Review: Five Tribes – The Djinns of Naqala

Introduction & Overview

Crossing the Land of 1001 Nights, your caravan arrives at the fabled Sultanate of Naqala. The old sultan has just died, and control of Naqala is up for grabs! The oracles foretold of strangers who would maneuver the Five Tribes to gain influence over the legendary city-state. Will you fulfill the prophecy? Invoke the ancient Djinns, move the Tribes into position at the right time, and the Sultanate may be yours!

This is the premise behind Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala, one of the biggest recent sensations in the hobby. Designed by Bruno Cathala, author of other celebrated titles like Cyclades or Mr. Jack (alongside Ludovic Maublanc), it was published in 2014 by Days of Wonder. Artwork is handled by Clément Masson in his debut outing in the board game industry.

The game has not yet been published locally, although it is entirely language-independent except for the rulebook and reference sheets (both easily found translated online). It accommodates 2 to 4 players, with a recommended minimum age of 13 and an approximate playing time of 60 minutes per game. The MSRP is €47.95. The first English edition by Days of Wonder was used for this review.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a standard two-piece cardboard box measuring 29.7 × 29.7 × 7.2 cm (the typical square format used for Ticket to Ride), we find the following items:

• 30 Tile tiles (cardboard)
• 6 Turn markers (2 pink, 2 turquoise, 1 black, and 1 orange) (wooden)
• 38 Camels (11 pink, 11 turquoise, 8 black, and 8 orange) (wooden)
• 90 Meeples (20 white, 16 yellow, 18 green, 18 blue, and 18 red) (wooden)
• 12 Palm Trees (wooden)
• 10 Palaces (wooden)
• 22 Djinn cards
• 54 Resource cards:
  • 2 Ivory cards
  • 2 Jewel cards
  • 2 Gold cards
  • 4 Papyrus cards
  • 4 Silk cards
  • 4 Spice cards
  • 6 Fish cards
  • 6 Wheat cards
  • 6 Pottery cards
  • 18 Fakir cards
• 96 Coins (cardboard)
  • 48 value 1
  • 48 value 5
• 1 Score pad
• 1 Bid Order track (cardboard)
• 1 Turn Order track (cardboard)
• 1 Cloth bag
• 5 Player Aids
• 1 Rulebook

How to Play

Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala is set in the legendary sultanate of Naqala, where players compete to gain influence and claim dominance over the city-state following the old sultan’s demise. The game runs over an indeterminate number of rounds. At the beginning of each round, players bid gold coins—which also count as victory points at the end of the game—to determine the turn order. Participants then take their turns according to that bidding track. On their turn, the active player chooses a tile from the modular board that contains meeples, takes all of them, and sows them one by one across orthogonally adjacent tiles, strictly ending their movement on a tile that already contains at least one meeple matching the color of the last dropped meeple. Next, they collect all meeples of that matching color from the destination tile; if this leaves the tile completely empty, they claim control over it by placing one of their camels. Immediately afterward, the player carries out the action tied to the collected tribe: yellow Viziers and white Elders provide victory points or allow summoning and triggering Djinns with unique powers; green Merchants claim resource cards; blue Builders award coins based on adjacent surrounding tiles; and red Assassins eliminate other meeples across the board to claim empty tiles or deplete opponents’ reserves. The player then resolves the tile action of the final tile (planting palm trees, building palaces, purchasing goods at markets, or invoking Djinns at sacred places). Optionally, players may sell sets of different merchandise cards to pocket extra cash. The game ends at the conclusion of the round in which any player places their last camel or whenever no legal meeple moves remain on the board. At that point, victory points from coins, Viziers, Elders, Djinn cards, Palm Trees, Palaces, controlled tiles, and merchandise collections are tallied, crowning the player with the highest total score as the new Sultan.

Key Concepts

Let us start with the most numerous component: the Meeples. These represent the five tribes of Naqala: Merchants (green), Builders (blue), Elders (white), Viziers (yellow), and Assassins (red). Tribe affiliation is essential because, as we will explore shortly, the color of the meeples collected dictates the specific action carried out.

