Altared space: A Tribal playtest AAR

Last week saw one of those frequent collective brain farts when someone asks a simple, innocent question and someone else shouts out, "Look! A shiny thing!" And then everyone goes crazy. Or maybe it was just me.

On our NHMGS chat group, Brian Renninger asked whether anyone could recommend a good set of rules for tribal warfare because he'd just ordered some figures—produced here in Seattle by Paymaster Games—for Pacific Northwest tribal warriors.

I (1) immediately recommended the rules Tribal by Mana Press in Australia, (2) ordered figures from Paymaster Games, and (3) ordered the 2nd edition of the Tribal rules.

Kevin Smyth followed on with actions (2) and (3) above. There was also a flurry of some interest by others that may result in a new new thing or it may just be another idiosyncratic enthusiasm by Kevin and Dave. Or just Dave.

Tribal is a set of rules I bought as a PDF (which may have been the only way they were available) maybe 4 years ago, certainly pre-pandemic. I looked at them as an option for playing with various tribal/prehistoric type figures I had (or wanted to have). Back then, I looked them over, thought they were interesting, but then never did anything with them. The thread Brian started just spurred me to action, because I can never have enough hobby irons in the fire.

With all this self-inflicted mania, I was eager to give Tribal a try using my beloved 40mm Bronze Age Europeanoids and Wes Rogers jumped in and volunteered to be my fellow test subject. We met at a very crowded Zulu's Board Game Cafe in Bothell on Saturday. I was only just able to reserve table space in one of the basement rooms where we normally play. 

On my way out of the house, I had a serendipitous moment in regard to previously unstated action (4), which was buying a 3' x 3' Tablewar F.A.T. Mat because Tribal is played on a 3' x 3' space and my game mats are 3' x 4' or 4' x 6'. I ordered it on Wednesday from Noble Knight Games in Wisconsin because Tablewar was sold out. I was just about to drive off when I realized I'd forgotten my printed copy of the rules. I went back in, got the rules, and when I exited my house I saw a slightly longer than 3' long box containing my F.A.T. Mat on my porch. Plan A had been to use a 3' x 4' mat, but then Plan B serendipitously happened.

Downtown Bothell, once literally nowhere, has seen a renaissance of late and become a hub of activity with the consequence that anytime after 9:00 am, there's no parking anywhere. I managed to snag a spot among the few spaces in the out-of-business bank across the street. Wes, I believe, parked just beyond the county line and hiked in. When Kevin and I play at Zulu's, we have a 10:00 am start (right when they open), arrive an hour earlier to get parking, then go eat breakfast at Alexa's.

I set up the game—3x3 is a surprisingly small play space when you're used to 6' x 8'—ordered some beer and food, and we got right to it. 

The scenario we played was something I came up with by drawing on a few scenarios in Tribal and its two supplements, Primeval and Brutal. Three characters were around an altar set amidst some stonehenge-y uprights. The goal of the game was to capture the characters and dominate the space around the altar.

Rather than go through spending honor points to buy units, heroes, and skills, I just created two equal sides of four 5-figure warriors, one 5-figure missile unit (Wes had bowmen; I had slingers, of course), two heroes, and a chief. No skills were employed. We each set up one card length in.

I spooked the cultists around the altar on my first move and they bolted to safety. For the rest of the first turn, it was Wes and I alternating sprinting our units towards the center jockeying for the best position.

Wes loved moving his minis through the uprights.

Tribal uses regular playing cards for everything. Movement is done in increments of card lengths (long edge) and widths (short edge). Sprinting is done using two moves on the long edge, one after the other. It didn't take much to get into engagement distance of each other.

On turn 2, I managed to snag the prancing priest before he could bolt any farther. Wes captured the two priestesses (or whatever they were), Stella and Ursula. 1 honor point to me, 2 to Wes.

Honor points are the sole determinant of victory in Tribal. No matter who dies or lives, honor is everything. If you go out in glory, you may wind up with more honor points than your opponent who killed you and thereby win the game. Honor points are gained from winning rounds of melee or from other objectives. When you win a round of melee, you get an honor point from a common reserve. When you completely eliminate an enemy unit in combat, you get one of your opponent's honor points—or two if it's his chief.

I managed to score a point for controlling the altar space at the end of turn 2. Thereafter, the space was in contention except for one turn where Wes controlled it and the last turn when I did again.

