Pandemic: Contagion and Pandemic: The Cure Reviews

Today, dear readers, you are in for a treat! Not one, but TWO reviews for the price of one! (Still free.) I'm going to take a look at two new games in the "Pandemic-verse," - Pandemic: Contagion and Pandemic: The Cure.

Pandemic has a special place in my gamer heart. It is the first modern board game I played (I had already tried Carcassonne and Catan at this point) that really captured my imagination and made me think, "Wow - we can do this with a board game?? What else is out there??"

Pandemic is the game that is responsible for me doing new things with old friends, meeting great new friends, having an owned games list over 200 (and a previously owned game list approaching 1000), and for writing these silly game reviews.

When I heard on the Dice Tower that a Pandemic dice game was in the works, I was definitely interested. I obviously love Pandemic, but I also really enjoy cooperative games and dice games in general. I was also excited when I heard about Pandemic: Contagion - the idea of playing as diseases sounded neat, and I wanted to see what Z-Man would do with that concept.

The first thing I should mention about Pandemic: Contagion is that it is a stand-alone competitive game. It has Pandemic branding, but aesthetics is pretty much where the similarities end. In fact, Contagion is not designed by Pandemic's designer, Matt Leacock. Contagion was designed by Carey Grayson.

As I mentioned, in Pandemic: Contagion, players are diseases, trying to infect and kill off as much of humanity as possible. Countries are represented by cards, which players will be placing their cubes onto - each cube represents that disease infecting 1,000,000 of that location's population.

On a turn, a player will have two actions available. Players can draw cards (Incubate), infect a location card, or mutate their disease. Cards are the currency of the game, and come in 6 suits - one matching each continent in the game. In order to infect a new city, a player must discard two cards matching the color of the city, but to spread an infection where a player already has her disease present only costs 1 matching card.


Mutating your disease means discarding cards in order to move up on 1 of 3 tracks. The first two tracks dictate how many cards a player draws and how many cubes she places each time she takes an Incubate or Infect action, respectively. The last track, the Resistance track, symbolizes how resistant a player's disease is to the effects of humanity's medical and epidemiology communities. Each round, a new event card will be revealed. If the effect is negative, being higher up on the resistance track means a disease will be less affected by the event.

Players will score points by having the most or second most disease cubes in a city when the total number of disease cubes meets or exceeds the total population of the city.

Play continues in this way until either the event deck runs out or when there are only two city cards left. All remaining cities are scored and the player with the most points wins!

Pandemic: Contagion is not a bad game. It is also, unfortunately, not a good game. I really like when games have upgrade tracks that each player can move up to individualize how they will play the game. I was hoping that this is where the interesting decisions in Contagion would be. Unfortunately, Pandemic: Contagion does not have anything interesting here. Not much changes from game to game, and although I haven't played the game over 10 times, I would feel pretty confident in saying players should always upgrade their Incubation ability, then their Infection rate, and then their Resistance level, if they feel like it. In all of the games of this I've played, the first few rounds consisted of everyone taking the same exact turn - Incubation action then grade Incubation track.

The game starts to get interesting once a few players decide to stop upgrading and get infecting the board. But even then, the game doesn't have much to offer. There are some interesting decisions to make when infecting, since the player who places the cube that triggers a scoring gets a one-time special action, but that's about it. Even the once a round global events deck is rather boring.

Pandemic: Contagion is a very simple card game with a neat theme. It is inoffensive enough, but I found myself bored while playing it. I can't recommend it. 5.5/10.

Jim would like to thank Z-Man Games for providing him a review copy of Pandemic: Contagion.

Pandemic: The Cure has a lot more in common with its big sister than Contagion. The Cure is cooperative, and it was also designed by Matt Leacock, the designer or the original Pandemic. In Pandemic: The Cure, players are a team of specialists, working together to cure 4 diseases ravaging humanity worldwide, before either the number of outbreaks or the number of infected become overwhelming.

The world map is represented by 6 tiles, arranged in a circle. Each tiles has a continent on it and is assigned a number from 1-6. Players can move their pawns to adjacent tiles by using a boat die result, or to any tile by using an airplane result.

