The White Tribe from White Dog Games

[mcguire]

Now I know what I'm doing this weekend.

Life is not exciting here.

And I did!



It looks pretty good in the picture there. Yes, I totally ignored the instructions. Note to self: the bottom baffle needs to be at the back to deflect the dice forwards. And separate your already-cut parts from your supplies---I had to re-cut a side because I used it to make the front and the bottom lip.

And yes, I am why we can't have nice things.

[Barthheart]

Awesome! 

[bayonetbrant]

 

[bayonetbrant]

more playthru articles

https://www.armchairdragoons.com/feature/the-white-tribe-playthrough-part-2/
https://www.armchairdragoons.com/articles/aars/the-white-tribe-playthrough-part-3/
https://www.armchairdragoons.com/articles/aars/the-white-tribe-playthrough-part-4/
https://www.armchairdragoons.com/articles/aars/the-white-tribe-playthru-part-5/


Honestly, I've lost some love for this one as it's gone on.

While some of the decisions are meaningful, the intensity really hasn't been there throughout and it hasn't felt like it's really building up to anything too crazy.
I don't know if I just got lucky with some early breaks, or there was a bad annual event setup initially that worked out in my favor, or what.

I haven't felt like I've been at a loss for managing the military side of the game at all, and that's just left a political/policy game in its wake that is really important to the game as a whole, but seems to have dominated what I'm playing and that's not really what I was hoping for.

[Advocator (Scott)]

Your final thoughts there have kind of been my experience with The Mission. Having played it a number of times now, I find I'm either in a really tough spot where there are some decisions to be made or I'm just walking all over the game. Having not played The White Tribe, I can't comment on what's going on with your game. In The Mission, it's almost always that I just got very lucky with the dice.

That's not to say there aren't meaningful decisions to be made. There are, but there just aren't usually very many to make (outside of the obvious ones). In comparison to another Madison design, I find I get to make more impactful decisions in Don't Tread on Me. Dice and random chit pulls still drive most of what happens, but I still feel like I'm making decisions that have an impact on the game.

Despite often being very, very controlled by the dice instead of any real decisions that I've made, I still find The Mission oddly interesting and I'm honestly not sure why. I'm pretty sure I'll trade it off at some point in time, but I'm not quite ready to do that yet.

[bayonetbrant]

I'm not fully giving up on this one yet.  I'm going to play it to completion, b/c there are a few BIG events yet to appear in the game.

I really, really like all the trappings of the game - there's a lot of good "UI" design here, like the random events being packaged as newspaper headlines.  But there seems to be a lot of times that you're doing a check on a certain turn for something that only has a 1-in-6 chance of happening, and after the 8th time you've checked for it and it's only happened once, you start to wonder why you're doing it every turn...

[Advocator (Scott)]

Are you still in your first play through? If so, I found with both The Mission and Don't Tread on Me that going through the rules after my first full game led to my discovering a few seemingly minor things that led to big changes in my next game.

Alarmingly, I find that happens more and more often lately... A friend and I started playing Supply Lines of the American Revolution: The Southern Strategy. It wasn't until we were in our third game that we realized the Crown could win by holding 10 cities and forts. How we missed that rule is beyond me (I mean the rule book could be better written, it's not bad, but it's not great, but missing one of the victory conditions can't be blamed on that). Regardless, the game got much, much better once we caught that.

[Advocator (Scott)]

It's been a bit... curious to see how things ultimately panned out for you with this game.

[bayonetbrant]

It's been a bit... curious to see how things ultimately panned out for you with this game.

I got 2 of the turns written this week, but we had other things going on here, plus I was down w/ food poisoning for a few days

[bayonetbrant]

https://www.armchairdragoons.com/articles/aars/the-white-tribe-playthrough-part-6/

[bayonetbrant]

Alrighty - so it's wrapped up and over

https://www.armchairdragoons.com/articles/aars/the-white-tribe-playthrough-part-7-the-end/

[BanzaiCat]

I'm new to Ben Madison's designs but am seeing the appeal.

I played a full game of Gorbachev a couple of weekends ago and I imagine its system is close to The White Tribe. I then set up and played a few turns of Jeff Davis, which had a lot of similarities to Gorbachev, so I'm guessing there's a pattern here. 

Nice work, Brant!

[bbmike]

At some point in the future, try it again. If it's anything like Don't Tread on Me, your second game will be nothing like your first one.

[Advocator (Scott)]

I'm going to second Mike's suggestion. My first plays of Don't Tread on Me and The Mission were very different from my subsequent plays.

I also found that using player aids  from BGG made The Mission much more enjoyable and streamlined. They didn't exist at the time, so I made the player aids on BGG for DToM. I found the ones that came with the games were functional, but not optimal. Having not played White Tribe, I've no clue if the ones on BGG are an improvement on what's in the box.

Ultimately, White Tribe hasn't made it onto my list to try out as it's just not a historical period that I've got a great interest in, but it is highly rated on BGG, which leads me to think that it's likely worth another go or two.

[BanzaiCat]

I've got The First Jihad, also, so I might look those player aids up myself. Thanks.