The tiles represent the specific locations where the various tribe members reside. Each tile features three vital elements in its corners:

• The top-right corner displays a victory point value set against a blue background (villages and sacred places) or a red background (markets and oases).
• The bottom-left corner indicates the specific tile action.
• The bottom-right corner provides a designated area to place a camel marker whenever a player claims control of the tile.

The victory points provided by controlled tiles can be bolstered with Oases and Palaces, placed through specific actions. These wooden structures add substantial end-game bonuses to any claimed territory.

As noted earlier, the core game relies on a mancala mechanism. For those unfamiliar with this style of play, here is a quick summary: components are distributed across several distinct spaces (in this case, meeples sitting on tiles). A turn consists of picking up every piece from a starting location and dropping them off one by one across adjacent spaces along a path (a sowing mechanic). The final space reached is then triggered, provided it already contained at least one meeple matching the color of the last dropped meeple.

This structure divides every turn into two distinct action types:

• Tribe Action: triggered by taking meeples of a specific color, regardless of which tile they are collected from.
• Tile Action: triggered by the specific tile where the movement concludes, regardless of which tribe meeples were collected.

The primary currency in the game is Gold Coins, which double as victory points at the end of the match. Coins are spent primarily to bid for turn order at the start of each round, though they are also used to purchase goods at the markets. We will see during the game flow breakdown how players obtain coins throughout the game. A player’s treasury remains secret during play; to facilitate this, coins are kept face-down, as their backs display a uniform design that hides whether a coin is worth 1 or 5.

Meanwhile, the market features an open lineup of merchandise and slave/fakir cards. Merchandise cards utilize card-drafting and set-collection mechanisms. They can be cashed in for money in sets of unique goods (the larger the set of unique goods, the higher the payout), though unsold cards also convert into straight victory points at the end of the game. There are nine distinct goods, grouped into three tiers by card frequency:

• 2 Cards: Ivory, Jewels, and Gold.
• 4 Cards: Papyrus, Silk, and Spices.
• 6 Cards: Fish, Wheat, and Pottery.

For their part, slaves (fakirs) allow players to boost specific actions. The deck contains 18 slave cards, which cycle through the market alongside general trade goods.

We also have the Djinns, who enhance actions, provide special abilities, and score direct victory points at the end of the game (printed in their top-right corner). Djinn abilities fall into two categories: permanent effects (often modifying scoring rules or boosting basic actions) and cost-based activated actions (which can only be invoked once per turn). These powers are cleanly laid out via iconography along the right edge of each card.

Lastly, let us review the Bid Order and Turn Order tracks. Player markers sit on the Bid Order track to establish who bids first. Using this priority, participants pay to place their marker onto an available spot on the Turn Order track, where higher bids grant earlier initiative during the round. The 0 spot features three subdivisions and operates under slightly different rules than the paid spots.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

1. Shuffle the tiles and arrange them into a grid of 5 rows and 6 columns.
2. Place all meeples into the bag, draw them in groups of three, and populate each tile with a trio.
3. Shuffle the resource deck and form the market display by revealing the top nine cards face-up.
4. Repeat the process with the Djinn deck, flipping the top three cards face-up.
5. Each player receives a set of markers and camels based on player count:
   • For 2 players: each player takes 2 turn markers and 11 camels.
   • For 3–4 players: each player takes 1 turn marker and 8 camels.
6. Additionally, each player receives 50 Gold Coins (nine coins of value 5 and five coins of value 1).
7. Drop the turn markers into the bag, drawing and placing them onto the Bid Order track in the order they emerge.
8. Set the Palm Trees and Palaces in a supply pool near the board.
9. From this moment on, flip all player coins face-down; their values must remain hidden for the rest of the game.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala plays out over a variable number of rounds until one of two end-game conditions is met. Each round is divided into distinct phases.

Phase I: Bid for Turn Order

Following the sequence set on the Bid Order track, each player selects an available space on the Turn Order track. Players pay the bank the exact number of coins shown on their chosen spot. No player may bid on a space already occupied by another marker, with the sole exception of the 0 spot. That position can hold up to three markers; however, whenever a new marker is placed there, previously placed markers are pushed up, taking their turns later.