Much like the original, players will all win if they can cure all 4 diseases. In The Cure, they do this by collecting samples of the disease, and finding a cure by rolling the samples and getting a result of at least a 13 or higher. 

Disease cubes in The Cure are actually 6 sided dice. At the end of each player's turn, a number of cubes are drawn from a bag and rolled. These disease cubes are placed onto the continent tile that has the number matching each cube's die result. Any cross symbols are moved to the CDC tile as resources the players can use whenever they wish.

On a player's turn, she will roll all of her available dice. Any Biohazard results must be kept and will advance the Infection Rate. The player can take actions according to her die results, or she may reroll her dice. In fact, she may continue rerolling as long as she has not used all of her available dice.

Aside from the Biohazard symbol, the player dice also have the basic actions of Fly (move anywhere), Sail (move to an adjacent location), Treat (take a disease cube from your location and place it into the Treatment Center), and Collect Sample (take a disease cube from the Treatment Center and put it onto your role card, with the Collect Sample die on top).

Each player's dice will also have special symbols on them, depending on their role. Some roles are better at moving, some are better at treating and curing, while others have special faces that are unique to their role.

At the end of any turn which a player has enough samples, they can attempt to find a cure for a disease. To do this, they roll all the disease cubes they have collected, and if the result is a 13 or higher, a cure for that disease has been found! If players find a cure for all four diseases, they win! If either the Infection Rate or the Outbreaks markers reach the end of their tracks, or if there are no disease cubes left in the bag and more need to be drawn, the game ends and the players all lose.

I think the biggest gripe I have with Pandemic: The Cure is that depending on how the dice get rolled, the players could either have a cakewalk or have their butts handed to them. This is not too much of a con, since this was also true for the original Pandemic - I've certainly experienced both the "cakewalk" and "butt-handed-to-me" varieties of that game as well. 

One of my favorite parts of this game is (unsurprisingly) the dice. First, the disease dice are not simple D6 dice with a cross on one side. They are weighted very differently - the red dice, for instance, do not have 2, 3, or 5 sides. This means that certain diseases will mostly affect certain continents, which makes outbreaks more common. Another thing I like about the disease dice is that because they all have a cross side, each time a player draws disease dice from the bag, there's always hope that at least a couple of them will come up as crosses, which can be spent by the players during the game to pay for communal event cards (which all have positive effects).

Thirdly, I really like the player dice. It is really neat that the dice for each role have custom sides, but I also really like the press your luck mechanism of players being able to roll as much as they wish, but all bad results must be kept. It really adds a lot of excitement to each turn and to each roll.

While Pandemic: The Cure is a bit shorter than the original, I would say that it retains much of the feel of the "full game." The Cure even simulates the collection of cards in Pandemic by forcing players to temporarily give up dice while they are looking for a cure. 

I really like Pandemic: The Cure, and would be hard pressed if asked which game I would rather keep, original Pandemic or The Cure. Fortunately, I don't have to make such a ridiculous decision. =) I'd rate Pandemic: The Cure 8.5/10.

Quantum Review

Quantum set up for two players. Wine and GoT coasters not included.

I love Star Wars. I really enjoy science fiction movies, books, and TV shows. I would love to love science fiction themed games...but my main gaming partner, my lovely wife, does not care for the "space" theme at all. So it is rare that any "space games" make it into our home. With this big factor going against it, does Quantum make the "Flartner" cut?

Quantum is the latest from publisher FunForge and designer Eric Zimmerman. Quantum is a lighter space civilization and combat game where the players' ships are represented by dice. The goal of the game is for each player to construct all of her quantum cubes on empty planets.

Players construct their cubes on planets by having ships in orbit around a planet that are exactly equal to the planet's number.

On a turn a player gets 3 actions. Players can Reconfigure a ship by rerolling it, Deploy a destroyed ship to the board, Construct a Quantum Cube (which costs 2 actions), Research (which can help a player get powerful Advance Cards). The last option is to have a ship Move/Attack. A ship can move as many spaces as it has pips on its face - so a ship represented by a die showing a 5 could move 5 spaces.

