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.