[This review is after just one play, but I really don't see my rating changing for this game. I started writing this as a session report, but by the time I finished it I realized I had just written a review, so with a few changes, here it goes]

Tribune: Primus inter Pares. It could've been named Tribune: Worker Placement, Set Collection, Hand Management. Hm, maybe that's what the latin stands for. I remember hearing in college that latin tends to be a concise language, so...

After my two gaming buddies explained the game to me, we got going. I was the only one of the three that hadn't played it before, but the other two had only played it once, so there wasn't that big a gap between the players. Knowing the game helps(as it should), but the game's mechanics are so familiar that I didn't have a hard time grasping what to do and when to do it. I actually lost because of a stupid slip: forgot to place a worker to try to take over the purple girls when I had all the cards I needed to do so. My mistake cost me a lot: I would've been the only one with the victory conditions and would definitely be the winner. One more turn, and a failed attempt at getting laurels later, I didn't even meet the criteria (while the other two did) in the next turn, since I lost control of the blue dudes (predictably) and wasn't able to get a hold of a Tribune tile with the purple girls. We still did the scoring, and in case I did meet the criteria, I would've tied in first place. Of course, I would've been the sole winner if I had fought for the purple girls when I had to, but oh well.

The game looks great, usual awesome-metallic-looking FFG standard. The chariot's quite the overdone little bit, but other than that everything's fine.

The thing that really bugged me is how generic this game is. Really. I mean, this is the guy that made Die Macher? I love that game not only because it plays great, but it plays unlike any other game I've got the chance to play. Looking at his other games here on the Geek (Extrablatt, was sticht? and the hilariously named "kunst stucke"), I thought that to him originality was a big deal. Now it seems like it isn't.

It's not a bad game, of course. I definitely was entertained while I played it, it had some interesting decisions, nice interaction, but aside from the clever two-player auction where the winner pays the loser (which is just 1/7th of the "city board"), I've pretty much seen all of this before. Had this been published a few years ago, or outside a already-saturated eurogame market, I could see me getting excited about this game. I almost bought it without playing it just because it was "a new game by the Die Macher guy" (and, like I've often stated here on BGG, with int'l shipping and import taxes games here end up costing 3x as much); right now, I'm just glad one of my friends here in Brasília bought it. I'll get the opportunity to play it once or twice a semester, which for me will be sufficient.

If you don't care about lack of originality and you like worker placement, by all means grab this, you'll be happy with it. Me? I enjoy it when I actually feel like I'm playing a new game when I get to play a new game, so I feel absolutely no need to add it to my collection, even though I'll still say yes when somebody suggests it. My tentative rating for this (remember, I've only played it once) is a 7.5, which right now does seem like a lot after all this complaining about unoriginality, but this still is a balanced, fun and engaging game. Just like a lot other euros I've played before.