In this combat example, blue's Destroyer narrowly defeats yellow's Interceptor.

Ships attack by moving into a space containing an enemy ship. Each player involved rolls one combat die and adds this to the value of the ship in combat. The player with the lower total wins. This means the game asks players to strike an interesting balance between their ships' mobility against their ships' effectiveness in combat.

All civilizations play exactly the same - aside from color and name.
...that rhyme was an accident...I promise.

Additionally, each type of ship has a special ability that can be used once per turn and that does not cost an action. The Frigate (4), for instance, can modify itself to be either a 3 or a 5.

There are also 6 Advance Cards available for players to take. The cards come in two varieties, gambit cards (which trigger instant effects) and command cards (which are ongoing effects). These can be acquired in any of 3 ways: by constructing a quantum cube, by destroying an enemy ship, or by getting your research die up to 6.

I play a lot of games with my wife. She will try almost anything once, but I avoid bringing home games that are set in outer space because of how much she does not like the theme. After our first game of Quantum, she said, "Ok, that was a really good space game."

As with any game with cards and dice, there is a good amount of randomness included in the game. This might push some players the wrong way. The randomness of Reconfiguring a ship can be frustrating if a player gets exactly the ship they want, and some of the cards in the game do seem much stronger than others. Both of these issues are mitigated somewhat by the game's relatively short playing time and fairly abstracted rule set. Speaking of abstraction, that is another possible issue for Quantum. The game is about space ships warring and colonizing planets, but some ships can swap place with each other? And any ship can randomly change into another kind of ship? These make for exciting and interesting game play elements, but go a long way to making the game feel more abstract and themeless.

I think that Quantum overcomes these few shortcomings and is ultimately a very fun, very engaging game. I have always thought that many strong games have one thing in common - a small number of simple rules but a great number of interesting decisions. Quantum is a prime example of this type of game. The rules are fairly limited, but the way the rules come together and interact with each other create a fairly deep play space which is quite fun for players to explore. The most basic concept of the game - that the stronger a ship is, the slower it is, and vice versa - is a perfect distillation of this idea. Quantum seems to take many things that make space games fun, and reintroduces them with the old K.I.S.S. principle, very much to it's benefit.

Overall, I would give Quantum a 7.0/10. It is a very fun little space game that would fit well in many a collection. There will be frustrating randomness at times, and there is definitely some theme wonkiness, but these are both reduced as negative factors by the game's shorter length and relatively broad strategic play space. This may not be the next Eclipse, but it was never trying to be. Quantum is one of those creative endeavors that doesn't overreach, but absolutely nails what it was going for - quick gameplay, simple but difficult decisions, all wrapped up in a pretty space package. I recommend you check it out.

Bang! The Dice Game Review

 

As a dedicated fan of the Bang! series of games (I think I have played every variant and expansion), when I heard about Bang! The Dice Game, I was very excited to try it out.

Bang! The Dice Game take the basic formula from Bang!, and provides a simplified and faster play experience.  To start the game, players will be dealt a character and a role.  Depending on your role, you will have a different victory condition - kill the Sheriff, kill the Outlaws and Renegade, or be the last man standing; and depending on your character, you will have a different special ability to help you accomplish your goal.  On each turn, you get five dice, and three rolls.  In between each role, you have the option to re-roll (almost) any of your dice, but whatever you have rolled at the end of the third roll must be kept.  The different faces on the dice represent a Gatling gun, which hits all other players if you have rolled three of them, a one and two distance attack which attack other players, beer which heals a player, dynamite which cannot be rerolled and will end your turn while inflicting one point of damage if you roll three of them, and arrows which immediately upon rolling them forces you to take an arrow from the middle (you take wounds equal to your number of arrow once the arrow pile is exhausted).  Players take turns rolling dice and shooting at each other until one of the victory conditions is achieved!

