Dice City Board Game

The Kingdom of Rolldovia is in danger. The barbarians abandoned the capital and completely destroyed it.

Now that Queen Statisia has been searching for the location of her new capital, noble families must vie to make their city a viable replacement.

Place of dice

Dice game for 1-4 players
Over 14 years old
45 minutes playing time

A brief overview of the city of dice

Dice City is a direct, competitive dice game for 1-4 players . Your job as a nobleman of the fantastically named Kingdom of Rolldovia is to develop your city into the most impressive metropolis and prevent your opponents from doing the same.

Do this by rolling the dice and using the capabilities of your various locations to increase your resources and expand your site. To win, you must be the player with the most winning points at the end of the game, which you earn by building structures, defeating barbarians, sending trade missions and attacking the sites of your opponents.

A combination of luck and strategic foresight will be needed to win.

Variations and extensions

You can buy several extensions for Dice City, but two main ones should be mentioned:

City of cubes: intersection

This extension introduces various new concepts to the basic game. Above all, a new source: gold. With the new one we can get a Gold Mine gold card. It acts as a currency and can be used to build new locations. There are also 48 new location cards that have all the new capabilities to make the most of them.

City of cubes: Expansion of the intersection

Expansion for the city of dice
45-minute playing time for 1 to 4 players aged 14+
Citizens (No suggestions) are looking for new ways to ...

City of Dice: By royal decree

In the royal decree, the queen suddenly began to pay much more attention to her noble families. This means that there are now incentives to use different strategies and build specific sites. For if you fulfill one of the Queen’s special plans, you will receive a reward!

In addition, a new green cube and board have been introduced into the game, representing an additional trading space available to players.

City of Dice: By extending the Royal Decree

1 to 4 players aged 14+
Expansion for the city of dice
New board, more dice, new strategies

Unpacking the place of the cubes

In a game called Dice City, you would expect a lot of dice. Well, there aren't as many of them as you might think. Only five per player (yellow, white, blue, black and red). In addition, you get:

4 player boards
45 Maps of harvest resource locations
15 Regular Military Charts
60 Location Cards
18 bandit cards
11 Merchant Ship Cards
30 source tokens (iron, wood, stone)
16 Deactivation tokens
1 Run the player token
16 Pass tokens
VP tokens
Rules

The first thing to mention with Dice City is the artwork - or perhaps ‘animation’ might be a better word. The box and all the components are designed using a very 3D cartoony style, putting me in mind of the animation from some of the old Lego PC games. It might not be to everyone's taste, but it certainly makes Dice City distinctive on the shelf. Not to mention, the bold colors it uses mean it really does stand out proudly on the table. For me, it ties in nicely with the sense of humor the game clearly has and I like it.

Most games for each player take place on his board. Here you will build your place and put the dice. These are well made and again very attractive in terms of color and graphics. So a thumb away from me about these.

A bunch of cards are also included with the game. They follow that they are solid both visually and structurally. However, I think that maybe we could make them a little more lively if we included more people in them. It's a city anyway. And if there’s something cities usually have a lot of, it’s people.

I should probably mention the dice as well.

Well, let's go. Task done. (They're just dice).

How to Play Dice City |

Setup

For starters, players take a 6 × 5 player board. The columns are marked for each number on the cube, and the rows for each of the five colors of the cube (white, yellow, red, blue, and black). Players also take one of five colored dice.

Then separate the maps of the Lumber Mill, Quarry, Mine and Regular Army locations into four decks - these are always available for production - and next to them the remaining location maps in one shuffled deck. Take eight shuffled location maps and place them face up on the table. These are locations that players can build.

In the end, the players discard your five dice and place them in the appropriate space on the board. For example, a red five would mean placing the matrix in the red row in the fifth column.

When turning

Each player has four stages in a row.

Use dice

At this stage, use each cube on your action board. The actions available to you are:

Use the location of the matrix and solve its capabilities (for example, gaining additional resources or improving the strength of your army).
Move the second matrix to an adjacent space of the same color.
Discard and refill the four location maps in the center of the play area.
Reactivate a location in your city that was deactivated by another player's attack.
Get a pass token.

When using the stencil, remove it from the plate.

If you have two tokens to pass, you can also opt for additional resources, force all players to spin one matrix, or increase your army.

