Last night, I got out my recently arrived, Dice City. I had viewed several videos on YouTube, showing game play and more, and I thought it to be a decent 3 and 4 player game. That is could also be played solo is was sold me on buying it.
So, I punched out a the few pieces that I would need and went to work.
The box has four player boards, which was nice as I half expected I'd need a second box to get to 3-4 people in it. The artwork on the accompanying cards and board is a nice and full of heavily stylized imagery. The rulebook is full color, as is now the expensive trend, and there is a plastic organizer tray in the box, which means I wouldn't need to shell out another $25-$40 for a laser cut insert.
The rule book is fairly good, although it would benefit from several examples of game play and some of the rules specific to certain cards is...somewhat vague. The game is simple and straight forward, though. One rolls 5 different colored dice, which correspond to colors along the edge of the player boards. The resulting pips on a die also correspond to columns on the player board, giving one coordinates as to spaces the dice should now be individually placed.
Some of the board spaces are production sites, others add strength to one's "army" and still others allow one to re-roll the die or to gain victory points. So far so good.
The various cards that are available are either trade ships, enemy armies, production sites, or buildings. The first three are always out and available, either being a source of victory points or goods. The buildings provide a number of different bonuses, depending upon their type. To buy a card, one expends resources gained, although only one of each of the three resources (timber, stone, iron) can be saved each turn.
In a multi-player game, the players can attack other players' buildings, causing them to not produce or be useable until repaired, but in the solo game, this option is non-existent and the solo rules do not provide for an alternative threat
In the solo rules, one is playing against the clock with 4 (or 5) building cards being drawn each turn, slowly burning down the deck, and the bottom of two rows of cards being discarded at the end of each turn (after the build phase). In this way, cards are available for purchase for a maximum of two turns. Purchased cards can be placed anywhere on the board, even over other cards, which are now discarded and out of play.
An interesting aspect of the game is that although the dice are placed on specific spots on the board, the player can use them in different ways. One is to remove one die to shift another die to a different (more useful) space on its own row. So, I can pick up the red die and move the blue die to another spot on the blue row.
The solo objective is to reach 50 victory points, or more if the player finds the game too easy. Victory points can be awarded in several ways, the main one being by building purchase, defeating the enemy armies, or purchasing trade ships.
As mentioned before, I think this is a decent, not great, game for 3 to 4 players and I think with 2 players it would be far less interesting. As a solo game, it is downright uninteresting and boring.
It comes down to whether or not one can produce enough goods, based on the die roll, to purchase enough cards to get to 50 (or more) victory points before the building deck runs out.
To me, this was like playing Solitaire with a deck of standard playing cards....yawn. There was no excitement or tension. And honestly, had I "lost" the game (I had 64 points before the game ended), it would have been solely due to my not having enough resources to buy the "right" buildings in time.
Boring....
I think a better way to handle the solo play would be to have the enemy armies attack, with the player's buildings possibly being damaged as a result. As there are three different size of enemy army, they could come in rounds; no attack, small army, medium army, large army, no attack, etc. But, this would force the player to develop army buildings, instead of using the die rolls to help determine the size of his army (as otherwise happens as one can pursue victory without every using an army), and then hope that the die rolls always give enough troops to ward off the enemy. But...this means the player loses options that he would otherwise have, and be forced to play to the new meta.
In the end, I do not recommend this game if one is going to play it solo. There's no meat and the bone is rather weedy. On the other hand, I do see some potential fun when playing with at least three players.
A final note: There are three expansions out for this game, but none appear to sort out the uninteresting solo play, while the multi-player experience may well be enhanced.
No comments:
Post a Comment