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Castle Dice
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Number of Players
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1 - 4
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Play Time
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45 minutes
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Ages
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8 years and up
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It is time to take a look at Castle Dice. Castle dice is a 1 – 4 player resource
management game. Some people think of it
as a worker placement game but while worker placement does play a role in the
game, proper resource management is the path to victory in Castle Dice.
The theme to Castle Dice is the players are medieval nobles
that are assigned by their lord to build a castle on the border to defend
against barbarians. The person who can
build the best castle will win the game and become heir to the throne. In order to be able to build the best castle
you need to get the right resources in order to recruit workers to build manage
your lands while suing those same resources the build your castle.
A game turn is fairly simple. First the players draw cards from the worker
and building deck until they have five cards in their hand. These are what they have the opportunity to
build during their turn, if it is not in their hand, it cannot be built or
recruited. The players then each get a fixed
set of dice plus up to three additional dice of their choice. The players roll their dice keep any dice
that come up as barbarians and put the rest in the center of the table. The faces on the dice are the resources that
the dice represent, animals, and a barbarian.
The players start going around the table recruiting dice and adding them
to their resources one by one until the pool of dice is depleted.
At this point the players make any resource adjustments for
their workers and then build more workers and buildings from their hand. The barbarians attack taking 1 of each
resource from the player’s pool for each barbarian that they rolled earlier in
the turn. When they complete this, first
player for the next turn is determined by who has the most horses.
The reason that I consider this a resource management game
instead of a worker placement game is that the players may on choose to build
workers that they want to from their resources.
They may only build items that they currently have in their hand. So even if they had the resources to build a
certain worker, they could not build the type of worker they wanted unless they
had a card with it. Having certain types
of workers do provide an advantage but having the correct resources are what
will help you win the game.
I found the game to be fun for a lighter game. While the artwork in the game is more on the
cartoony side, which leads you to believe that it is a super light kids game
there is a definitely enough there to entertain a group of adults. There is too much randomness in the game with
the card drawing to see what can be guilt and the dice themselves for the game
to be considered anything but light. The
name of the game should be enough to warn off players that like to keep the
amount of random chance down to a minimum.
Even then the game takes around an hour to play so you do not get stuck
in it forever.
This is a good game to use to introduce players to board games. It is fast paced so you are not having to
wait long for the turn to come around to you and there is enough there to keep
even the most experienced player from getting bored with it.
It’s time to make a Relic Run!
