Everything has its own tracker: the structures you’ve built, the cities you’ve conquered, the roads you’ve paved to span those cities, the coins that aren’t at all connected to the stuff you’re using to construct buildings. Roll-and-write games are no stranger to the long-form arithmetic of tabulated scoring criteria, but in this category Rome & Roll wins the ancient Olympics. But frankly, the dice aren’t the only thing that fails to slide into 20/20 without some serious squinting. “But Dan, my optometrist claims I have very good vision after that laser surgery.” First of all, congratulations! Enjoy your perfect eyesight. But all that information is crammed onto tiny dice in a game where a misstep can prove enormously deflating.įelt pen, check. That just happens to be the die’s sixth face. If that sounds cluttered, now add actions that don’t need an icon at all, the odd symbol for modifying other actions, and numbers that don’t seem to have any purpose except to convince newcomers that they can take six wood. Then there are action icons, there to let you build structures or raise legions or build structures according to a different set of exceptions or build a third thing. In the version I got my hands on - which was a prototype, it should be said - the dice were immediate focal points of confusion. Stare blankly at the dice, that’s what, at least for the duration of the first play. To gain the best dice, you’re incentivized to spend senators, but every lost senator is a real blow. Which, in case you were wondering, is a loaded proposition for reasons we’ll touch upon momentarily. Senators are rare, only gained when you construct a building next to somebody else’s building. The hurdle is that the resource in question is a senator. There’s even a bit of resource management to consider, because not only do dice provide resources - everything from fish and wood to bricks and stone, with maybe a rare jewelry or basket (huh) thrown in there for good measure - but they also spend a special resource, at least if you want to nab two at once. At the start of every round, everybody drafts two knuckle bones out of a shared handful. If anything, it’s just more complex.Ĭonsider its dice. Right away, the problem with Rome & Roll is that its added heaping of complexity doesn’t make it better. The mid-weight Euro part, not the wargame thing. That’s exactly what Rome & Roll is trying to do. Can roll-and-writes be more than trifles? Could you design, say, a wargame out of this? Or even a mid-weight Euro? But it does raise a question that has yet to be answered. It’s the sort of genre that screams “gateway game.” Or worse, “filler game.” Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those designations, really. It’s a genre in its infancy, much like deck-building shortly after Dominion popped into the world but before anybody figured out it was good for something other than slapping a movie license over the top and cashing the royalty checks. The most recognizable example is Welcome To the reigning champ is probably Cartographers. Often the same results are shared by all, but not always. Someone rolls a handful of dice (or flips some cards), and puts the results to use by writing them (or penning them) onto a pad of paper (or dry-erase board). If you’ve been awake over the past year, you may have noticed this “roll-and-write” craze.
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