Ethnos, 2nd Ed

• Designer:  Paolo Mori
• Publisher: CMON
• Players: 1-6
• Age: 12+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In the faraway land of Ethnos, a new Age is dawning. The ashes of the old Age have left the Six Regions empty, and the twelve Clans scattered to the winds. Now is the time for a clever leader to unite them into a powerful alliance, skillfully using the unique talents of each Clan to control the Regions.  Do you have the wit and the wisdom to become the next Emperor of Ethnos and usher in a Golden Age?

Unite the Clans to Control Ethnos – What was old has been made new again. The land of Ethnos has been rendered empty and a new Age is beginning. Someone must take up the mantle of Emperor. Will it be you?  In Ethnos 2nd Edition, players must take control of the various clans of Ethnos, gathering members and unleashing them into the six regions. Each clan has different special abilities, and depending on who you choose to lead your groups, different strategies can be employed. 2nd Edition includes updated rules and rules for Solo mode.

So, what is Ethnos? Well, Ethnos is ultimately an Area Control game where the players are fighting over control of 6 areas in the land of Ethnos. You do this by using a “rummy” style mechanic to place down Parties of Allies.  There are 12 Clans in the box, and in each game, you will choose six to use.  All the cards from the six chosen clans are shuffled together to form an Ally deck. Each card has an Clan icon in the upper left corner and a stripe down the left side telling you which of the land regions it is associated with. Most of the clans have 2 cards for each of the six different land regions.

The game is played over three ages. When you set up each age, you take the 3 Dragon cards and shuffle them into the bottom half of the Ally deck.

On a player’s turn, they can do 1 of 2 action choices:

1) Recruit an Ally- There is a starting offer of Allies available to everyone on their turn equal to two times the number of players, so in a four player game there will be 8 allies out there to start with. So on your turn, you either take one of the face up allies in the offer, or you draw a card from the top of the deck in hopes that you get what you want.   If you draw from the face up supply, you do NOT put a new card out to replace it.  It is quite possible that the face up supply runs out as you play through the age.  There is a hand limit of 10 cards, and if you are at the limit, you cannot add cards and instead must play cards (see below).

2) Play a Party of Allies – So here is the meat of the game. On your turn you may play a group of cards that represent a Party of Allies that you are sending to an area to help control it. This party must consist of either the same color (ie area) or of the same allied tribe. In doing this, you are going to be hopefully placing a control marker out on the board. You choose a leader for your Party – placing this card on the top of the stack you are playing, and if you are able, you will place a control marker in the area that matches the color of the leader chosen. In order to place a marker, you need to play one more card in the Band than you have control markers already in that area. So the first one just costs one card, but the second will cost 2, etc..  You can play more than the minimum required if you want.  You may also play less than the minimum and simple forfeit the chance to play a marker.

After you do that, you may have a power that you can use from the leader which you will do, and then, and here’s the kicker, you have to discard all the cards that remain in your hand to the public offer (unless, of course, a leader power allows you to not do this).  Played Parties remain face up in front of the player who played them until the end of the age.

That’s all you do on your turn, then play passes to the next player and they do the exact same thing. Turns are going to move pretty quickly here – even more so when the card display is empty.  There will be many turns where the players simply draw a card off the top of the deck, hoping to get one that makes a playable party for them.

The deck of cards will have 3 dragon cards in it and those are your timers for each Age. When a player draws that third Dragon card in the deck, play ends immediately and end of Age scoring takes place. Each area will have randomly assigned scoring tiles letting you know how much each area is worth after each age. In the first Age, only the first player will score; then 1st and 2nd place in the second age, and then the first 3 positions in the third age.  You score those, and then you will score points based on the Parties of Allies that you played that Age. 

A 1 Ally Party will score you nothing, a 2 Ally party will score you 1 point, a 3 Ally party equals 3 points so on down the line getting even more valuable. After scoring that, everyone discards all their cards and their allies, the deck is rebuilt and play proceeds to the next Age with the person last in points being the starting player. Do that through 3 Ages and the most points wins the game.