2. Attack

In the previous phase, you had the opportunity to increase military strength by using locations (this only lasts during the turn). If you have enough military power, you can carry out an attack and earn winning points in return. You can either attack bandits, attack enemy locations to deactivate them, or attack their stockpile of resources.

Each attack reduces your military strength. However, if you have enough left after each one, you can carry out any number of attacks.

3. Build and trade

At this point, you can place a spot from the center of the playing area and place it anywhere on the player’s board to replace it. You have to spend money on it, but you can build as much as you want if you can afford it. Replace all purchased locations in the center of the play area.

At this stage, you can also spend the funds to earn extra winning points with the help of merchant ships.

4. End of turn

If you have leftover resources, you can keep one of them (wood, stone and iron) for the next plant. The rest needs to be returned.

Then you die your matrix and place them in certain places. Playback then passes to the next player.

End of game and scoring

There are four conditions for the game to end and the scoring to begin:

The bandit cards are running out
Location cards are running out
Merchant ship cards are running out
At least two player lines are full of location maps

If one of these conditions is met, players add up the winning points they have in their city. To this they add winning points from their bandit cards and merchant ship cards.

Whoever has the most winning points wins!

Your first Dice City game

Like playing dice, a lot of dice places, of course, happen by accident. But keep in mind that you can manipulate it with a lot of things.

For example, you can dedicate an entire line to locations that create a specific resource or increase the strength of your military. That way, no matter what you turn over for those colored cubes, you’ll be much more likely to get it.

The same can be said for the spaces that appear in each line at the beginning of the game. If you have them in a row, you increase the chance that you will be able to use the other squares from one to six to one of five. So even though they may seem a bit pointless at first, you can use them to your advantage.

Advantages disadvantages

Advantages:

Easy to learn
Build your city
Great for families
Balance of happiness and strategy

Weaknesses:

The attack system is somewhat weak
The element of happiness will not be to everyone's liking

Dice City is one of those incredibly enjoyable games where you end up feeling a real sense of accomplishment, whether you win or not. Each player can develop their own sprawling urban landscape that has been cultivated and built with love and affection. I got a lot of the same punches from him as when playing Sim City or Theme Park World as a kid.

In addition, Dice City is also an extremely fun game. Each roll brings with it a lot of decisions and several different chances to earn those precious winning points. As your city expands, you can choose to focus on specific areas and it will bring a real personality to your city.

Of course, playing with dice is a lot of coincidence. So if you are behind some hardcore strategy , it may not be the best option for you. But there’s not really much skating. Instead, it’s all about what you do to make happiness happy to your advantage, and here comes the strategy.

In fact, if anything, I enjoyed happiness the most at Dice City. The euphoria of this took over when you finally ranked this perfect combination and had enough funds to sail on a merchant ship, it was hard to match.

It is also a very easy game to learn with simple concepts that kids and players will easily pick up for the first time. I think this is going to be the perfect family game.

One thing that could be improved is the attack function. At first, I really liked the idea of attacking the sites of your opponents and removing the building. It reminded me of the daring escapades I set out on in the Age of Empires to destroy the port of Nemesis and stop them from sending ships down the river.

But there is really only so much damage you can do. You may be able to deactivate a strong building, but you can easily discard the dice to get it back in the game. As such, it seldom seemed to me that I was gathering military strength in addition to attacks on bandits. Instead, I focused on winning points in an easier way. I think this is one area that needs to change.

TL; DR

Dice City is a fun little dice game that sets you up against friends to build the most impressive city. The emphasis here is on making smart decisions and not on constantly moving, which means that this is not a game that is completely dependent on luck.

As a simple and direct learning game, Dice City is perfect for family or a group of friends with a variety of experiences.

Conclusion: a verdict?

If you’re interested in a simple game that anyone can play, then look no further than the dice site. He has a satisfying mix of luck and strategy, which makes him a really impressive family-style game. Not only that, it works just as well with two players as it does with four.

I especially liked how you can get involved in building your city. It may just be a bunch of cards on the board, but the freedom of how you can cultivate it, not to mention all the beautiful colors, means you develop a pretty strong bond with it by the end.

You will hardly win any strategy reward with this. But for a simple, fun and engaging family or game for beginners, Dice City marks all the fields for me.

Place of dice