I think I was the one who initiated the first melee. Melee uses a combat hand you deal out from your card deck. The number of cards in your combat hand is equal to the number of figures in your unit or the remaining wounds for your heroes and chief. A combat round is played out in one to five exchanges. Cards have their standard values 2-10, with JQKA being 11, 12, 13, 14 respectively. Jokers are 15. Unless they sprinted into contact, the attacker has the advantage, meaning that the player being attacked has to play the first card in an exchange, unless they have a skill that gives them the advantage. Thereafter, the winner of an exchange has the advantage in the next exchange.

Black cards are strike cards, you can only inflict wounds by winning an exchange with a black card. The black suits are also tied to the type of weapon you're using. Clubs are tied to hand weapons like swords, hand axes, and clubs. Spades are tied to long weapons like spears. If you play a card tied to your weapon you get +1 to your score. Also, longer weapons win ties if opposing a unit with hand weapons.

Tripling an opponent's score causes two wounds for long weapons, but hand weapons only need to double the opponent's score to inflict two wounds. For warrior units, each wound removes a figure. For heroes and chiefs, wounds are tracked using a die. I used my nifty viking hand-carved bone dice. They were perfect for the setting. It's good to have a dice fetish.

Red cards are feint cards. They don't cause wounds if you win with them, but they have other properties. If you win on a heart card, you can change the suit of the card you play in the next exchange. For example, you could change a King of Hearts to a King of Clubs, which would make it a strike card causing wounds if you win and adding +1 if it ties to your weapon type.

Diamonds allow you to change your opponent's next card to any suit. For example, if he plays a black Joker, which can be nasty, you can change it to a red Joker, denying him the ability to inflict wounds on you. This can come in handy if his card is twice or three times the value of your card. He'd win the exchange, but cause you no damage.

A combat round lasts for as many exchanges as the number of cards in the combat hand of the player with the most cards, up to five exchanges max. Having more than five cards in your combat hand is possible. Chiefs have six wounds and get six cards in their combat hand. Some skills let you draw extra cards for your combat hand. The increased number of cards just gives you more options to play in an exchange.

If you run out of cards before your opponent does (for example, you might have a hero with only three wounds left, but your opponent is a full unit of five figures), you have to draw a panic card for the remaining exchanges. You can win an exchange with a panic card, but you can't inflict a wound. It's pretty disappointing to pull a black Joker as a panic card against your opponent's 2 of Clubs. It feels like a waste of a good kill card. You do however, survive and win the exchange.

After the last exchange, whoever won the most exchanges wins the melee round, gets an honor point, and the loser retreats to one long card edge distance away.

It's not uncommon to come out of a fight badly battered, even as the winner. It's also possible that after five exchanges, you fail to do any hurt either way. My heroic slingers came through the fight unscathed, despite being charged by one of Wes' warrior units.

Missile units aren't melee-worthy. They don't draw a combat hand; they can only draw panic cards. If you win enough exchanges on your panic cards, you win the melee round and get an honor point. Which my slingers did.

I don't know how many turns we played. We weren't keeping track. The game went back and forth with honor points lost and won. In the end, Wes lost all his units, heroes, and his chief. I still had five remaining: two battered warrior units, one fairly intact hero, my much-battered chief (whom I moved out of harm's way after he had only two wounds left), and my pristine slingers, who didn't even break a sweat but repulsed a charge and took out three figures with their slingstones. Honor point tally was 10 for Wes, 20 for me. The last few turns of wiping out the battered remains of his units took several honor points from his pile and put them into mine.

The game was easy to play after a turn or two. I had to correct a few errors in understanding as we went. For example, I had us dealing out activation cards blindly to each unit until it dawned on me that I may be wrong about that. From turn 3 on, I think, we did it right where you deal out a hand equal to the number of surviving units you have, then you look at the cards and assign them as you want. That way your chief's activation card isn't a 2 of Hearts.

The game played quickly. We probably got in six or seven turns, which is average length for a Tribal scenario. I enjoy the rules and I'm looking forward to getting the second edition next week (I expect). There are a lot of unexplored nuances to the game. Buying skills will also make a difference and enhance the combat prowess of heroes and chiefs. You can buy skills for your warriors, too, but with only 0-4 honor points to spend for skills, why waste them on mooks?

Despite its name, Tribal can be used for any pre-gunpowder kind of fight—although I believe 2nd edition has gunpowder rules—not just primitive warfare. The rules themselves highlight Vikings. That means that we don't have to spend time painting 30+ minis before we can play. Any of our Saga warbands can be used as Tribal warbands.

It does, however, open up a lot of possibilities for primitive type minis I've looked at longingly online but couldn't figure out what to do with them. Go Tribal, of course.