Tribes

Designed by Steve Jackson and award-winning science-fiction author David Brin, Tribes has been an underground favorite for years. It started as a very simple roleplaying game which plays a lot like a boardgame. The new Second Edition streamlines play and upgrades the components to a level expected by modern gamers.

The Stone Age is now, and your children are the key to the future! In Tribes, the players are cave men and women. They hunt and gather food, make their tribal laws, and deal with natural disasters. But the object of the game is simple: Look after the children! In this game, the way to win is to have the most kids . . . and do whatever you have to do to make sure they survive. The players must know when to cooperate, and when to cut their losses and protect their own families.

Tribes supports 4 to 8 players, creating their own laws and social patterns. With several copies and a referee, you can have several tribes at once, competing, trading, exchanging members, and even making war.

This edition features erasable Character Cards and Birth Records, along with a marker; gameboards for tracking years, game, and children; color tokens for Food, Grain, Baskets, and Spears; filling a sturdy box (the game weighs 373 grams).

If you enjoy big multiplayer games like Terraforming Mars or the original Civilization, you’ll like this game of what happened before civilization was a thing.