The first pro that I have for Bang! The Dice Game is that there are die faces that matter while rolling the dice.  The basic Yahtzee formula for die rolling has been left essentially unchanged for a few decades now.  You can see examples of it in many, many games, and it is always the same.  Roll three times, and keep the final result.  However, Bang! changes this - arrows do things immediately.  And, dynamite locks your die.  These die faces actually make for some interesting decisions about when to keep re-rolling, and when to accept what you have.  For example, one time that I played, I was trying to finish off one of my opponents.  However, the arrow pile was very low, and I knew that if I re-rolled and got too many arrows, I could inadvertently kill myself instead of my opponent.  I risked it.... and it did not work out in my favor.

Arrows and Dynamite have immediate effects

The next pro that I have for Bang! TDG (I'm sick of typing "The Dice Game") is that it is much faster than the original game of Bang!  Now, let's go ahead and throw this out there - I enjoy Bang!  I think that it is a fun game, and I am generally up for playing it.  However, since I often am teaching it to new players, the game can really drag along sometimes.  That is not the case with the dice game.  Between the decisions being streamlined and the extra death that arrows can inflict (along with not being limited to playing only one "Bang!" card per turn), the game generally lasts around 20 minutes.  Which I think is the optimal length of time for Bang!  This change has caused several people that I've played with to actually prefer Bang! TDG over the original.

The third pro that I will mention for Bang! TDG is that it does a slightly better job of allowing your secret identity to actually be secret.  Because of the dice being random, and because you are forced to use the dice, you can sometimes get away with shooting the sheriff and calling it an accident.  This is easiest in a four player game where the sheriff is sitting across the table from you ("whoops, I didn't mean to roll a "2" hit - sorry..."), but can also happen with Gatling guns and by causing arrows to damage him.  Plus, Gatling guns clear out the arrows in front of you in addition to hitting all of your opponents, so they help add some confusion into the mix of "why did he just shoot me?"

However, there are still a couple of cons that I have for Bang! TDG.  First, the Renegade role is still terrible.  Yes, the Renegade can occasionally win - I realize this.  However, generally the Renegade will not win.  It is very, very hard to be the last man standing.  Actually, it might have become even more difficult in this version, because the sheriff no longer gets penalized for finishing off his deputy, so if he sees a weak opponent, he is more likely to pounce.  (Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the Renegade is included in the game series, as trying to figure out who is the Renegade and who is the Deputy is the best part of the hidden identity element of the game.  Plus, it helps balance things out so that the Sheriff doesn't get obliterated by the Outlaws from the beginning.  However, that doesn't mean that I even want to be the Renegade.)

Dueling it out with friends

The other con that I have for Bang! TDG is that some of the characters just feel better than others.  Specifically, one character never takes more than one wound from Indians/arrows, one character can take all of his damage as arrows (which is amazing when there are not many players left), and one player can re-roll dynamite.  Most likely, each person will have their favorite characters that they think are the best, but these are the ones that I think may be a bit too strong.  With that said, I haven't really seen anyone be able to runaway with a game simply because they had one of these characters.  The team aspect of the game does a nice job of keeping a slightly overpowered character in check.

Overall, I give Bang! The Dice Game an 8.5/10.  I haven't completely decided if I like it more than the original game of Bang!, but I definitely like the tempo of the game more than the original - especially when teaching new players.

If Bang! TDG sounds interesting, you might also check out Catan: The Dice Game, King of Tokyo, and The Resistance.

I would like to thank dV Giochi for providing me with a review copy of Bang! The Dice Game.

Perudo (Liar's Dice) Review

One of my favorite party games that I'm glad to get to tell you about is Perudo (also know as "Liar's Dice").

