OUR REVIEW

Clans, camels and demons

Five Tribes

The Djinns of Naqala

Designer Bruno Cathala is not unknown in the games play community. Since the year 2000 he has created approximately 30 games. Among them are titles like Boom Town, Schatten über Camelot, Jamaika or Flinke Feger as well as Kleopatra und die Baumeister. He was rather successful with those games, too, five times one of his games was selected for the list of recommended games for Spiel des Jahres. Some more awards came from Japan, from France in the guise of As d’Or and last but not least from the Viennese Games Academy. Very often Bruno Cathala co-operates with other designers, among them Serge Laget and Ludovic Maublanc. This year at Spiel in Essen Cathala had five different new releases on show. In Five Tribes he is the sole designer and has - in my opinion - provided his best game so far. Well, this already summarizes my positive opinion about the game.

Let’s take look at the name of the game. “Tribes” means clans, kin, family and we can select from five of such clans, more on them later. The subtitle in addition to Five Tribes is “Die Dschinn of Naqala- The Djinns of Naqala”. Dschinns - the term is of Arabic origin - are invisible, demonic being originating from fire. Contrary to angels, which sprung up from light. They are even mention in the Koran, in surah 72. We also know demons from the story of „Aladdin and the Magic Lamp“ in the stories of 1001 nights, where they are benevolent beings. This game features 22 djinns. They are a central factor of the game and can decide on victory or loss of the game.

The term „Naqala“ - which is also originating from Arabic - can be translated into English to deliver or transport or distribute. And this takes us to the mechanics of the game, for which the designer took inspirations from the game of Mancala. Most people know this game as “Bean Game”, where you distribute the number of pebbles or beans that are in one bowl into subsequent bowls. This game was described for the first time in the 17^th century, but in Ethiopia and Egypt game components have been found that originate from the 4^th century AD. The origin of the game lies in regions in Africa and Arabia and it spread also into the Caribbean, where its use is restricted to men, while it mostly entertains women and children in Asia. It also spread to other parts of America due to the slave trade. The rules for Mancala offer more than 800 variants and the game also has many other names. There are speculations - albeit unproved - that the game is more than 5000 years old and thus is the oldest game in the world.

Now, hopefully, I have made you curious enough to turn our attention to the actual game. Each player heads or uses five tribes and occupies - assisted by Djinns - enough locations to acquire victory points. The dominance over locations is documented with your own camels. (Any similarity to living politicians is surely pure coincidence and not intended at all!). Additional victory points can be accrued from gold, palaces and palm trees on tiles that you own.

The box in the standard size, e.g. for Kosmos games, is very richly filled. Foremost there are 30 tiles of different values in colors blue and red. The give you different options, to which I will get back further on, and represent the actual playing board. Due to the random and arbitrary arrangement at the start of the game each game is different and this is not the only way that ensures uniqueness.

Then there is a sequence track on which you mark the order of play with a corresponding marker, determined by a bidding mechanism. Furthermore the box holds 12 wooden palm trees and 10 palaces which are placed, as already mentioned, in the course of the game, plus, of course, the tribes that provide the title:

There are 16 yellow “Wesire/Viziers“, 18 blue „Baumeister/Builders“, 18 green „Kaufleute/Merchants“, 18 red „Meuchelmörder/Assassins“ and 20 white „Ältere/Elders“. Finally, there are 18 Slave cards and 54 Resource cards made up from 2 each for Ivory, Jewels, and Gold, 4 each for Papyrus, Silk and Spice and 6 each for Fish, Wheat and Pottery. All of those cards are used to accrue money in the course of the game. All cards are shuffled and a row of 9 cards is laid out at the start of the game.

Probably some people will bemoan the „political incorrectness“ of slaves but in the period in which the game is set, slave trade was common and generally accepted. I did already mention 22 Djinn cards. Those Djinns also come in different values, there are two cards of value 4, one with value 5, ten of value 6, five of value 8 and two of value 10. Those cards, too, are important for the final scoring. Three Djinn cards are displayed at the start of the game. 98 gold coins, unfortunately only cardboard ones, round off the copious components.

Let’s take a look at the flow of the game, which is facilitated by four big and very clear summary sheets in DINA4 format. Each player starts the game with coins of value 50 and with eight camels in one color, they are available in blue, black, and orange and pink. In the first round the turn order markers are placed on the bidding order track randomly. The furthermost player on this track has the choice from 9 cases at a price of 1, 3, 5, 8, 12 and 18 or 3 times 0, respectively. That means, a maximum of three players can indulge in stinginess. If you want to ensure that you will be among the first to move you must spend some money. The one in first place is the first in the next round to make a bid for the turn order. Then he has the chance to choose one of the 30 location tiles for his starting point. Before we begin, all colored tribes members are drawn randomly from the bag and three meeples are placed into each location.