Phase II: Actions

Following the Turn Order track from first to last, each player executes the following steps:

1. Move Turn Marker: Shift your turn marker to the first vacant spot on the Bid Order track.
2. Move Tribe Meeples: Pick up all meeples from a chosen tile and sow them across a contiguous path of orthogonally connected tiles, starting on any tile orthogonally adjacent to the origin. Three strict movement rules apply:
   • Matching Last Meeple Rule: While the dropping sequence of the earlier meeples is entirely up to you, the final meeple dropped must match the color of at least one meeple already present on the destination tile.
   • Orthogonality Rule: Each successive tile along the path must share an edge with the previous tile where a meeple was dropped.
   • No Immediate Backtracking Rule: You cannot drop a meeple onto the tile you just left on the immediately preceding step. Looping back around is permitted, but requires a minimum path of 5 meeples.
3. Check Tile Control: After placing all meeples, take all meeples from the final tile that match the color of your last dropped meeple (including that meeple). If removing those meeples leaves the tile completely barren and no camel is currently on it, claim control by placing one of your camels in its corner.
4. Tribe Action: Regardless of whether you seized control of the tile, resolve the action corresponding to the color (tribe) of the meeples collected:
   • Viziers (yellow): Place all collected yellow meeples in front of you. They score points at the end of the game.
   • Elders (white): Keep all collected white meeples in your personal supply. Beyond awarding end-game points, they can be spent to recruit and activate Djinns.
   • Merchants (green): Return all collected green meeples directly to the bag and take an equal number of resource cards from the market, starting from the leftmost card (no picking and choosing). Note: do not refill the market yet.
   • Builders (blue): Return all collected blue meeples to the bag and gain coins equal to the following formula: number of collected blue meeples multiplied by the number of surrounding blue-scoring tiles (including the destination tile itself). You may discard slave cards to increase your virtual blue meeple count, maximizing the payout.
   • Assassins (red): Return all collected red meeples to the bag and select one of the following two options:
     • Assassinate an opponent’s Vizier (yellow) or Elder (white) from their personal reserve, returning it to the bag.
     • Assassinate a meeple on a tile located within a range equal to or less than the number of red meeples returned to the bag. Range is measured orthogonally tile by tile. You may discard slave cards to extend this kill distance. If killing this meeple leaves that tile completely empty, you immediately claim control by placing one of your camels on it.
5. Tile Action: Perform the action printed on the tile where your movement ended:
   • Oasis (mandatory): Add a Palm Tree token to this tile (there is no stacking limit for trees).
   • Palace (mandatory): Add a Palace token to this tile (there is no stacking limit for palaces).
   • Small Market (optional): Pay 3 coins to the bank and take one resource card from the first three available cards (counting from the left).
   • Large Market (optional): Pay 6 coins to the bank and take two resource cards from the first six available cards (counting from the left).
   • Sacred Place (optional): Discard 2 Elders (white meeples), or 1 Elder and 1 Slave card, to claim one of the three face-up Djinns. Its power becomes active immediately and can be used on this same turn.
6. Merchandise Sale (optional): You may sell sets of goods at this stage. The coins earned depend entirely on how many unique goods (excluding slaves) are cashed in together. You can sell multiple distinct sets in one turn if you wish:
   • 1 Good: 1 Coin.
   • 2 Goods: 3 Coins.
   • 3 Goods: 7 Coins.
   • 4 Goods: 13 Coins.
   • 5 Goods: 21 Coins.
   • 6 Goods: 30 Coins.
   • 7 Goods: 40 Coins.
   • 8 Goods: 50 Coins.
   • 9 Goods: 60 Coins.

Phase III: Clean-up

Once all players have taken their turns (and all Turn Markers are back on the Bid Order track), perform the following clean-up steps:

1. Refill Market: Slide any remaining resource cards to the left, then draw from the deck until the display is restocked to 9 visible cards.
2. Refill Djinns: Draw from the Djinn deck until 3 face-up cards are available once again.

At the end of the round, verify if either end-game trigger has occurred. If not, proceed to the next round. Should a player find themselves with zero legal moves on their turn, their actions are restricted solely to triggering Djinns and selling goods.

