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Ethnos

In Ethnos, players call upon the support of giants, merfolk, halfings, minotaurs, and other fantasy tribes to help them gain control of the land. After three ages of play, whoever has collected the most glory wins!

In more detail, the land of Ethnos contains twelve tribes of fantasy creatures, and in each game you choose six of them (five in a 2/3-player game), then create a deck with only the creatures in those tribes. The cards come in six colors, which match the six regions of Ethnos. Place three glory tokens in each region, arranging them from low to high.

Each player starts the game with one card in hand, then 4-12 cards are placed face up on the table. On a turn, a player either recruits an ally or plays a band of allies. In the former case, you take a face-up card (without replacing it from the deck) or the top card of the deck and add it to your hand. In the latter case, you choose a set of cards in your hand that match either in tribe or in color, play them in front of you on the table, then discard all other cards in hand. You then place one or more tokens in the region that matches the color of the top card just played, and you use the power of the tribe member on the top card just played.

At the end of the first age, whoever has the most tokens in a region scores the glory shown on the first token. After the second age, the players with the most and secondmost tokens score glory equal to the values shown on the first and second tokens. Players score again after the third age, then whoever has the most glory wins. (Games with two and three players last only two ages.)

Pip: In the time it takes my companion/opponent to move his knight to a new square I have broken off a piece of the game board and stuffed it into my mouth, crumbs on my T-shirt volunteering the specifics of my crime.

On the plus side, I am road testing one of Jenn Sandercock’s edible games – The Order Of The Oven Mitt – and thus I have a mouthful of gingerbread rather than cardboard. On the less plus side you aren’t supposed to eat the board yet and I’ve just remembered I don’t like gingerbread.

The gingerbread debacle happens every year around Christmas. Faced with the dramatic potential of pretending to be a giant devouring a village I will tuck into any number of gingerbread houses and gingerbread folk, trying to ignore my tastebuds. I mention this to make it clear that the gingerbread problem is my own cross to bear rather than anything to do with Jenn. BUT gingerbread is a really useful building material so it’s working really well as the substrate for the game.

Paul: Quinns! The oven timer has gone off! What have you got in there, exactly? It looks like… bread.

Quinns: No, that’s not bread that’s rising. It’s THE EMPIRE.

Paul: Is it going to take long? I wanted to put a pizza in.

In the worker placement game Fields of Arle, set in the German region of East Frisia, players develop an estate and expand their territory by cutting peat and building dikes.

The game covers nine half-years with alternating summer and winter seasons, and each season allows or denies specific player actions. Different and detailed manufacturing processes allow a player to create goods needed to expand her estate. In addition, trades with adjoining municipalities can help a player gain the needed resources or goods for building and expanding.

In 1942, the Japanese empire exploded across the Pacific, conquering everything before them. The only large land mass still held by the Allies was Australia, which they desperately needed as a staging area for a planned U.S. led counter-attack. The Japanese knew of the importance of Australia, but lacked the resources to conquer it, so they decided on the next best thing: Isolate Australia from the United States by building an airfield on the island of Guadalcanal, from which planes could disrupt the Allied supply lines.

The United States, ill-prepared as it was for any offensive actions, immediately attacked with the 1st Marine Division under the command of Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, caught the Japanese by surprise and easily took control of the airfield. The Japanese 17th Army, under the command of Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake, counterattacked with an ever-increasing number of troops. For the next four months a titanic struggle took place in the air, on land and on sea as the isolated Marines and U.S. Army fought for their lives to hold their tiny perimeter around the airfield against the might of the Japanese Empire.

Conflict of Heroes: Guadalcanal – Pacific Ocean 1942 recreates this struggle on your tabletop and includes gorgeous beach and jungles maps of the South Pacific, amphibious landing craft, the USMC, Japanese Banzai Charges, night combat, and much more.

Here’s a question for you. What contains Fields of Arle, Spoils of War, Conflict of Heroes and Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs? That’s right! The answer is “A fistfight over an archaeological dig site in Northern Germany.” But another valid answer would be the 58th ever SU&SD podcast, wherein Paul and Quinns discuss all of these games. What’s more, Quinns reveals the results of his months-long experiment using the BG Stats app. After all of that excitement the boys relax by dipping into the mailbag for a question on why board games seem to be getting more expensive, and close the podcast by talking about the noble art of marble racing. Enjoy, everybody! (Thanks to BGG User Steph Hodge for this podcast’s header image!)

Unlock! is a series of cooperative card-based escape adventures for up to six players. Each Unlock! game consists of sixty cards depicting objects, maps, and puzzles that can be activated, solved, or combined in an effort to access other cards and areas. The free companion app tracks the time allotted to win the game, while also offering hints and unlocking new, and necessary, elements. When the players believe they have figured out the code to escape each adventure, they will input the number into the app and escape the danger, or lose even more time in finding the real sequence.

Everyone meant to use the cabin only as a shelter for the night, but come the morning the door has been secured by a combination lock, with no one knowing the combination of numbers that will let them leave. The windows are barred as well. An enigmatic spinning code dial and a mysterious book is all that you have to go on. Can you escape from this abandoned cottage?

In EXIT: The Game – The Abandoned Cabin, players must use their team spirit, creativity, and powers of deduction to crack codes, solve puzzles, collect objects, and earn their freedom bit by bit.

Quinns: As “escape rooms” continue to spread across the world like an architectural venereal disease (but a nice one!), you may or may not know that there are now lots of escape room board games. Yes! You can have (almost) all the fun of escaping a real room, but at a tidy fraction of the price.

For the last few weeks I’ve been fretting and sweating against these games’ arbitrary countdowns, searching for the best simulation of being locked in a room. And do you know what? I had a consistently happy time of it.

But the time for happiness is over. Two series emerged as front-runners during my trials, and it’s only right that I pit them against one another in cardboard combat. From Germany, in the blue corner, we have the prestigious series of EXIT: The Game. And from France, in the red corner, we have the flashy contender known as Unlock!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! LET’S GET READY TO ~~RUMBLE~~ PUZZLE!

America in the 19th century: You are a rancher and repeatedly herd your cattle from Texas to Kansas City, where you send them off by train. This earns you money and victory points. Needless to say, each time you arrive in Kansas City, you want to have your most valuable cattle in tow. However, the “Great Western Trail” not only requires that you keep your herd in good shape, but also that you wisely use the various buildings along the trail. Also, it might be a good idea to hire capable staff: cowboys to improve your herd, craftsmen to build your very own buildings, or engineers for the important railroad line.

If you cleverly manage your herd and navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of Great Western Trail, you surely will gain the most victory points and win the game.

Ethnos

Games News! 15/05/2017

Fields of Arle

Conflict of Heroes: Guadalcanal – The Pacific 1942

Podcast #58: A Field of Marbles

Unlock!

EXIT: The Game – The Abandoned Cabin

Review- EXIT: The Game vs. Unlock!

Great Western Trail

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