Sunday 3 November 2013

Agri-roller

Rainy Sundays are good for card-sniffing. We'd broken out new purchase Castle Dice the day before but played with simple, almost completely made-up rules, like a cow-and-poultry Scripts and Scribes. But both Stanley and Joe said they wanted to play the whole game and, I have to say I'm impressed, they sat patiently and learned it.

And then played it three more times, once with the visiting Mark and Peppa.

Pork chop!
 
It must have been nearly called Slightly Silly Agricola, as that's kind of what it is - Agricola crossed with Stone Age perhaps as there's quite a bit of dice-rolling. Over seven rounds everyone is trying to build the best castle, and to do this you generate resources through the dice-rolling, and use the resources to build parts of the castle. They come in the form of cards, but there are host of character cards too, to add variety and flavour, and many of these generate "villagers" for you who bring their own little bonuses and assistance.

It's really quite moreish - the appearance and learn-as-you-play aspect makes it nice for the kids but there's definitely room for strategy, and even some spicy screwage if you take a dice you don't really need to stop someone else getting it. Oh and there's animals and barbarians too! And you can stop the barbarians by scaring them off with a pork chop.

We've had a great laugh playing this and I think it's a bona-fide kids/GNN cross-over. Like Cube Quest but with dice instead of Grunts. Mmmmm.

8 comments:

  1. Sounds like fun Sam - how long does a game take?

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  2. Fairly quick, about an hour I think?

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  3. What's unique about it is that after having rolled your dice (and taken your barbarian hits) everyone's dice are pooled and then removed one at a time. So you can make a plan, not get the rolls you needed, but concoct a plan B based on what's available.

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  4. Cor you did well to get four games in then!

    I like your split personality here on the comments - you should start an argument with yourself.

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  5. I think we only played the full seven rounds once, with myself and Stanley. So I'm guessing a little bit.

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  6. Wow nice going. I actually got Ashton to play 2 full games of Hey Thats My Fish on Sunday. It was all his idea to play as well and we managed to go through the games without him deciding to change any of the rules! The next gen is coming along nicely....

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