Overview

Clans is an abstract strategy game where five clans wander ancient terrain, forming villages by grouping huts together. Each player is secretly assigned one clan color and tries to score the most points for that color by strategically forming villages. The twist is that all players move any huts on the board, so deduction about opponents’ secret colors is as important as tactical positioning.

Components

• 1 gameboard divided into 60 areas with 4 terrain types: mountains (gray), forest (dark green), steppes (yellow), grassland (light green)
• Rivers and lakes grouping areas into 12 regions
• Epoch chart on the board showing 5 epochs with favorable/hostile terrains
• Scoring strip around the epoch chart
• 60 huts (12 each in 5 clan colors)
• 5 secret clan cards
• 12 yellow bonus chips
• 5 scoring disks (1 per clan color)

Setup

1. Place 1 hut into each of the 60 areas. To ensure even distribution, make 12 groups of 5 huts (one of each color), place one group into each of the 12 regions, then distribute huts one per area within each region.
2. Place all 5 scoring disks at the start of the scoring strip.
3. Each player draws a secret clan card and keeps it hidden until end-game scoring. Unused cards go back in the box unrevealed.
4. Place the 12 bonus chips on the corresponding spots of the epoch chart.
5. Randomly determine a start player; play proceeds clockwise.

Turn Structure

On your turn you perform exactly one action: move all huts from one area to an adjacent occupied area. Then check if any villages have been formed.

Actions

Movement

• Pick any area on the board and move all huts in that area to one adjacent area that already contains at least one hut.
• You may move huts of any color, not just your own.
• Movement across rivers is allowed but not across lakes.
• A group of 7 or more huts may not be moved. However, huts from adjacent areas can still be moved into such a group.
• If two groups of 7+ huts are adjacent, the smaller must move to the larger. If equal, the active player decides.

Forming Villages

• A group of huts (even a single hut) becomes a village when, at the end of any turn, its area is surrounded only by unoccupied areas.
• When a village forms, three things happen in order:
  1. The active player takes the topmost bonus chip from the epoch chart (worth 1 point at game end).
  2. The village is scored (see Scoring).
  3. Scoring disks for each clan color represented advance on the scoring strip.

Dispute

• If all 5 colors are represented in a village when it forms, a dispute occurs first: all colors with only 1 hut in the village are removed before scoring. Those colors receive no points for that village.

Scoring / Victory Conditions

Village Scoring

• Each clan color present in a village scores points equal to the total number of huts in the village (regardless of how many huts of that color).
• Favorable terrain: The village scores additional bonus points as shown on the epoch chart for the current epoch.
• Hostile terrain: The village scores zero points (no hut points, no terrain bonus). The active player still receives the bonus chip.
• The 12th village always receives a 5-point terrain bonus regardless of terrain type.

Epochs

The game spans 5 epochs. In epochs I-IV, one terrain is favorable (bonus points) and one is hostile (zero points). In epoch V, all terrains are favorable. The number of villages per epoch equals the number of bonus chips: 4 in epoch I, 3 in epoch II, etc. When the last bonus chip of an epoch is taken, the next epoch begins.

End of Game

The game ends when the 12th village is established. Players reveal their secret clan cards. Each player adds their collected bonus chips to their clan’s scoring disk position. The player whose clan’s scoring disk is farthest along the strip wins.

Special Rules & Edge Cases

• If 2 or more villages form on the same turn and there is only one bonus chip left in the current epoch, the active player decides which village belongs to which epoch.
• If both the 12th and 13th villages form on the same turn, the active player decides which is the 12th (and thus scored).
• If no legal moves are possible before the 12th village forms, the game ends early.
• You cannot move huts into an unoccupied area; the destination must contain at least one hut.
• In some editions, the 5th clan color is white instead of black.

Player Reference

Epoch	Villages	Favorable Terrain	Hostile Terrain	Bonus
I	4	Forest	Mountains	+1
II	3	Steppes	Grassland	+2
III	2	Mountains	Steppes	+3
IV	1	Grassland	Forest	+4
V	2	All	None	+5

Village Score = Total huts in village + terrain bonus (if favorable)
Hostile terrain = 0 points (but active player still gets bonus chip)
Dispute (all 5 colors present) = remove single-hut colors first