Now the Mancala mechanism comes into play. You pick up all meeples from a location and distribute them one by one onto adjacent tiles, whereby you adhere to the following rules: Never move diagonally from tile to tile, and never move to and fro, and the last meeple you place must be placed on a tile that already contains a minimum of one meeple of this color. This ensures that there are at least 2 meeples of the same color. This last meeple you placed and his “brother” or “brethren” of the same color are taken up in hand again and dealt with according to their color: Yellow Viziers are kept and earn you one victory points at the end of the game for each vizier and ten points for each player who did collect fewer viziers. White Elders are also kept and give you two victory points, but no bonus at the end. You can use Elders during the game to acquire Djinns. Green Merchant meeples are put back into the bag and are thus taken out of play. According to their number you may take commodities or slaves from the outmost end of the respective display. The blue Builder meeples are handled in the same way. They are taken out of play, but give you gold according to their number. Should you hold slave cards you can enhance the amount of gold. The number of cards is multiplied by the number of blue locations adjacent to the end-of-move location. If you hold red Assassin meeples at the end of the move you discard them and may eliminate one meeple within range.  Range of elimination is determined by the number of red Assassins plus any slave cards. As an alternative you can assassinate one Vizier or one Elder of another player. Should you need gold you can acquire this by selling one set of commodities. Depending on the number of commodities you acquire between 1 and 60 gold (in case of nine commodities).

When it happens that a location is empty after you did pick up the final meeples of your movement turn, you claim the location for yourself by placing one of your camels there. This brings us to the functions of the location tiles. Each tile shows a number on a red or blue background and entitles you to an action. When a move ends on a red 8 you must place a palm tree on the tile. When you end up on a blue 5 you place a palace. Both actions are “must be done” actions. Actions from other tiles are left to your discretion. The red 6, which is called „Small Market“, allows you to pay three gold and choose of the three foremost commodities cards. At a 4, the “Big Market”, you may choose two of the 6 foremost cards after payment of 6 gold.

There are also so-called „Holy Sites“, featuring numbers 6, 10, 12 and 15. On these locations you can acquire one of the three Djinns on display when you discard two “Elder” or one “Elder” and a slave. It would be far beyond the scope of this review to mention the respective advantages of all 22 Djinns. Some of them can be used instantly, others need additional meeples and slaves to become active. And some other ones are only of use at the end of the game.

This brings us already to the end of the game. This happens as soon as a player uses his last camel or when no regular meeple movement is possible. A sheet included in the box facilitates the score-taking for eight different kinds of victory points. You score points for Gold, Viziers, and Elders, the total sum of your Djinns and location tiles, sets of commodities and for palm trees and palaces on your own locations.

At this point I want to give lots of praise to the artist Clement Masson. The visual effects and the functionality of the game elements are excellent. With the help of pictograms and the marvelous game summaries one can immerse oneself quickly and easily into the rather complex game. Due to the always random arrangement of the locations in a game and the also always different initial meeple placement each game is different and not predictable. Yet, should you happen to have one of those endless ponderers in your group it could be that you are threatened by insanity or that violence might be in the air due to the plethora of options and possibilities to move. The variety in ways to generate victory points keeps the game challenging and thrilling to the very end and can also generate some surprising results.

Contrary to the artist I am not as happy with the editing. There are some things that I do not understand. The tribes were packed separately - quite unnecessary, as the first thing you do is to shuffle them in the bag for placement as a random generator on locations. Juxtaposed to that, the four camel varieties came in one bag, Switching those two ways of packaging would have been better. It is also quite unnecessary that the location tiles have two printed sides. If would have been better to do this with the gold markers, because for them identical back sides for the 1 and 5 denominations have been chosen and so they cannot be distinguished. As positive as the use of wood might be, tiles would have done as well instead of the three-dimensional palaces and palm trees. I have the feeling that the game needed additional pimping to justify the rather steep price of about 50 Euros.

But all this niggling does not diminish in any way my good opinion of the game and the quality of the game which definitely is one of the highlights of the 2014 crop. On the scout list of Fairplay magazine at Essen it was constantly ranked on the front-most positions.

Rudolf Ammer

Players: 2-4

Age: 13+

Time: 80+

Designer: Bruno Cathala

Artist: Clement Masson

Price: ca. 50 Euro

Publisher: Days of Wonder 2014

Web: www.daysofwonder.com

Genre: Placement, collecting

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Mechanism based on Mancala

Many additions for variable games

Attractive design

Simple rules

Down-time can be long due to excessive pondering

Compares to:

Mancala for the basic mechanics, otherwise placement and collecting games

Other editions:

Rebel.pl, announced

My rating: 6

Rudolf Ammer:

A game with a lot of options and a perpetually changing starting situation. Very nice design and simple rules provide a thrilling and positive game experience.

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0