In Perudo, each player starts with five dice and a cup (to keep their dice secret). Each round starts with all of the players rolling their dice. Whoever lost a die most recently (first round, just pick someone randomly) starts the round. They must bid how many dice they think have been rolled among all of the available dice. For example, they may bid "five 4's", which means that they think that there are at least five dice showing the number four among all of the players' dice. To add to the fun, one's (or ace's) are wild and count as any number. Now the next player must either increase the number on the die (and keep the number of dice at least the same), or they can increase the number of dice (so, in our previous example, both "five 5's" and "six 2's" are legal bids, but "four 6's" is not); or they can "call" the player before them, if they do not think that their bid is correct. Once someone is "called", all players reveal their dice. If the necessary dice were rolled, then whoever called them loses a die; otherwise, the person who made the bid loses a die. There are some other special rules when a single player gets down to one die, and for how to bid on ace's, but this is the bulk of the gameplay. Play continues like this until only one player has any dice left.

A beautiful Toys R Us version

The first thing that I love about Perudo is the secret element of the dice. Since any given player never has more than five dice, the players have to completely guess what dice are present. Yes, you can use statistics to guess how many of each die there should be, but statistics always lie to you in Perudo. Because of this, it's great fun to start the game by bidding that there are 10 or more of some number, when you really have no idea. But, with six players (30 dice), 10 is probably a safe bet!

The next thing that I like about Perudo is the mind games that you can play with people in the game. In a big game, your objective is simple - bid so high that the bid will not get back around to you, but just low enough that people will not call you! If I bid on something and five other people bid after me before I am forced to bid again, then this works out really well (after all, you can't lose a die unless you either call somebody or are called). However, the game can be just as fun when you have eliminated everybody but yourself and one opponent. It's a fun bluffing exercise to try to outwit your opponent when you know what dice you have rolled, he knows what he has, and you must still force his hand - and the less dice you each have, the better it gets. If we each have one die left, should I start by bidding "one 2", when I have a five, thinking that he won't call me? If I do, and he changes it to "one 3", should I call him thinking that he is using my same strategy?

The final aspect of Perudo that I like is the social nature of the game. Yes, Perudo requires strategy, but it's not such an all-brain encompassing strategy that you only focus on it, leaving no room for talking. Perudo has quite a lot of banter, laughing, and "ahhhhh!!!" moments (as your opponent outwitted you - or really did roll all five of his dice on the same number). The game is flat out fun to play (pro number four), and at the same time allows players to enjoy each other's company. (Plus, it can be scaled up to as many players as you want if you have extra dice lying around. Though I'd guess at some upper limit it stops being fun.)

Final pro - it can also be played by anyone! Perudo is very non-traditional gamer friendly.

With this, you can lie to anyone!

With all the positive aspects of Perudo, there are really only two things to mention that can be considered negative. First of all, Perudo is a filler game. I don't really envision people getting together specifically to play it. However, since it could also be thought of as a party game, it is a game that I can see people being able to play often (like.... you know.... at parties) - especially non-traditional gamers.

The other "con" (well, more "thing you should realize") is that there is player elimination in Perudo. Once you run out of dice, you are out of the game. However, since this game will probably be played at parties, this simply provides time to mingle, get a snack, go to the bathroom, or just chat with your other friends that were eliminated.

Overall, I give Perudo an 8.5/10. I love Perudo and think that everyone should play it. However, my (current) personal rule is that I reserve 9+ for games that I think people would get together specifically to play, which I don't think is the case for Perudo.

If you're looking for fun dice games, you might also want to look into Cookie Fu, Martian Dice, and Rory's Story Cubes.

Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game Review

Due to my interest in playing Biblios, I also wound up with an opportunity to play Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game.

In Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game, the goal is to get the most gold.  Every turn, the active player will roll all of the dice (1 gold die, 5 resource dice, and 1 adjustment die).  Then, depending on what is rolled on the gold die, various things might happen.  In a "standard" turn (when a coin is rolled), players take turns selecting groups of matching dice and moving their token up on the corresponding resource track, gaining gold, or adjusting the end of game value of one of the resource tracks.  If the gold die rolls an "auction for resources" then an auction begins, with the winner getting to use all of the dice - and then the active player rolls the dice again.   The gold die can also roll an "auction for gold" in which the players bid how few gold coins that they are willing to accept to permanently remove a token from the game - then the active player re-rolls all the dice.  Finally, the gold die might show a re-roll icon, which allows the active player to re-roll any or all of the resource dice, but must pay one more gold each time that he re-rolls a group of dice.  Play continues until three scoring markers are at the top of resource groups, someone reaches the top of the abbot track (a resource track that's not worth points at the end of the game), or one player has removed four tokens.  Then, whoever is winning each resource track gains gold equal to the value of that track (indicated by a die) times three, and second place gains the value of the track.  Whoever has the most gold wins!

