Setting-up Five Tribes is like spending a day as Elon Musk – you throw peasants into piles and gamble on which ones will get you filthy f*ck*ng rich. That’s probably a terrible comparison, but the game board does look like a fully exhumed meeple graveyard with every corpse spread-eagle. So there’s that. In more meaningful terms, Five Tribes is a Mancala-style point salad abstract that slaps you upside the head for even thinking of the word “diagonally.” It’s a game that might teach you a thing or two about history, and DEFINITELY teaches you what the word “orthogonally” means.
But don’t let my cynicism fool you. This game is f*ck*ng dope as sh*t and should not be overlooked. Unless you want theme. If you want theme, then overlooking this wacko gem should be #1 on your to-do list. But if you love mechanics and a randomized board, then you should play Five Tribes. It’s a beast whose claws sink in during set-up and never lets go.
Gameplay
The game board is 30 tiles set-up randomly in a 5×6 grid (There 5 different kinds of tiles among the 30). Three randomly chosen meeples are placed on each tile (There are 5 different colors of meeples). On your turn, you will choose a tile, pick up every meeple on that tile, and then drop them off, one at a time, in an orthogonal route of your choosing. The last meeple you drop triggers that meeple’s power AND you activate the tile you end on.
So each turn you will get a MEEPLE POWER and a TILE POWER. Because you are dropping meeples onto other tiles, you are increasing a location’s meeple amount (This means the board state is vastly different between turns, causing some serious AP). The goal is to combo meeple powers with tiles as best you can. Turn order is done with a bidding system – give up vp to go early to hopefully take a REALLY point-heavy-combotastic-turn.
1ST CLAW - The Set-Up
The opening board state is Analysis Paralysis HEAVEN. In addition to gauging the sexiness of each randomized meeple pile and tile locations, the FIRST thing you must decide is maddening – how many victory points will you spend to go early in the round? Do you have any idea how confusing it is to gauge a “Good first turn” in Five Tribes? It’s one of the only games where there are 1,000 legal moves and 97% of them are dumb as f*ck. So how much should you pay? How long should you look before you commit? You might spot a 15 victory point move and pay 8 victory points to claim it. Or pay 5 to get 10 vp only to have the next *sshole spend 8 and destroy everything you’ve ever loved. And worst of all, the last player might chop your jugular by paying 0 and get 20 more than you cause you stupidly made a pile of five meeples with two red assassins WHAT THE F*CK WERE YOU THINKING?!
Welcome to Five Tribes, where taking advantage of the previous moron is the name of the game. This is what every first turn feels like. Actually, this is what EVERY turn feels like until the final camel is thrown onto some sh*tty 6 point spot, but I digress. You want tough decisions? You want that glorious AP that defines all difficult board games? Then you will love this one. The first claw of Five Tribes latches onto your spine and drags your overworked brain through the mud. It’s pretty intense.
2ND CLAW - Your Point Engine
After a few whirlwind rounds where you absolutely made embarrassingly horse-sh*t choices, the 2nd claw strikes and lifts you back onto your feet. The board has developed into strings of small piles with a few meaty 6 meeple tiles. You’ve somehow developed a hankering for one of the 5 meeple’s styles and now seek to exploit the living sh*t out of it. You might have acquired 2 genies, each directing your decisions, or a TON of yellow meeples that you would gladly trample your own mother to defend. Or you’ve snagged all the sweet rare resources and have a mad set in front of you. At this point, you can still score a healthy amount of points with each type of meeple and tile, but you are REALLY leaning on one or two styles to carry. SO! Do you keep hemorrhaging out vp to activate the universally best spot (Say 3 builder meeples near 5 blue squares), or do you save and pull off a move only you are interested in?
It is also at this point that the blood-thirsty assassin meeples really start to wreck sh*t as there are multiple tiles with just a single, pathetic, SOCIALIST meeple. Every person at the table has the same question running in their head – HOW THE F*CK DO I KILL THOSE SONS A’ B*TCH*S AND DROP A CAMEL ON THEIR CORPSES?
THE BITE - Sudden Death
By the end of Five Tribes, there’s almost nothing left of Naqala. You’ve stolen the wealth of the builder (blue) meeples, the assassins (red) have slaughtered each other, the viziers (yellow) and elders (white) have all been gathered – or murdered! And the merchants (green)? They were the first to go! It’s just scraps; piles of 1, 2, or 3 meeples. The board looks so unappealing, is it even worth bidding vp anymore?
The Bite often occurs when several players have two or three camels left. Less than a third of the meeples remain on the board, leaving a dozen or so small moves obvious to everyone. The challenge swings from “What is the best move?” to “Should I bid at all?” The AP of deciding which move to perform gets bulldozed by the AP of deciding how many vp to bid. Bidding zero seems worth it since every option sucks and the world is garbage, but if a player drops their last camel before you act, you won’t even get another turn.
The Bite is admittedly the weakest point in Five Tribes, but that does not mean much in this 10 out of 10 game. The end moves pretty quickly and causes a complete U-Turn in thinking, making the finale anything but boring.