Inuit Review
I really can’t stay…
Baby, it’s cold outside!
I’ve got to go away…
We’re in the effing Arctic!
I…
You will literally die out there.
Players: 2-4
Time: 30-45 mins
Designer: Alexey Konnov, Alexey Paltsev, Anatoliy Shklyarov, Trehgrannik
Artist: Paulina Wach
Publisher: Board&Dice
Inuit has you collecting together a tribe of warmly dressed people and getting on with the day to day tasks of that tribe. Hunting, religion, warfare, that sort of thing. It describes your relationship with the arctic wilderness as one of unpredictabilities but ultimately of opportunities. It is your job to take from it the best you can.
Above you see a typical tribe, a healthy mix of people hanging out below a long thin player board. Each column corresponds to a job: whale hunter, shaman, seal clubber. On your turn you simply choose one of the jobs and take as many of the cards associated with that type from the ‘Great White’ (market) as you have people in that job. With an extra for the slot on the player board itself. It is card drafting at its simplest but it does some very clever things within that.
The first is with people. The Elder action lets you take more people, assigning them to whatever jobs you want in your tribe. Boom. Instant engine building! You’ll start with nothing, and from there specialise your tribe as best fits your chosen strategy. This makes the Elders a real focus, which rather befits their position.
The second is with the Great White itself. Unlike so many card markets, this one changes size throughout the game, expanding on bright sunny days or contracting down to a tiny choice when the storms blow in. But importantly this size is player controlled. On your turn you always flip a new card into the market and, optionally, you can scout, revealing more cards according to how many people you’ve assigned to that job, as usual. Scouting doesn’t count as your action though, so you can boost your, and your opponent’s, options. This process allows neglected card types to accumulate until players decide to pivot. It allows a player with 4 whale hunters to decide to wait a round rather than take the 2 whales available, to make the most efficient use of their engine, and then for the other players to undercut and counter-draft. The market becomes the arctic wastes, a place of great opportunity but where optimally efficient actions are rare moments of celebration. Although I don’t suppose the Inuit people quite phrase it that way…
Inuit is, like so many games, about maximising your efficiency. But it creates a space that is about evaluating chance rather than counting resources. Adding another Inuit to a job means that job can be more efficient, but you are less likely to see enough cards of that type to make full use of it. Might it have been more efficient to not take more people at all? Especially due to how they score. Each adult has a symbol of their tribe, and each child has two symbols (their parents).
Yes, Inuit children are just as effective workers as the adults. Yes, you probably will spend a fair amount of time commenting on each other stealing children. No, no, I’m rescuing them you see… from the Arctic.
Each of your tribes-people in actual tribes at game end are worth points to you, wherever they are. But any strangers in your tribe costs you points. So you want to collect your own tribesmen (who I assume got lost out there? This is thematically very strange) but you can take other’s if you think you can get the most out of them. Evaluating chance.
What is really great about Inuit is that this evaluation must depend on how you think the other players will act. It makes a quiet, tableau/engine builder into something inherently interactive. The interactivity goes even further when it comes to collecting weapons. This job takes people from the Great White and flips them face down above your board, depriving those tribes of their points and earning you some. The shaman’s rites are as close to take-that as the game gets but they are abilities you have the option to prepare for, and can affect all players equally. If they hit you particularly hard, you generally only have yourself to blame.
Each job has its value and it is to Inuit’s credit that the core action is the same for each of them, but all have differences to consider. Even the three types of game, Seals, Orcas and Polar Bears are worth different amounts of points and appear at different frequencies. For such a delightfully simple system (just take cards!) there is a lot to consider each turn, mostly thanks to how each player affects each other in interesting but rarely directly confrontational ways.
The game generously comes packaged with two expansion modules included: 1) The Great White, and 2) Rising Sun. Number 1 is by far the larger, adding extra card types that tweak many of the game elements. There are larger animals for each type, of which only a single large animal can be taken in a single turn. Conflict cards add an extra focus to weapons and targeting certain players. Legendary characters are tribesmen with specific roles and the ability to earn bonus points, effectively challenging you to double down on certain strategies. More risk to evaluate. Number 2 adds some special global rules that come into effect in the early, mid and late game, again tweaking your focus from the standard you might have become accustomed to with the basic game.
Inuit came very much out of the blue for me (or should that be the white…?) Arriving unbidden on my doorstep in the shape of a review copy. I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t something this good! The degree of depth and interaction present in such a simple drafting game thanks to some simple mechanical choices has greatly impressed me. They even did some cultural due diligence!
Rating: In-to-it
Our copy of Inuit was provided for review by the publishers Board & Dice.
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