The first pro that I have for the Scripts & Scribes Dice Game is how the "auction for gold" works.  Inevitably, you will have certain resources in which you are not going to be first or second place.  So, why bother even keeping the token for this resource?  The auction for gold lets you trade it in to at least make a few coins, since you knew you weren't going to make any otherwise.  Of course, if the auction for gold is rolled early in the game, then you have to decide if you're willing to sacrifice a resource that you have a good chance to win in order to get extra gold.  And, based on if this auction is rolled early or late in the game will adjust the value of your token - if you sacrifice it early in the game when you still have an opportunity to win any given resource, it might be worth 6 or more gold.  Whereas, at the end of the game, when everyone has a token that they can sacrifice, it might only be worth 1-3 gold.

The resource track

The next pro that I have is how the auction for resources work.  Instead of knowing exactly how much each player has bid, the auction is a combination of a silent auction and an open auction.  It is fair knowledge to know how many cards each player has bid, but not how much gold.  However, if you bid with a card, you cannot pick it back up later - so, if you only have cards worth 1, 2, 3, and 5 in your hand to start, you might have to consider which of these you're going to bid with to start the auction.  After all, starting with the 1 is "safe", but if you bid them in order, you are progressively bidding higher, whereas your opponents might be only bidding 1's - and since only the number of cards is open knowledge, you have no idea if you're horribly overbidding.  It allows your opponents to try to bluff you into bidding higher - or lower, if they throw less cards.

The next thing that you need to be aware of is that this is a dice game.  This means that weird things will happen that slaughter all probabilities.  I've played in one game where the "auction for gold" was rolled three times in a row to start the game (and the "auction for resources" was never rolled in that game).  I've also played where the opposite was true - "auction for resources" was rolled repeatedly, and "auction for gold" was never rolled.  You also might have all of the dice roll the same resource.  Conversely, you might have the opportunity to re-roll and spend gold trying to make all of the dice show the same resource, only to spend all of your money and never have it happen.  Dice games are very, very random - so be aware of that, and if that's not something you would enjoy, then you should probably avoid them. 

Dice are very, very random

So, Scripts and Scribes the Dice Game is the Dice Game for Biblios (also known as Scripts and Scribes, if you were wondering about how they are connected).  Biblios is a much "tighter" game than it's Dice Game equivalent.  Since that term really doesn't mean much, let me describe what I mean by it.  In Biblios, things are carefully balanced out, and as a player, you have several opportunities to plan ahead.  You won't know everything that will be available to you later in the game (there is a random element in the setup, and the other players also affect this), but you still know generally what will happen and can plan accordingly.  The Dice Game has strategy involved, but planning might be completely thwarted.  Whatever you plan for may never even be possible due to the roll.  So... now that I'm thinking through this con, I'm realizing that I may lean towards the disliking how random dice games are side of my "neutral" point in the previous paragraph!

Overall, I give Scripts & Scribes: The Dice Game a 7.5/10.  It had some really fun elements, but I think that I would overall rather play Biblios, and have a random element that isn't quite as drastic.  Yet, I think that Scripts & Scribes: The Dice Game makes for a good strategic choice that is easy to teach to new people, and the randomness helps them have a better chance to win.

If you like die games, you might also check out Take It or Leave It, Cookie Fu, Martian Dice, and Catan - the Dice Game.

I would like to thank Dr. Finn's Games for providing me with a review copy of Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game.

Dice Age Review

A very interesting looking game that I asked for a review copy of is Dice Age (BoardGameGeek link - it's not on Amazon).

