Ethnos Review – The Best-Playing “Boring” Game in Your Collection

My favourite factoid about Ethnos is that throughout prototyping Paolo Maori, the designer, copied a map of Slovakia to give the board an island feel. When it went to publishing, this slipped his mind, and artist John Howe picked up the prototype and enhanced it without a second thought. So Ethnos went out with a high fantasy map suspiciously looking like Slovakia.

That’s not the only interesting thing about Ethnos though. Another is the game’s twelve different fantasy creature decks, each changing the game drastically by adding sideboards or rule-breaking powers. During set up, you select at most half of these. Creating infinite combinations of different ways to play the game.

Underneath this diversity though, the core game remains the same.

There are two things you can do on your turn. The first is to pick up a card from the market or the top of the creature deck and add it to your hand. The other is to play a band of creatures from your hand.

Forming a band in real life requires you to get four friends together and source a couple of wigs from your mum’s closet. It’s a lot easier in Ethnos, where you just need a set of creature cards that are either all the same type or the same colour. So for instance, you could have a band of elves where cards are a mix of colours, or a band of all green cards of varying creature types.

In playing a band, you’re often left with some remaining creatures that don’t fit. These are returned to the market, ready to be snapped up by rival players.

Also during the formation of the band, you must pick a leading creature card. You’ll get to activate their power after the band is played. As well as put an influence token onto the region of the board matching their colour.

For example, if I played a band of four elves with a green card leading, then I’d carry out the elf power and put an influence disc in the green region.

One thing to note is that you only gain influence if your band is larger than the amount of influence you currently have on that region. So in the first round, you can get away with playing small bands of one card each. Throughout the game, you might find yourself unable to put influence markers down unless you play bands four or five cards large.

Play continues with you taking turns picking up cards and creating bands until three dragons are drawn, immediately ending the round. Score the round based on the regions you have the most influence in and the size of all of your bands played.

After three rounds of this, you’ve played a game of Ethnos.

Every game is a new story

The different factions in Ethnos are incredible. The effect they have on the game, and how they change the way you play keeps me coming back to play this game.

In one game, we might play with the Merfolk. Introducing the Merfolk track to the game. Now when you play a band of Merfolk, you move up their track gaining points and influence markers. Making it a great way to get a lot of influence markers on the map.

Then in the next game, Merfolk might not be in the game at all. Completely removing this avenue of point scoring and strategy. Replacing them, however, might be the Centaurs whose power lets you play two bands at once.

As you can see, each of the twelve different creature types brings a unique flavour to the game. With up to six different types in one game, the combinations are endless. Making Ethnos one of the most interesting games I’ve played because each game is so wildly different from the last.

Now while the creature cards are the highlight, they aren’t the only standout feature of Ethnos. Its approach to area control is also cause for delight.

Unlike other games in the genre where it’s all about aggression and conflict. Ethnos treats area control more like a race. So instead of trying to muscle each other out of the regions, you’re instead like greyhounds edging closer to the mechanical rabbit.

As such, it removes all of the aggression and the associated emotion without losing any of the pressure you normally feel in area control games.

Speaking of pressure, we must talk about the dragon cards that end the round. These cards are shuffled into the bottom half of the deck during setup. So nobody knows when they’re going to show. But with three of them, you usually get a warning before everything comes to a close.

Even still, these cards add an element of push your luck to Ethnos. Especially, when there’s one dragon card remaining, and you only have half a band ready to go. Thereby forcing you to make that gut-feel decision of playing a sub-standard band, or waiting a round to see if you can get the perfect card. This is a lot of fun.

The art isn’t bad, the theme however…

Ethnos is not just a fantastic entry into the hobby, it’s a fantastic game most board gamers will love. That said, there are reasons you might not like it.

For one, in Ethnos you live and die by the cards you draw.

At the start of each round, the market is rich and fertile with plenty of different creatures on offer. Once that’s been picked clean though, you have to wait until someone returns their unwanted cards to the market. Otherwise, you’re spending your turns top decking creature cards from the deck and waiting on lady luck to smile at you.

This randomness can be frustrating because you’re usually chasing after specific creatures for your band and not getting them. However, for me, that’s part of the fun. It becomes less about drawing the right cards and more about getting a handful of cards and figuring out the best way to play them.

Given you’re always deciding between playing a large band for a lot of points, or the right band (either territoriality or for the power). Figuring out the best way to play your hand is a lot of speculation and fun.

The other reason you mightn’t like it is because of the art. Now, Ethnos‘ art gets a lot of slack. So let’s be clear, the art by John Howe is well done. That’s not the issue. The issue is the subject matter and how it’s presented that brings Ethnos down.

This is high fantasy at its most cliche. Where all of the races are rehashed from books and movies we’ve countless times before. It doesn’t have a distinct style like Root, or the world-building like Merchants of the Dark Road.

As such, it’s unoriginal and boring.

This is why since its release players everywhere have been asking for a reprint with all-new art. Players everywhere might have finally gotten their wish with Archeos Society. But for now, despite the art, Ethnos is a wonderful game that is welcome on my table any time.