In ancient prehistoric times, you have discovered a new land with plentiful lakes, mountains and forests (and apparently many stone rocks that shall be called dice). Your people can develop new things like basketry or find oxen or simply GROW and conquer.
In Rise of Tribes, players control a tribal faction in prehistoric times looking to GROW, MOVE, GATHER, and LEAD their people. The board is modular, composed of hexes in various terrain types. Each hex has a population limit. Players manage the number of tribe members they place on any one hex to either trigger or avoid conflict.
Each turn the active player rolls two dice, then selects two of the four actions to take – GROW, MOVE, GATHER, and/or LEAD. Each action is resolved one action at a time. The power of each action taken depends on the die roll plus the last couple of dice placed onto the action board on the selected action by other players. Once both actions are taken, the active player resolves any Conflicts. The final step of each turn is the time to build villages and complete goal cards.
Victory is possible in a couple ways: gathering resources to build villages and/or completing development and achievement goal cards for your civilization. Villages (limited to 1 per hex) score 1 point for the tribe that built them at the start of that tribe’s turn. Goal cards will score points immediately when completed. Every tribe’s ambition is to score 15 points. The tribe to score 15 points first wins the game.
Solo mode, with the addition of Rise of Tribes: The Vul’Keth Invasion (required and sold separately), is a very challenging way to play Rise of Tribes.
Rise of Tribes – Microbadges
Rise of Tribes fan
Rise of Tribes fan
Alan Stern
Goal-oriented area control driven by... dice rolls? A lighter euro with dice determining strength of actions. GOOD: The core of the game is solid. I like the events adding a random flavor. I like how the action strength waxes and wanes (albeit randomly - more on that below). The area control works with the goals. BAD: The action choices are limited and, while they lead to some deeper interactions, there's not much variety to your options. The control mechanism (combat) is hard - you have so little influence round-to-round if others want to clear you out of a hex. Most important of all, the dice roll controls all. If you roll a lot of suns, you *WILL* have stronger actions. If you roll a lot of moons, you *WILL* have weaker actions. SUGGESTION: Replace the dice roll with a pool of cards based on the same probability distribution. This would guarantee an even distribution of results negating my dice roll issue. BOTTOM LINE: I wanted to like this one more than I did. Not for me.
BGGPhoenix
2-4P 30-60M Area Majority/Influence, Events Modular Board, Variable Powers Worker Placement, Dice Rolling
BethRobinson
Excellent for the optimization of randomness. You know what everyone else has and where they are, you can make plans, but then what the "year" brings will tilt one way of another and you need to adapt, or not. I played with 4 and look forward to trying other player counts. Glad we pledged it.