Went away for a few days with friends, and brought along two games I’ve had for a while now but never played. Ethnos was front-of-mind because it’s had kind of a shit-show year. Folks had lots of positive things to say about the OG version of Ethnos, but it seemed like the art & presentation was universally disliked. Folks were constantly clamoring for Ethnos v2, and so while I’d bought v1, I wasn’t super motivated to play it, expecting disappointment.

I loved it.

It turns out the art is fairly standard “LOTR-alike”, but there’s nothing wrong with it. The cards are quite legible, the colors are clear, the pieces quickly illustrate the control over the various regions, which is their main purpose. The only issue I have with the production of the game is that the insert is hot fucking garbage, and spills everything everywhere if you don’t keep the box horizontal.

As for the game? It looks like some sort of fantasy wargame, and I suppose you could say it’s like that, but abstracted. What it is mostly is a really fast set-collection game where you’re building up a hand of the same type of unit, or units dedicated to the same region. One unit “leads” your party, and you use their particular power (specific to their type) in some advantageous way. There are 12 types of units, and any game uses a random selection of 6 of them.

You build up control over areas, and that’s how you score, but you also score based on the size of the “bands” of units you play. Bigger bands = more points. Control over territory = more points. That’s basically it.

The game it reminds me of most is Ticket to Ride. You’re looking for matching sets to accomplish a task, then you do the task. At some point you draw cards that have been shuffled into the deck to end the game, and when you draw the third dragon, the game instantly ends, which adds a lot of tension to the mix. The last twist is that whenever you play a band of units, any other cards you don’t use in your hand go into a face-up market, and aside from an initial spread of face-up units, that’s the only way you can pick units you know, instead of just top-decking.

It’s fast – a game is <30 minutes, but there’s a lot of fun decision-making, a lot of variety, and it seemed like a lot of different ways to win. The art was a total non-issue.

The funny thing is that both the “revamp” of Ethnos, Archeos Society, was received poorly, because it exchanged the “control areas of a map” mechanic for a “progress along a track” mechanic, and people think it’s a change for the worse. Then, within 6 months of that, they released a new version of Ethnos with all-new art – “fixing” the main problem of the OG game. No changes to the rules. But the weird thing is that while the art is more colorful, it’s as cliche now to use anthropomorphic animals as it was to use high fantasy, the mechanics of the game are much less legible, the map is less clear, the icons are less clear, and the mapping of powers to “races” was much more intuitive in the original metaphor. So it’s wild. I’m glad to have the OG version, because it really sounds like both of the new ones messed it up.

Definitely an enjoyable game, and I think it’ll go into regular rotation in our house. The kids picked it up quickly and had a lot of fun.

We also busted out Twilight Inscription, thinking we’d play the short tutorial game, but ended up playing the whole thing. Really enjoyable, complicated roll & write. I’d been intimidated by it, because I’m not particularly familiar with the game it’s inspired by (Twilight Imperium), and it’s significantly more involved than any other roll & write I’ve played. Asymmetric races, an “event deck”, six dice of two types, relics, four boards you mark up, a ton of icons…

It’s a lot.

And yet, it’s also surprisingly simple, once you grok the basics. Each turn once you get what each board does is quick, but there’s enough stuff to do that it’s satisfying. It also felt like there are many valid ways to win, and understanding synergies and making the most of what you’ve got in the moment is… well, that’s how you win all games. 😀

Max went hard on industry, and smashed it. I’d ended up investing a lot in warfare, since my race’s special powers had some warfare-based stuff, but I ended up over-investing in it by quite a bit, and I think if I’d spent two fewer turns on warfare, and more in Expansion or Industry I’d have done a lot better. The kids held their own pretty darned well for a first stab at not only this kind of game, but the “most” of this kind of game.

It was also a lot of fun. About an hour and a half, which is crazy for a roll & write, but also, complex enough that it felt like a “complete game”, and not a watered-down or simplified version of something good.

Both games were really fun – while Ethnos will probably make it into regular rotation, I think Twilight Inscription will likely be a fairly “occasion” game, just because it’s longer, and more “brain-burny” for sure. I could see giving the solo mode a shot, for sure.