Review

Gentes

Civiliations across centuries

Gentes, Latin for „People“, was first in 2017 by Spielworxx, sold out very quickly and has now been re-published by Game Brewer. The most notable feature of this game is an innovative time mechanism, represented by Sand Timer tiles which you need to take practically for every player action and thus reduce the available action spaces for players during the current round – there are only 6 round altogether – and maybe also in the next round. Furthermore, the actions described later can, for the most part, be only implemented by the removing of action tiles – Tile Removal, a reversed Worker Placement mechanism, so to say.

The big game board depicts the Eastern part of the Mediterranean states and territories, divided into three regions. Every region has six cities with tree different resources – temple piece, oracle token, merchant city with money yield – in the course of the game, players put their houses into those cities with the “Seafaring” action, yield money or bonus tokens, which in turn provide other reductions and options for other actions.

Furthermore, the board shows several different areas like „Philosopher“ - educational costs -with six types of population groups – artisan, soldier, priest etc., to improve the status of the respective population on your own board; „Scribe“ to allow you to buy additional civilization cards for your hand (you begin the game with two such cards); „Chronicler“ for playing those cards; „Tax Collector“ to enhance your financial status; „Leader“ to become the new starting player, and the already mentioned „Seafaring“ to occupy cities on the board and in the so-called hometown-area, which again gives you various advantages for the game as you acquire additional action options or improvements thereby, like buying cheaper or +1 for population, etc.

Very interestingly regulated, too, is the mechanism to improve your own population. You must buy one of the action tiles for the price indicated on it, then place the tile on your action board and then put the depicted number of timer tiles behind it. For some actions in other areas, you must place more than one timer, may even up to three timers. You can decide, if you want, to place maximum two timers adjacently as a double timer or to place them separately on two cases. For this decision, you need to know that at the end of the round, in the so-called Decline phase, only one timer is removed from each action case, so that from double timers one remains in place, which blocks the action case in the next round or earns you penalty points at the end of the last round.

Depending on the amount you paid, you can either buy one or two population improvements; the further to the right the intended population group is situated, the higher the costs will be. Then the remaining population tiles are shifted to the left, becoming cheaper, and the selected tiles are placed again in reversed positions at the right-hand end. The improved population groups are adjusted accordingly on your own board; the six groups are marked in three rows with counter-current numbers of 1 to 6 (from left to right as well as from right to left). At some point, ideally, the two groups will run into each other, and thereby moving each other backwards; so that, if you have brought one group up to improvement level Six, the other group in the same group will be at Zero automatically.

However, one of the most important action is the acquisition of additional civilization cards, which are divided into three eras, up to eight of them are available for the action “Scribe”. For this, too, you can acquire up to three cards with one action; the more of them and the further to the right they are placed, the more you have to pay and the more timer tiles you need to take.

The action yielding most points is the action „Chronicler“ for playing exactly one civilization card from your hand, which is, of course, also regulated by the „Tile Removal“ system with ascending costs and one or two timer tiles, and is a favorite, especially towards the end of the game, to get the point-laden cards (up to 18 victory points) of the third era on the table. The cards usually specify up to two cities where you need to have a house already set up by the „Seafarer“ action.

Always, the cards show requirements of the minimum values of necessary population groups; you need to consider this carefully when improving your own population as well as for buying cards for your hand – you need to include this in your planning ahead.

Those cards give you – in relation to the era – rising numbers of points and certain other permanent advantages – maybe also disadvantages, e.g. loss of a unit of population – and also additional action options. The cards also show one or two of four possible symbols; for each card, you can select a symbol, and score a point for every card carrying that symbol that you have played already. This chain reaction should also be considered when buying cards, as long chains and each additional card can lead to acquisition of quit a lot of victory points.

Various bonus tiles - e.g. for the first player who has played eight cards or has 18 population or has all six houses in cities on the board, he will receive eight victory points, all others only four – are also an incentive to follow very definite strategies to be first in one of those categories.

At the end of each round, a so-called Decline phase is resolved, in which you do . besides the already mentioned removal of sand timer tiles, several other cleaning-up operations and also do, for instance, a check on hand cards. If you have more than three cards in hand, you must take a timer tile for each additional one and have thus fewer action options in the following round. In each region on the board, exactly one town for each player, at his on choice, is activated; this also gives you quite some money or victory points or various temple or oracle cubes. You can, for instance, discard three cubes to improve one population.

Many details as well as the resolving of the game end would exceed to scope of this review. The rules themselves are rather straightforward, twelve pages for three to four players. All rules are easily understood and comprehensible, featuring lots of examples. There are rules and a board (on the back of the regular board) for two players and even a solitaire rule.

So, there is barely a wish that is not met by this – in my opinion – nearly perfect civilization development game. A definite recommendation for all players interested in innovative and partially really new mechanisms must be unconditionally given.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 1-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Stefan Risthaus

Art: Harald Lieske, Adam P. Mclver

Price: ca. 48 Euro

Publisher: Game Brewer 2018

Web: www.gamebrewer.com

Genre: Civilization development

Users: For experts

Special: 1 player

Special: 2 players

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr nl + es

In-game text: no

Comments:

New luxury edition

Innovative time consumption mechanism

Acceptable duration

No area control mechanisms

© Image Hank Rolleman

Compares to:

Civilization for general theme and game mechanics

Other editions:

Spielworxx (sold out), Maldito (es)

My rating: 7

Gert Stöckl:

An exceptional civilization development game with few area control elements (no wars) and an innovative time-consummation mechanism.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0