Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala rules refresher

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You are trying to finish with the most Victory Points and become Great Sultan of Naqala. You do that by moving the five Tribes of meeples around the board in a mancala-style shuffle, claiming tiles with your camels, collecting viziers and elders, hoarding gold, and calling on Djinns.

For setup, the thirty tiles go face up in a rectangle five by six, that is the Sultanate. All ninety meeples go in the bag and you drop three at random onto every tile. With three or four players, each of you takes eight camels and one turn marker, and the spare pink and blue sets stay in the box. With two players, each takes all eleven camels of a colour and two turn markers, so each of you plays twice per turn, possibly even back to back. Everyone gets fifty gold, nine coins worth five and five worth one, and your coin total stays secret until the end. Turn markers go randomly onto the Bid Order Track. Lay out nine resource cards face up in a row beside the draw pile, and three Djinns face up beside theirs. Palm trees, palaces and the rest of the gold form the bank.

Each turn starts with bidding for turn order. In the order shown on the Bid Order Track, each player picks a spot on the Turn Order Track, pays that many coins to the bank, and places their marker there. No two markers may share a spot, except on the zeros. Then players act in order from the highest bid down. On your turn you move your marker, move meeples, check for tile control, resolve the tribe action, resolve the tile action, and then optionally sell merchandise. After everyone has played, you clean up and bid again.

Now the details. Bidding on zero is special. There are three zero spaces, and new markers push the ones already there down the aisle, so the last person to bid zero plays first among the zeros and the first to bid zero plays last of all. If all three zeros are taken, the final bidder must bid at least one, and therefore plays first.

When your turn comes, first take your turn marker off the Turn Order Track and put it on the first empty spot of the Bid Order Track. That sets next turn's bidding order.

Then move meeples. Pick any tile with at least one meeple, take all of them into your hand, and drop exactly one on each tile as you travel, orthogonally only, never diagonally. You may not immediately backtrack onto the tile you just came from, though with at least five meeples you can loop around and return to it later. The last meeple you drop must land on a tile that already contains at least one meeple of that same colour, so you can never finish on an empty tile.

Then check control. Pick back up that last meeple plus every meeple of the same colour that was already on that final tile. If that empties the tile completely, place one of your camels there and you own it. A tile already owned by someone never changes hands, even if you empty it again.

Now do the tribe action for the colour in your hand. Yellow viziers and white elders you keep in front of you. Green merchants go back in the bag and you take that many resource cards from the front of the face up row. Blue builders go back in the bag and earn gold: count the blue valued tiles surrounding your final tile, including that tile itself if it is blue valued, and multiply by the number of blue meeples you just returned. Red assassins go back in the bag and kill one meeple: either any meeple on a tile no farther than one tile per assassin, counting orthogonally, or one yellow or white meeple held in front of an opponent. If that kill empties a tile of all its meeples, you take control of it too. With both builders and assassins you may discard any number of Fakir cards, each adding one to the builders' multiplier or one tile to the assassins' range. If you would take two tiles but only have one camel left, you must place it on the tile you ended your move on.

Next, the tile action for the tile you ended on, whether or not you took control of it. If you claimed a second tile with assassins, you do not get that tile's action. Actions marked with a red arrow are compulsory: an Oasis makes you place a palm tree, a Village makes you place a palace, unless the supply has run out. The others are optional and cost you. A Small Market is three gold for one card from the first three in the row. A Large Market is six gold for two cards from the first six. A Sacred Place lets you pay two Elders, or one Elder and one Fakir, to take any face up Djinn. Spent Elders go back in the bag. Do not refill any gaps in the rows yet. Djinns give points at the end and often a power. Powers with a cost may be used once per turn, only on your own turn, and you may use a Djinn the moment you take it if you can pay.

Finally you may sell merchandise, discarding one or more suits of all different merchandise cards. Fakirs cannot be sold. A suit pays more the wider it is, from one gold for a single card, three for two, seven for three, up to sixty for all nine different types. After everyone has played, slide the remaining resource and Djinn cards to the front of their rows and refill to nine and three.

The game ends at the end of the turn in which one of two things happens. Either a player places their last camel, in which case they finish normally and everyone else still gets their turn this round. Or no legal meeple movement is possible, in which case that player and everyone after them may still use Djinn powers but cannot move, and the turn simply finishes. Then score: one point per gold coin, one per vizier plus ten for each opponent with strictly fewer viziers than you, two per elder, the values on your Djinns, three per palm tree and five per palace on tiles you control, the printed value of each tile you control, and the sale value of each suit of all different merchandise you still hold. Most points wins, and players who tie share power as Sultans.

A turn, played out

It is the middle of a 3 player game. The red player bid 4 and has already played, and your bid of 2 puts you next. Your marker comes off the Turn Order Track and goes onto the Bid Order Track. It lands on the second spot, since red took the first. You scoop up a tile holding 1 green, 1 yellow and 1 blue meeple. Heading east, you drop the green on the next tile and the yellow on the one after. Then you turn south, not back the way you came, and drop the blue on a Village holding exactly 2 blue meeples. That finish is legal only because blue is already there. Now you lift your blue plus those 2. That puts 3 builders in your hand, and the Village is empty, so your camel goes on it. The builders go back in the bag. The Village is blue valued, and 3 of the tiles around it are too, which makes 4 tiles. You discard 1 of your 2 Fakirs to raise the multiplier from 3 builders to 4, so the bank pays you 16 gold. The Village has a red arrow, so you must place a palace on it. Because you control that tile, the palace scores you 5 points at the end. Last, you hold 3 merchandise cards, all different. You sell them as one suit for 7 gold. Your remaining Fakir stays in your hand, since Fakirs cannot be sold.