My thoughts on the game

I remember playing the original version of this game at a Gathering of Friends many moons ago – well actually in 2017: https://opinionatedgamers.com/2017/04/09/sunday-at-the-gathering-2/.  I remember the game being fairly well received, but like many games in the hobby, it was in the rear view mirror before too long – my own copy was definitely left behind back in 2017.   Interestingly, the game has been redone twice in the last year or so.  Archeos Society (2023, Space Cowboys) is not a strict reprint, but uses a lot of the core mechanisms.  Now, in 2025, we do get a reprint.  Mechanically, it appears to be the same, but now the tribal people have been replaced by anthropomorphic animal clans.  Additionally, the helpful text explanation of the leader power on each card has been replaced with iconography that is of varying quality.

Each of the Clans has a special power and the game will obviously play differently depending on the particular combination you draw for your game.  For me, I don’t need an unlimited number of setup variations, but I do like it when different components at least cause you to examine your strategy fresh each time due to the differing interactions.  Each of the leader powers definitely can be strong when used at the right moment, and you often have to make some agonizing decisions when you have a Party with two different leader powers that you want to use – and you are limited to only using one!

The game definitely has an old-school feel to it, but as this game is essentially eight years old now, that’s not surprising.  The area control game has a nice long and slow build to it.  Your super pointy pagodas stay on the board between Ages, so you fight over the regions over the whole arc of the game.  Additionally, as the areas reward more players each round, there are definite benefits to getting into a region without an intent to ever have the most pointy pagodas in it.

The variable scoring tiles will certainly make certain areas worth more than others, and you’ll be able to gauge how much competition is likely to occur for those areas based on the potential reward.  That being said, the curve of points is relatively flat – the minimum score is four points and I believe the maximum is 12.

The components are decent.  I am of two minds about the cards.  I like the overall look of them, but they are single indexed, and it makes it really hard to play if you don’t splay your hands as a right hander would.  Rather than have the area information only on the left border, why not make it be the whole background?  (IIRC, this is the format of the original Ethnos cards).  We ended up using our trusty card racks to play the game so that everything could be seen easily.   

Be sure to look at the cards very carefully.  The colors and icons of some of the clans are sadly quite similar, especially from far away.  And, you might end up picking up a Raven when you thought it was a Monkey.  Also, my brain has a very hard time reconciling the fact that the Red Panda clan uses bright green as its icon color.  So confusing to me!

Also, I am very thankful that the player aid cards help summarize the clan actions, but as you can see from the text on the player aid, there’s no reason why that text couldn’t have just been put on the card, and then you wouldn’t have even needed a player aid?!  In addition, the clan titles and icons are omitted on the player aid, so you have to match the icon for the action to figure out what it does.  The whole thing is just so cumbersome, and honestly, I feel like there was enough space on the cards to just leave the text on them.  Yes, yes, Maybe the icons help for the game to be language independent… but the icons certainly make the play of the game more difficult.

There is also a weird section in the setup of the game in the rule book where it recommends six specific factions to use but then doesn’t use the associated icons in the text, (only gives you the names of the six clans) so I was forced to go to the back of the rule book to find the descriptions of each of the Clans to then figure out which were the right ones to use in the first game. This process could have been much easier, especially because it was a recommendation for a very first game of Ethnos. 

Ethnos is an area majority game that uses a nice set collection method for playing to the board.  The rounds have an ebb and flow to them.  When there are a lot of cards in the display, turns take a bit longer as players look at all their options to choose.  Then, when it is empty, turns are lightning fast as everyone just draws off the top of the deck.   Whenever someone finally is ready to play a Party, this usually causes cards to be discarded back into the pool, and then the pace slows down a bit again, only to speed back up once the cards are gone again.  Our games have come in just under an hour, and that feels to be the right length for this game – enough time to let you have a nice battle for control of the regions, but over before you tire of it.  

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Michael W: We still pull Ethnos out somewhat regularly as it’s a great fit in the 6-players-but-not-long niche. Easy to teach and downtime is minimal, so there’s certainly enough opportunities to get it to the table to merit keeping our copy. Sad to hear they went backwards in the playability of the new edition. There’s no such issues with the original, so sounds like it would be worth seeking out in favor of the new, at least for English speakers.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Michael W.
• Neutral. Dale 
• Not for me… John P