Clans
Clans is one of the games in my collection that falls into the "because" category. As in "because there was nothing else I fancied and I badly needed a fix, doctor." As you might expect, the quality of the "because" games varies. Clans, however, has already repaid the investment for reasons I'll explain in a moment. And it's not a bad little game at all.
First the basic details. Clans is a game by Leo Colovoni produced by Venice Collection. It comes in a small box slightly wider and deeper than the Kosmos boxes for such as Lost Cities, Kahuna Finale and such like. In the box are: a fold out hard backed map, 60 wooden huts in 5 equal sets of different colour, 5 wooden scoring pieces, 12 cardboard village counters, 5 large clan tiles (one in each of the 5 game colours) and colour printed rules in Italian, French and
English. 
The production is German with all the quality you would expect. One surprise was a missing green hut so I made do with a green die.
The object of the game is to win by scoring the most points. At the start of the game the players spread the 60 huts over the map's 60 spaces. Then each player secretly draws one of the 5 large clan tiles to see which colour they are.
The map is split into four different terrain types: mountain, grassland, forest and steppe. Down the right hand side of the map is an epoch track - basically a game turn track - where you put the 12 village markers. Each village, in sequence is tied to a favourable and unfavourable terrain. For example, in the first epoch of 4 villages the favourable terrain is forest and the unfavourable terrain is mountains. In the second epoch the favourable terrain is mountains and the unfavourable terrain is grassland. Villages formed in the unfavourable terrain are wiped out and count for nothing. Villages in the favourable terrain get scoring bonuses. In the first epoch the bonus is 1, 2 in the second epoch, 3 in the third, 4 in the fourth and 5 in the fifth. The game ends when the twelfth village is formed.
So far, so good, but how do you form the villages? This is where my story about the game repaying its investment comes in. Over the weekend we had visitors. Inevitably the games room was mentioned and the visitors were keen to try out a game because this was all new to them. So, out came Clans. It describes itself as playable for 2-4 in 30 minutes. That is spot on. Not only that but because there is one basic rule it is a dawdle to explain, easy to play and more difficult to be good at than it looks at first sight. It's deeper than it looks. So much fun was had that we played 3 games well inside 90 minutes. Fast, fun and challenging and "just one moreish". Great! Ah, but how do you form the villages? I thought you'd never ask.
Players take it in turns to move the huts. One move consists of taking all the huts in one space and moving them to another space. that's it. The restrictions are that you cannot move into an empty space. So when you move the hut out of a space that space will never be a village - an important concept. And you cannot move a group of 7 or more huts. When any hut or huts are completely surrounded by empty spaces or the edge of the board they form a village. (We assumed this happened even if you created the village by moving away the alst adjacent hut. This was the only unclear part of the rules.) And then there are the tweaks.
If all 5 colours are in the village human nature takes over and there is strife. All single colour huts are removed. For example: in a 7 hut village there are huts of every colour (5) and 2 extra black huts. The 5 single coloured huts are wiped out leaving a village of 2 black huts. Clever, simple and deadly. Once strife and unfavourable terrain are worked out the colours score - one for each hut in the whole village - plus any bonuses. For example, if there are 3 huts in the village that's 3 points for any colour hut in the village. It does not matter if there are 1, 2 or 3 of your colour in the village.
Part of the fun is guessing who is what colour. That may be why there are 5 colours but only 4 players. It allows you some legroom for havoc. But it is possible for the non playing colour to win!
Clans is a perfect game for non gamers as an introduction. After a while it may become repetitive. But let's not take away that this is a fine little game. A good filler. And maybe just a little bit more. It's easy to see why the game was a Spiel Des Jahre contender.
Ellis Simpson
7 July 2003