So; I noticed that FE has an oddity in it. Most colours have two empires:
* Red has Dwarves and Orks
* Green has Elves and their Thallid slaves who rebelled
* Blue have Vodalians and Homarids
* Black has humans (the thrull keepers) and Phyrexians
But...
* White has humans and, um. I guess Draconian since there's that Cylix, maybe?

White is Human vs. Human. Icatia falls partly due to the inner struggle with the Farrelite radicals.

That doens't really work mechanically for tribal effects, though.

You could go with classes. Icatians are really mostly Human Soldiers. All Clerics were Farrelites or members of the Order of Leitbur which was mostly swayed towards that side. But there are generic Human (Townsfolk) which are kinda split (though looking at Farrelite Zealot, you could argue that's some convert and reimagine it as a Cleric).

I'd have to look at the rest of the set to make better suggestions, but you'd end up with more than ten tribes anyway, right? Both Orcs and Fungi come with little cousins.

Btw:

> * Black has humans (the thrull keepers) and Phyrexians

I always thought the conflict was Order of the Ebon Hand (which apparently worships Gix, accepts Humans and non-Humans) vs. Thrulls (created by Endrek Sahr - a member of the Order) - like in green undone by creations of their own making.

I don't recall any Humans of the Order cooperating with the Thrulls against any Phyrexian leadership.

The gimmick of FE were the counters and tokens. Which they supplied on whole sheets of pop outs via magazines. Hence each color has a creature token type represented by these markers.

Every color except white has the token types destroy the nontoken types of the same color as the major conflicts.

• Black conflict was masters (non-Thrulls) vs. slaves (Thrulls).
• White was faction vs. faction. The token type Citizen were neutral. Eventually white empire was destroyed by red Goblins and black Thrulls.

Mmm. More can be found on Oliver Farrel and the Farrelite Cult by clicking here.

Also, white citizens tokens sure could destroy non-token white creatures. Though it requires access to the deity that the cultists paid tribute to, the Hand of Justice.

Unfortunately, due to the way that Magic's creature types evolved, Townsfolk and Citizen creature types didn't really catch on. Maybe this would be a good time to invoke "Mono-creature type" versus "Multi-creature type"? Since anyone who follows Farrel is "Creature - Human" and anyone who follows Leitbur is something aking to "Creature - Human Soldier" or "Human Cleric". You could print cards with lines like this:

"Creatures with exactly one creature type get +1/+2 until end of turn."

~or~

"Prevent the next 2 damage to target creature this turn for every creature type it has."

Oh, one more aside. Much of the events of Fallen Empires had to do with 'Global Cooling'. This is the period right before the Ice Age, after all. Each of these kingdoms were falling to more brutal means due to a shortage of food and supplies, and were conquered by barbarians that were better adapted to living in the new environment.

I always thought this was an interesting takeaway, but also an overlooked part of the story. It's ultimately a story about climate change. But it's really hard to glean any of that by just looking at the cards.