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shows one of five possible raw materi- als. Exploring means to expand your territory using a land tile
picked at random from a
wrong. Sure, burning a re- source should not be done lightly, but it’s not necessari- ly a big loss. The important
thingisthatthebenefityou get for this “hard compensa- tion” of shortages is according
the sacrifice.
I Simple structure hides
a deep game
For the three actions that take place on
your private territory, there is a develop- ment track that shows their effectivity: how many movement points you have,
how many terrain tiles you can draw, and how many huts you can grow. Every player starts each track with a value of one. Invented technolo- gies allow you to advance in the
area noted on the tile.
Some technological ad-
vances add more action tiles or events, to the ac- tion line. The latter are mostly catastrophes, but players with deep enough shell reserves will rather pay than trigger them – es-
pecially since you lose an action at the same time. Sooner or later, though, somebody has to take a bite of the sour apple. Maybe because that player can deal with the effects and prefers to get a few shells instead of paying one, or may- be because there are simply no shells to
pay for skipping a disaster.
Tribes leaves nothing to be desired. The
mechanics are smooth and fit perfectly together. The components are decent, both in terms of manufacturing quality and graphics. The iconography is clear
and understandable. The same applies to the instructions. Pub- lisherandauthorhave
delivered a more than decent work, which, unfortu- nately, is not the norm these
days. This is all the more aston- ishing when you consider that Tribes is the first game from the newly founded Tea Time Produc-
tions.
If Tribes has a prob-
lem at all, it’s that
its simple struc-
ture hides the
depth of the
game. The latter
comes from the mix of
long-term planning (which of the currently visible technologies should one go after?) and short-term tacti- cal considerations. Tribes is in no way confrontational (interaction is limited only to the choice of ac- tions), nevertheless, everyone is ey- ing around the table to determine what can be had for free and where competitor’s plans can be foiled without hurting oneself. The short actions and the extremely low administration overhead al- most inevitably lead to a fast- paced game. Barely more than ten minutes per player are needed for a relatively intense gaming expe- rience, something you’ll search for in vain in many big Euro games.
Tribes can be recommended for two, and even solo players have been given a decent version.
For the newcomer from Swe- den, this is a successful entry, one that makes you hungry for a “big” game based on this system.
Meanwhile the worldwide li- cense for Tribes has been ob- tained by Kosmos, and their multi-language version is to be expected some time in 2018.
Oliver Grimm/sb
bag. Grow- ing allows you to add huts to tiles where you already have one or more, and moving lets you shift huts to other
hexes.
The mere possession of huts on tiles
showing resources makes it possible to invent new technologies. If you lack cer- tain resources specified on the technolo- gy tile you are aiming at, you can choose to use other terrain tiles instead, but then you have to permanently exhaust that ter- rain – they will be flipped over to the neu- tralside.
With burning tiles Tribes cleverly solves a problem that can arise when using a ran- dom technology tree along with random terrain hex draws. Some people con- stantly snag terrain with ex- actly the right resource from the bag, others pick always
Title: Publisher: Designer: Artist: Players: Age: Duration: Price:
Tribes
Tea Time Productions Rustan Håkansson Lennart Moberg
1–4
about 8+ years
about 20–45 minutes about 47 €
Reviewer Playing appeal
Oliver Grimm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Matthias Hardel* . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Alan How. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
* Remarkably restrained. Very well worth playing, but something more could be more in this case.
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