Game End

The game ends at the conclusion of the round in which either of these two conditions is met:

• At least one player has placed all of their camels on the board.
• No legal meeple moves remain on the board.

Players then tally their final scores on the pad. Each player scores:

1. 1 victory point for every gold coin held.
2. 1 point per yellow Vizier, plus 10 bonus points for each opponent who has fewer Viziers than you (certain Djinns may alter this calculation).
3. 2 points per white Elder (certain Djinns may alter this calculation).
4. Victory points printed on owned Djinn cards.
5. Victory points printed on all tiles you control.
6. 3 points per Palm Tree located on tiles you control (certain Djinns may alter this calculation).
7. 5 points per Palace located on tiles you control.
8. Merchandise cards: each set of unique goods awards points equal to its equivalent coin cash-out value.

The player with the highest overall score wins. In the event of a tie, tied players share victory.

Personal Opinion

Today we dive into one of the biggest tabletop sensations in recent memory. Debuting at Gen Con 2014, it climbed into the BGG Top 100 within mere months. Designed by Bruno Cathala and published by Days of Wonder—a studio renowned for stellar production standards—it arrives with every hallmark of a runaway hit. Does Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala genuinely live up to the sky-high hype, or does expectation get the better of it? Let’s find out.

What immediately stands out about Cathala’s design is its sheer accessibility. As detailed above (assuming you are the thorough sort who reads the entire review), a handful of straightforward rules are all it takes to get rolling. Within ten to fifteen minutes, everyone grasps the framework and you are scattering meeples across the sands with abandon.

Simplicity, however, should not be mistaken for lightness. Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala proves remarkably demanding for anyone gunning for the win. Two cornerstone design choices drive this weight: the spatial mancala mechanism used to cycle meeples across the grid, and an unapologetic “point salad” scoring structure where virtually every element translates into victory points.

Mancala mechanics naturally blossom into wide decision trees. One need only look at titles like Stefan Feld’s Trajan (read its tocho-review here) or Rüdiger Dorn’s Space Walk (read its tocho-review here). Both utilize this distribution engine, yet they confine it to closed tracks with predetermined movement paths. The sheer cognitive strain of projecting several turns ahead in Trajan is notorious. Five Tribes pushes the concept further by unshackling the mechanism onto an open two-dimensional grid, letting players branch out in any of the four cardinal directions and multiplying tactical branches exponentially.

Anyone who has tackled these titles knows that this level of board manipulation makes games inherently tactical. Every single turn reshapes the landscape; trying to plan concrete moves minutes in advance is an exercise in futility, because by the time your turn arrives, the board state will have mutated entirely.

Do not confuse this volatility with pure chaos. The sheer breadth of choices encourages players to formulate broad objectives rather than fixed sequences during downtime. That downtime is best spent assessing strategic goals across two vectors: tribe actions and tile actions. What do we need most next turn? Merchandise? Cash? Tile control? Djinns? The board will evolve, but when your turn rolls around, having a priority in mind keeps things moving—unless an irresistible windfall opens up that is simply too lucrative to pass up.

Problems arise when a player waits until their turn begins to calculate every possible route from scratch. Here lies the design’s primary Achilles’ heel: players prone to extreme analysis paralysis will try to parse every mathematical outcome on the grid. Given the staggering permutations, this is an agonizing endeavor. I would flatly avoid pulling this game out with extreme AP players—or at least insist on a sand timer. Sluggish downtime ruins the entire flow.

As mentioned, the point salad nature of Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala defines the scoring experience, with nearly every piece contributing to your final total. In fact, only turn markers and slave cards fail to award victory points directly. Everything else adds to the pile. While this can frustrate purists who prefer laser-focused scoring objectives over runaway three-digit point tallies, it works brilliantly when properly integrated. The secret lies in how seamlessly the mechanics intertwine.

Once again, Stefan Feld serves as the gold standard here. Landmark designs like Bora Bora (read its tocho-review here) and Trajan represent the pinnacle of this design school, tying various mini-games back to a central engine (dice in Bora Bora, the mancala bowl in Trajan). Yet sometimes individual components feel bolted on, like the jewelry in Bora Bora or Trajan tiles in Trajan—they offer points, but their thematic and mechanical connection feels forced.

