Ethnos Review

War is a messy business. There’s blood, it usually smells terrible in camp, and there is a non-zero chance you might get your head lopped off. No thank you. I’ll stay back and hire mercenaries to do my fighting thank-you-very-much; after all, you can’t lead the conquered land if you’re dead. If that sounds like your style, then Ethnos is the area control game you’re looking for.

A new age is dawning in Ethnos, the eponymous continent that you and up to 6 players will battle over. Mercenary bands of 12 fantasy races are scattered across the land and it’s your goal to unite them under your banner and take control of this mythical continent. You’ll recruit everything from Giants to Halflings in a clever game that manages to hide simple set-collection under layers of asymmetry, special abilities, and tactical strategy.

This isn’t the kind of fantasy battle where you’ll marshal forces in your corner and burst onto the land swinging axes and taking things from your opponent. Instead you’ll collect mercenaries - cards - from a public row in a simple system immediately familiar to anyone who has played Ticket to Ride. Rather than collecting a set to lay some trains, you’ll collect these sets in an effort to dominate one of 6 provinces. A one card set is good enough to place your first marker, but each subsequent marker placed into a province will require an additional card in your set. This isn’t particularly difficult early in the game, but I wouldn’t be writing about Ethnos if it didn’t bring a few clever twists to this system.

Stacks grow as provinces get more and more valuable as the game goes on.

Ethnos’ card play has two standout rules that work in tandem to provide the game its edge. The first is that the public row of cards players draw from is not refilled. The second is that playing a set of cards forces you to return all unplayed cards from your hand to the public row. This is, in short, amazing. It packs so much tension into the game in such a simple way. Blind drawing off the top of the deck now brings a tremendous amount of risk. Even if you manage to get the Orange Giant you’re hoping for, you’re likely about to flood the market with juicy cards for your opponents to pick up.

Early in the game this doesn’t often rear its head. It’s generally pretty easy to create a 1-3 card set you can use to enter a new province or place your 3rd disk but by the time you get to the third age, this laces every turn and decision with sweet poison. Drawing is necessary but risky. Placing that beautiful 5th disc is sweet yet you cringe as you put a couple Giants on the board knowing that an opponent has been drawing them. Strategy has really opened up as players discover it isn’t always worth holding out for a set large enough to place a disc; end-of-round scoring may be enough.

To be honest, this system alone would make Ethnos a decent game though not necessarily a stand out one. I’ve mentioned the fantasy races a few times and they’re the snarling Minotaur that smashes this game to the top of my recommendation list. Each race is made up of 2 cards corresponding to each province, and each race has its own unique power. When you make a set of card they can either be all the same race (all Merfolk, for example) or a menagerie of beasts of the same color. In either situation you pick one card to be the Leader of this snarling band of warriors and that’s the card that drives your action.

It’s the leader’s color that determines which province you may place a disc into and the leader’s race that determines the power you activate. Some are rather simple. A stack led by a Minotaur adds +1 to its strength for determining disc placement while a Dwarf-led stack adds +1 to end-of-round scoring. Others manipulate the set collection rules by allowing you to hold a few cards back or possibly play multiple sets at once. While their power is not immediately visible, I love that Halflings don’t allow you to place a token at all, though they’re great for boosting sets when led by another creature as there as twice as many Halfling cards as any other race.

Halflings. Unimpressive on their own but terrifying in numbers.

These add another layer to the tactical options because not every race is available in each game. In what is becoming a rather common system, only subsets of cards are chosen so you have a slightly different strategy in each play. Unfortunately, not all races are created equal. Four of the races add new tokens, boards, or rules that clutter up an otherwise streamlined game. With only 1 or 2 of them in the game it isn’t a big deal but adding too many gets messy. Additionally, the power level of some of the races - looking at you Trolls - can make the blind draw system feel a bit unfair.

These issues, however, are minor. Ethnos is a worthy addition to any shelf and I like it so much I’m taking the rare step of sleeving every card because I expect to play this game a lot. This is a game of escalating power and stakes. Provinces become more valuable as they get harder to control, draws become riskier precisely as they become more necessary, and players howl and cheer like the monstrous mercenary bands they command.