Benny Sperling
United States
Arlington
Texas
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Continuing to demo Roll Through the Ages is a passion of mine. I love that it is mostly wood bits, except for the score pad which works great laminated and using dry erase markers on. I sat down with two experienced players and one new player for Roll Through the Ages with the Late Bronze Age added on.
The players included Michelle, Becky, Tina and myself. Tina was new, Becky had played once or twice and Michelle was a seasoned veteran. I went about explaining the faces of each die, including how skulls cannot be rerolled. Everyone seemed to understand that. Next I explained turn order and how it is important to follow the turn order exactly. Again I got nods of understanding. I explained the cities and monuments. I explained the selling of goods to build developments. More nods, they seemed to grok the concepts.
We began to roll and build up our empires. I got lucky with people early on and was rolling all 7 dice in short order. Becky, Michelle, and Tina seemed to be doing well with buidling monuments and beginning to stock pile goods.
The problem of Pestilence soon arose!! With four people rolling 5 to 7 dice each per turn skulls were inevitable. Although I don't think I've seen quite that many Pestilences in one game. Knowing the four player game, they happen, but they don't generally happen back to back to back. Yes that's right, 3 Pestilences in a row on three consecutive turns! Then we went a whole turn without one. Followed by 2 more in a row! It would seem the other players and I would have noticed this trend. Surely there was a way to stop our cities from getting the black plague, whooping cough and 3 dice sickness. There is, it's called "Medicine" it's a development you can buy. The problem lies in the cost to possible destruction. Medicine costs 20 coins. But it prevents all that Pestilence, that doesn't typically happen. The turns without it, players would think, we're done with Pestilence for sure! Not quite as there was another just around the corner.
The players and I bought into "helpful" developments. We bought Shipping, Agriculture, Masonry, even Empire! We built all of the monuments collectively! But when that last monument was assembled, it was the Temple by Michelle, we suffered one last Pestilence by Tina's dice roll. Points were a lot lower than I had ever seen! I personally lost 27 points in disasters. I rolled 3 Droughts, the other 7 disasters were from Pestilence.
I ended up winning, but I had a measly 29 points. Michelle was at 25 and Becky and Tina were in the teens. We discussed the importantce of Medicine as the game wrapped up, questioning ourselves why we didn't buy it at all. The point swing would have been monumental had any of us gotten the vaccinations, leeches, and sutures.
Fun was had by all and the Pestilence rollers did appologize. Definitely one of the most entertaining games I've played.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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Medicine would've gotten me 12pts alone (3pts from buying the dev itself), so it really does seem like a must-buy in a 4p game where everyone's going to be rolling 5 yo 7 dice. Of course, interesting point comes where everyone has it.... then you're not doing any damage anymore, so 3 skulls "loses some if its value".
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I thought the game was over when either all monuments were built or when a player reaches five developments.
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