Fortunately, Five Tribes avoids that trap completely. Every scoring avenue stems directly from the core sowing movement, aided by its underlying mechanical elegance. Rather than stitching together disconnected mini-games, every action emerges from the same spatial interaction between tiles and meeples.

Left entirely on its own, this system could easily devolve into an opportunistic, quasi-random exercise where everyone simply grabs the highest-scoring move available on their turn, much like Feld’s Bruges. To counter that drift, Djinns are introduced as guiding strategic beacons. Their asymmetric bonuses steer players down distinct paths, injecting crucial long-term vision into an otherwise tactical puzzle.

Beyond analysis paralysis, the game’s heavy tactical bent carries another potential pitfall: inexperienced players can inadvertently kingmake the player sitting right behind them. Nuances like carefully managing meeple distributions across intermediary tiles only click after a few plays. Inadvertently setting up a massive combo for the next player can swing the outcome. While that is a natural reality of high-interaction tactical boards, dynamic turn bidding does allow cunning players to intentionally position themselves after a novice—a cutthroat tactic, but entirely legal.

Another triumph is the monetary economy, evoking shades of Traders of Genoa in the way capital circulates. Money drives turn-order bidding and fuels market buys, yet fresh coins only enter player hands through Blue Builders or merchant sales. Cash reserves remain perpetually tight unless you pull off a monster set collection sale, forcing players to divert actions simply to stay financially solvent and competitive in the bidding war.

Player count adjustments are handled cleanly. At two players, each participant controls two turns per round and manages a larger herd of camels, whereas three and four-player games grant a single turn per player with fewer camels. Three players feels like the sweet spot, striking an ideal balance with just two turns between your actions. Four players brings extra board churn, though never unmanageable chaos. Two-player duels, meanwhile, become deeply cutthroat: earning consecutive turns via sharp bidding unlocks devious combo potential. Viziers also scale with player counts: in a duel they only ever represent a 10-point swing, but in higher counts the majority bonus jumps to 20 or 30 points, transforming them into a fierce area of contention.

Replayability is off the charts. Setup may be slightly fiddly, but the shifting grid, tactical flexibility, and randomized market displays guarantee that no two games feel alike. You cannot rely on a pre-baked strategy; success demands adapting to the resources at hand.

Production-wise, Days of Wonder delivers their hallmark excellence. Punchboard components (tiles, coins, and tracks) are thick and punch out cleanly. The coins are especially impressive, featuring intricate serrated edges that cheap cardboard would have butchered. The custom wooden pieces look fantastic—large, sturdy, and brightly painted. The meeples even sport sculpted turban silhouettes rather than generic profiles. Cards are printed on solid stock, though having two different card sizes means sleevers will need two separate pack sizes. The vibrant, unconventional player colors (eschewing standard red/yellow/blue/green since those belong to the tribes) are a welcome touch. The custom plastic insert keeps every component snugly in place, much like Small World. A thick score pad is included, and while the rulebook is generally well-written, having the final scoring breakdown near the front rather than the back is a slightly odd organizational choice.

On a side note, a palace token in my review copy arrived with a minor defect. I submitted a quick ticket via the Days of Wonder website and received a replacement piece within two weeks. Top-notch customer support.

Clément Masson’s artwork deserves high praise. For a game that is fundamentally abstract beneath the surface, the evocative Arabian Nights theme shines through, particularly across the stunning Djinn illustrations. The tiles can feel a bit barren once meeples are cleared off, but the box cover is an absolute showstopper. It marks an outstanding debut for the illustrator.

And let’s wrap this up. Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala is a brilliant design built on an open two-dimensional mancala framework paired with a cohesive, deeply engaging point salad. A tight monetary economy and asymmetric Djinns provide the strategic anchor needed to steer through an ever-changing board state. This intensely tactical environment demands constant adaptation and sharp opportunism. On the downside, the staggering array of visible paths can grind the game to a halt under severe analysis paralysis, and green players risk handing high-value setups to the next in line. Even so, its accessible rules paired with rich, demanding decision-making make it an immensely rewarding modern classic. A masterclass in how much tactical depth can be squeezed out of a lean rulebook. For all these reasons, I rate it…