Dice Age is the game of funky dice.  Each game, each player gets a handful of different dice - you can either have everyone bring their own pre-constructed group of dice, or share a set and hand them out randomly.  Once you start playing, the active player will pick one of his dice from his "Garden" and roll it (thus placing it in his "Field").  After rolling, it can either show a symbol or a number.  If you roll a number, then that number must be lower than the previously rolled number - if it is not, then all of the dice in your field go to your "Wasteland", and all of the other players move the dice in their Field back to their Garden.  If you roll a symbol, then you get to do special things - like picking which die one of your opponent's must roll next, rolling two dice at the same time and picking the result, bringing back dice from the Wasteland, etc.  Play continues like this until only one person has dice left - and they have ushered in their own.... Dice Age!  (Or something - at least, they win.)

Again - the dice look awesome.

The first pro for Dice Age is that the dice look awesome.  And beautiful.  And sweet.  And whatever other adjectives that you want to use that get the message across that these dice are something that you will want to play with.  In fact, this is the entire reason that I asked for a copy of Dice Age - it looked amazing, and I really wanted to play with the dice.

Ultimately, having played Dice Age, I liken it to a product like "Mighty Beanz."  It is a collectible toy that you can play around with.  Whereas you could spin the Mighty Beanz and watch them wobble around and such, you can roll the dice from Dice Age and see what faces you can make them land on.  I think that this is a neat toy, and it's nice that there is a game attached.  However, I think it's good that this is a neat toy because, this leads me into the first con...

The two-sided, four-sided, die

As a game, I did not like Dice Age.  First of all, the rules are awful.  When I got the game, my mom happened to be in town, and I figured this would be something she'd be interested in, so I let her look at the rules - one page, how hard can this be?  She had no idea what was going on.  So, I read them.  I had a vague semblance of how to play the game, and then my wife read them and seemed to understand the gist of the game.  Before playing, though, I looked through the dice and had no idea how the "faces" of the die correlated to the different symbols and numbers that are shown on the rules.  So, before even attempting to play, I had to look for FAQ's and help.  If you have bought this game, then you will need this link. You're welcome.  That link explains how the dice "faces" translate into rolls.  One of the ones that I would have never figured out on my own is the "Nitro" die.  This is a four-sided die.  Yes, four.  Yet, there are two valid "sides" for it.  (In case you missed why I'm confused, it's because 2 does not equal 4.)  I would have never, ever, ever figured this out on my own.  The rules that I have say, "You'll find there are numerous effects at first and it can be intimidating.  Don't worry, you'll know everything by heart after a few games.  Later on, refer to the online Dice Age Compendium and Comprehensive Rules at..."  Ok.  But, the problem is that I needed these references before my first game.  And yet, many of the questions that I had, I still don't have the answer to, even after looking through these references.  For example, can the number that you have to roll lower than be less than zero?  (One of the effects allows you to roll a six sided die and add or subtract that value from a die you roll later - so if you roll a 6 on that die, and roll a 4 as your "number" later, then, can you make the number to beat be -2?)

What is this roll worth?  (It's 3.)

However, eventually we (team effort) deciphered the rules well enough that I think that we played the game at least mostly as it was intended.  And so, this leads to the next con.  The game itself isn't really all that great.  There is some strategy involved, and I can see kids enjoying it, but the premise is really simple - just roll lower than the previous person.  Which, ultimately, boils down to having better dice.  If the dice that I have left only have numbers higher than 10, and all of yours have low numbers, then you're going to win.  This, of course, is affected greatly by which dice you bring, and so if you play repeatedly, you will want to use the variant where each person builds their dice pool before the game, so that you have strategy involved in what you pick.  However, ultimately, it's a game to play when you want to mindlessly toss things around for fun (which isn't all bad - there is definitely a place for games like that).

With all of this said, I give Dice Age a 5.5/10 as a game.  As a toy, it would get much higher - probably in the 8-10 range.  What's the moral of this review?  If you buy Dice Age, buy it as a toy.  Perhaps try the game, but buy it as something neat to play with.  There's also an "official" stacking game that you can play with the dice.  Or, you can just stack them up like a leaning tower and see how high you can go.  But, again - toy; not game.

