Designed by: RV Regal
In Nētā-Tanka, players are competing tribespeople hoping to become the new venerated elder (the Nētā-Tanka of the title) by proving themselves as the best tribe leader. Every round, you will send your people out to complete tasks on the board, such as locating, hunting and cooking buffalo, foraging for mushrooms, cutting logs and so on.
With all the resources gathered you have other options available to you – adding food to your pot, constructing tents and totems, and developing crafts.
As with many worker-placement (– put a worker on the board; take the action) games, the catch is that – until you develop the capacity to share spaces – other players ahead of you in turn order will undoubtedly take a spot you’re after. An an additional catch is that if you claim two linked spaces, the link itself triggers an extra reward – not much as a one-off, but over the course of the games’ ten rounds, amounting to a considerable difference when weaved to your advantage.
On your turn, though, you only place a single worker, so there’s an element of risk as to whether the other end of a link will still be open when the game comes back to you again. Once all pieces have been placed on the board, they are removed one player at a time, triggering the associated actions. Beware – some advantageous places demand your worker stay on the board for the next round, shuffled to a new and less alluring space, so taking these spots is a commitment. One particular spot changes round by round, giving Neta Tanka a seam of randomness and ensuring there’s no zero-sum approach to play.
After the tenth round is over everyone scores – and everything scores! How many tents you built, what you threw in your pot, your crafts, and – no sniggering at the back – the height of your totem pole. Most points… wins!
You can and will be blocked out of spots you're after - often it's not a spoiling move, but sometimes it certainly is!
Moderate to high. The fact you don't know what's available to you until your turn arrives means for all the many swift turns, there will be several longer ones as computations are run, plans rejected and recalibrated.
The rules are actually not excessive at all - each spot does a particular thing and once you're familiar with the iconography, it's an easy enough game to understand what everything does. But the challenge is in making the cogs connect, and spinning them in the most productive way. It's more than possible to get something wrong and be taking a tribesperson off the board with nothing to show for it!
Neta Tanka's rounds each have a specific once-only action, and these are randomized. More than that though, there are different paths to victory depending on - literally - which way you want to go. A little of everything? A focus on the pot, the tents, the crafts or the totem itself?
1-4
Players
12+
Years
60-90
Mins
Sam says
Whilst Neta Tanka feels lovingly produced, it has a combination of things that don't add up to a great experience for me. The theme feels a bit awkward; albeit I'm sure harmlessly-intended. But combined with a busy-looking board, somewhat nonsensical scoring and protracted lulls whilst everyone figures out plans B, C or D... as with the popular Five Tribes, the excessive downtime of a game where you can't do any real planning until your turn actually arrives means I'm in no rush to play Neta Tanka again. For my tastes it's two-stars really, but we've put it as a three because there is most definitely a strand of puzzle-loving, optimizing gamers who will love it. Ten years ago, I would have too, but my tastes these days definitely err towards games that minimise the pauses and focus on the play.