Schotten Totten is a game with a simple premise. There are two tribes who each have their own territory they control. There is a border in between these two territories marked with some stones. As the ruler of one of these tribes you’ll probably think “wouldn’t it be so easy just to push the stones a little bit into the other tribes territory, to expand mine?”. And the answer is yes, it would be. If the other tribe doesn’t do it first!

In Schotten Totten there are nine stone tiles laid out on the table in a line. You win by claiming 5 stones, or 3 stones that are adjacent to each other. On your turn you play one of your 6 cards, and then you draw a card. That’s all you do on your turn, it’s really that simple. In fact this whole game is very easy to understand, but there is a lot of strategic depth. I feel like every time I play Schotten Totten I learn something new about the strategy.

When you play one of your cards, you play it on any stone tile that has not yet been claimed, and the tile you place your card on can’t already have three cards that you have played on it. Once both players have three cards on a stone tile, whoever’s 3 card combination is stronger gets to claim that tile. There are 6 different colours of cards each with 1 card of each number from 1 to 9. The best possible 3 card combo is having 3 cards adjacent numerically and of the same colour, the next highest combo is having 3 of the same numbered card, 3rd highest combo is 3 cards of the same colour, then three numerically adjacent cards, and finally the worst combo is just having three random cards. The player with the better combo claims the stone. If both players have the same combo, then the player with the highest sum of numbers on the cards they played on the stone claims it.

The final twist of claiming a stone is that if you can prove that your opponent could never win a certain stone, you can claim it for free. And that’s the whole game, so simple it can be explained in a paragraph. But a lot of the strategy in the game comes from the fact that you have to play a card every turn. Let me give you an example of some interesting risk vs reward gameplay that can happen in Schotten Totten: you have the red 4 and 6 in your hand. If you played them both on one stone and then drew the red 5 you would have a colour run (which is the best combo). But, if you’re opponent draws the red 5 they can play it on the board and prove you can’t make a colour run and have an easy time beating you on that stone. So maybe you should just play the six and wait a bit so you can stay flexible. But if you do that you might have to waste some space on some other tiles by playing cards that aren’t too useful to you, since you don’t have anything else to play. It’s situations like these where you have to weigh up keeping yourself flexible on a stone, or not filling up too many spaces so you will have more choices later in the game.

Ok, when I said “that’s the whole game” earlier, I lied. There is an optional variant which adds new cards called tactic cards. When you draw a card in the tactic card variant you can choose to draw from the regular deck or from the deck of tactic cards. These cards offer all sorts of different fun powers. some of them are units that act as wild cards, some of them change the way the battle is fought on a particular stone, and some of them let you move and destroy cards. These tactic cards make the game a bit less luck based, because you can rely a bit less on drawing specific cards from the regular deck. The powers are also fun to use, and add some variety for seasoned veterans of the game. They really do changed up the game a lot, but they add quite a bit of complexity. So I would recommend playing a couple of games of the regular version of Schotten Totten before adding tactic cards in.

Schotten Totten is a very fun, 10 minute game. Though I do love long multi-hour strategy games, I don’t always have time for them. And with Schotten Totten only needing 2 players, it’s really easy to play anywhere. But just because it’s a quick game does not mean there is a lot of strategy. It does have quite a bit of luck in it, but usually if you play smart you won’t need to worry about bad card draws. If you want to do a deep statistical analysis you can, but if you just want some quick fun you can also do that with Schotten Totten.

What does Ethnos have on it’s face? An Eth-nose! Thank you for reading this review of Ethnos, have a nice day.

You’re still here? Alright, I guess I can tell you a bit about Ethnos’ gameplay. Ethnos is a game for 2-6 players set in a land called (surprise surprise) Ethnos. You must create bands of different fantasy races, such as: halflings, minotaurs, centaurs, and wizards (which are apparently a race). A band must have all units from the same race, or the same region. Bands of larger sizes will give you lots of points later in the game. Then you select one of your band members to be the “leader”. You then get to place one of you control tokens in the same region as the region the leader is from. But if you have equal or less cards in your band then the amount of control markers you already have in the region, you cannot place another control marker there. If you have the most control markers at the region at the end of an “age”, you get a certain amount of points depending on the region. Another important thing about your leader is the fact that you get to use their races special power when you play the band.

These special powers are quite major powers that can really change the course of the game. For example: the wingfolk let you place a control marker in any region instead of the one they come from, the trolls let you take a troll token with a value up to the amount of cards in your band that can break ties for control of a region, the merfolk even have their own scoring board! There are 12 races in Ethnos and each game you only play with six of them so it’s not overwhelming. Doing this gives Ethnos the benefit of letting you really get to know each of the races powers, but it also allows you to have more variety and replay-ability in future games. These powers are really interesting, and they add some extra strategy to the final (arguably most important) layer of the game: actually getting the units to be in your bands.

At the begging of every age you deal face up six cards each with a race a region on it. On your turn you can play a band of allies, or draw one of the face up cards, or draw from the deck. Interestingly you do not replace a card drawn from the line of face up cards with a card from the deck. The face up cards are actually refilled when a player plays a band. Because when a player plays a band, all the other cards in their hand go face up for other players to take. I really like this for two reasons: 1) because it adds a layer of risk vs reward ” do I want to draw another card for the chance to make a bigger band but risk having to end up throwing it away where other players can take it, or should I just play my band as it is now?” and 2) because it adds a type of player interaction I don’t normally see in games, where instead of undermining the other players, you’re giving them something.

Ethnos feels very cleanly designed, and intuitive. But it also exhibits a lot of really interesting strategy. Taking only half an hour to an hour, and having a very wide range of player counts. Ethnos is both good for all sorts of situations, and very strategic. The only downside is that there is quite a bit of luck when you draw cards from the deck (which happens quite often). But in the end, the best player should still win. I hope I sold Ethnos well enough to you, because it’s quite hard to sell. You really need to play it to understand how fun it is. And I would definitely recommend playing it. Thank you for reading this review of Ethnos, have a nice day.