If you enjoy dice games, you might also check out Martian Dice and Zombie Dice.

I would like to thank Tristan Convert's Games for providing me with a review copy of Dice Age.

Take It Or Leave It Review

Hey, look - it's time to review more kids' games!  This time, it is Take it or Leave it.

Take it or Leave it really strikes me quite a bit as multiplayer Yahtzee (yes, I realize that Yahtzee is officially multiplayer, but playing with more people does nothing to change the game aside from making you wait longer for your turn).  In Take it or Leave it, you have a hand of combos that you are trying to complete as well as an action card.  Each round, the starting player takes a ton of dice and rolls them - there are blue, orange, and red (wild) dice that can be used in combos.  Next, players take turns taking a single die out of the middle and/or playing an action card.  Players may also pass if they no longer have dice that they think will help them.  Once all the dice are gone (or all players have passed), then each combo that is completed scores points, and each extra die that was taken (and every wild die) scores a negative point.  Play continues through several rounds, and whoever has the most points wins.

Now, if you have ever read any of my posts about Gamewright games, this first pro will not surprise you.  I like that the game is kid friendly, easy to learn, and has very high quality components.  This, to me, is Gamewright's trademark, so it should come as no surprise that Take it or Leave it has these characteristics as well.  Specifically, this game focuses on teaching kids probability and "visual discrimination."  I agree with both of these areas, and I really like the probability part - probability that a six will be rolled and probability that your opponent won't steal the die you need.  I would say that it also focuses on addition since you might have combos that are "at least 15 on orange dice," thus forcing you to add up your different values and see what other numbers you need to complete your combo.

Actions and Combos

As a second pro, I like the fact that there is player interaction, and it comes in a couple of different forms.  You can either steal a die that your opponent needs, or you might even be able to re-roll several dice.  Either of these actions can quickly cause your opponents to have to abandon certain combos and see what other combos they can attempt while using the previously taken dice.  So, the person that wins will normally be the person that is able to readjust their strategies quickly as they play - or is able to thwart their opponents' strategies.

Finally, I like that you lose points for taking dice that you can't use, and even for using the wild dice.  I also like that your combos are secret.  This combination of rules works incredibly well to allow you to attempt to thwart your opponents, but makes it challenging to do so.  Since you don't know if all of their cards require certain numbers, or colors, you can attempt to guess and make (for example) the orange dice run out quickly, hoping that all of their combos depended on orange.  Or, you can take all of the high numbers, or all of the 5's.  Or, if you wanted to be really devious, you can play an action card to re-roll all of the blue dice available after the first couple of rounds (when they have already started taking dice) - thus changing the numbers on what they planned on taking.  But, any of these strategies for thwarting your opponent are balanced by (and contingent on) the fact that you lose points for taking unusable dice - so, you attempt to make your combos by taking the dice that they need.  But, if you focus too much on stopping them and take extras, you will lose points (but, if you succeed and they get stuck with extras, they lose points)!

More Actions and Combos

The main con that I have for Take it or Leave it is that the actions don't seem especially helpful - especially since you only have one available at a time.  At the right time, an action card can be amazing and can save you (or earn you) several points.  However, as I think more about the actions, many of them can be used to try to mess up your opponents, but the ones that are useful for you will be used less often.  For example, one of the actions lets you add one or subtract one from a single orange die.  This can be helpful, but you really probably want to get the rest of the combo taken before you use that combo.  And, if all the orange dice are taken, or if the die that is close to the right number is taken, or if you were able to simply take a die with the right number, this action is useless.

Overall, I give Take it or Leave it an 8.0/10 as a kid's game.  The game isn't enthralling enough that I will come back to it over and over, but it is currently one of my preferred dice games - one that actually requires skill other than rolling dice well.

If you like dice games, you might also want to check out Martian Dice, Zombie Dice, and Catan: Dice Game.

I would like to thank Gamewright for providing me with a review copy of Take it or Leave it.