Camels and Genies and Assassins, Oh My!

Five Tribes

by Bruno Cathala

published by Days Of Wonder

Five Tribes was originally released back in 2014. This is a clever, multi-faceted mancala-based game where players move meeples around a board made of a grid of tiles in order to collect points via the actions of the five tribes: yellow viziers will gain you points at the end, white elders are valuable later, but can also be used throughout the game to access djinns, green traders grant you goods from the market, blue builders help you to acquire money and red assassins allow for strategic killing of meeples, either on the board, or in your opponents’ stashes.  There’s a cool bidding mechanic to determine turn order and because of the diversity of ways that players can gain points, it’s often a mystery who’s ahead until the scores are tallied.

How we came to play this game:  

Mike heard about this game after it had gotten some press for winning a bunch of awards and we picked it up.  We’ve since acquired the two large expansions plus the one bonus djinn.

This reminds us of:

Susan: We’ve been playing this game for a while now, so it’s more that other games are now reminding us of this one!  Quadropolis, Clank, and Terraforming Mars come to mind as others that also encourage players to use a diversity of ways to garner points as the game goes on.  The basic mancala mechanic works well here, with strategy needed to plan out what “tribe” you’ll collect (and get their benefit) as well as which tile you end on, because you also only may do certain actions on certain tiles.

Mike: Susan is correct. Five Tribes has become (at least in our eyes) a standard bearer for the new wave of mancala based board games. Istanbul and Planes come to mind as adjacent experiences.

Game art:  

Susan: This is probably the best space to mention that this game has a few problems with some not-very-politically-correct imagery. One of these was so serious that they actually printed a fix for.  In the original game, one of the things you could buy in the market was slaves, literally pictured with chains on their ankles. WHAT?? There was so much backlash that they issued a set of replacement cards, with cobra-charming fakirs on them instead.  There’s still ivory being sold in the market, though.

Mike: The game art is really satisfying. Wonderful wooden meeples, camels palm tree and palace figures really give the game board the feeling of a Middle Eastern bazaar. The card art on for the djinns and market cards are fantastically detailed. It's a delight to look at and adds significantly to the game experience. But yeah, having slaves available in the “market” was probably a bad idea. Historical realism is nice to have, but C’mon man!

Pretty! (and so is Susan!)

Best part:

Susan: This is one of those rare games that is actually deeper as a two-player game.  With two players, each person plays two turns per round and the bidding must occur for each of those two gos, which leads to annoying rich periods of planning out the multiple moves in a row. There’s still enough of a luck component, via the cards that are available to acquire, that I enjoy it but the strategy and randomness make it really enjoyable to be played over and over.

Mike: Annoying the crap outta Susan with my usual analysis paralysis which (especially in two player games) is highlighted because of the amount of strategy needed to be successful in the game. We all know how I love annoying the crap outta Susan!

In a sad attempt to turn the tide, Susan tries analysis paralysis as a strategy. Mike is still the king!

Worst part:

Susan: Sometimes I feel like this game ends about two turns too soon. I think that’s because Mike is a camel-laying fiend and my best-laid plans are wasted.

Mike: The setup is effing annoying. It comes as a complete surprise how difficult it is to reach into a bag, pull out exactly 3 random meeples and place them on 30 individual tiles. I mean it’s ultimately worth it, I love the game, but the setup is laborious! Can’t wait for an iPad version!

This is the setup we use in our video! Makes a fun visual but its still annoying!

Mistakes we made:

Susan: The first few times that we played, we accidentally refilled the market and djinn cards in between rounds.  It wasn’t a major mistake, but once in a while, this will affect decision-making.

Mike: Considering how many moving parts there are, we’ve been relatively mistake free with this one. That’s rare. If you read this blog with any regularity, we are notorious screw-ups when we first start playing a game, but that’s mostly because I lay the responsibility for interpreting the rules at Susan’s feet exclusively. She really good about taking on that responsibility, but it's a lot so sometimes things slip through the cracks because I am a lazy sod.

Play again?

Susan:  Absolutely.  We got the Artisans expansion a while ago and that added some nice dimensions via the new tribe and its power and some limitations on moving around the board. At holiday time, we added the new expansion, but haven’t incorporated that just yet.

Mike: Well, considering the backlog of titles we have to get to, I don't know if we’ll ever play anything we’ve already played again! The game room is quickly becoming the board game equivalent of “Hoarders”!

Can we get going here, please???

Times played:  

Susan:  This is actually a known quantity because you use a score pad and Mike makes us save them all but I’d have to go look.

Mike: I wanna get this blog out now and I'm not home to look at the box. We have played this a lot cuz we love it!

Game record -

Susan: See above.

Mike: No need, I'm winning!

#BoardGameHaiku

Drop, drop, drop, two reds

That meeple’s dead, boom, camel

Wait what, that’s your last?