Dan Drontle
United States
Saint Paul
Minnesota
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When I was a child, there were several games that I enjoyed playing that I would not enjoy playing now. One of those games was Yahtzee. While I don't necessarily want to play Yahtzee, I still enjoy a good dicefest from time to time.
Alea Iacta Est fills that void for me. Although I have no evidence to back it up, I'm still pretty sure that the game designer played Yahtzee as a child and decided to make a clever game out of it.
The game consists of 40 six-sided dice in 5 different colors, 5 different buildings, and some chits and cards. The components aren't spectacular, but they are, for the most part, functional. (Although the senate cards have a frustrating lack of information on them, which requires players to look at the cheat sheet until they've memorized them.)
Each round, players take turns rolling their dice and placing them legally onto one of the buildings (each building has different requirements for placing dice there: the Castrum requires sets and the Senatus requires runs, for example).
Players continue to go around the table taking turns rolling their remaining dice and placing them until one player uses up all of their dice. Each player that has not had a turn at rolling gets one last turn and then the buildings are scored. Unused dice are placed in the Latrina. Each building gives a different benefit, but most of the benefits in this game are victory points. The exception is the Latrina, which gives players dice re-roll tokens.
Repeat this for 5-6 rounds (depending on the number of players) and you are done.
The theme is somewhat thin in this game, but that's true of many Eurogames that I've enjoyed.
What I like about this game is the player interaction and decision-making required. Each building will only give out a certain number of victory points each round. For example, in the Castrum, players are rewarded providences which are worth victory points. However, there is only one providence for each player in the game. (In a 5 player game, there are 5 providences available each round.) So, if there are 6 or more sets in the Castrum, some players won't get anything. Also, some providences are worth more than others. If you want a good providence, you should put more dice into the Castrum because the person with the longest set will get first choice of providence.
However, if you put a lot of dice into the Castrum, you have less dice to place into other buildings, which can also earn victory points.
Finally, you have to figure out how quickly you want to place dice into buildings. Ideally, you'd like to place some of your dice into as many buildings as possible, but that takes time because you can only place in one building per turn. And if someone ends the round early by placing a large number of dice into one building, you might be stuck with a lot of unused dice.
In spite of all these decisions, this game tends to move quickly with little analysis paralysis because the dice often constrain what choices players have. At the same time, because players start with 8 dice, and because it is easy to get re-roll tokens in this game, players should rarely have the game completely ruined for them by the dice.
Overall, I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a light, but still strategic, game.
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Jeffrey Allers
Germany
Berlin
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Thanks for the great review, and I'm happy to hear you like the game!
crazypumaman wrote: Although I have no evidence to back it up, I'm still pretty sure that the game designer played Yahtzee as a child and decided to make a clever game out of it.
Believe it or not, I have never played Yahtzee. I was actually inspired by a game design contest in which I could only use dice and normal playing cards:
http://berlingamedesign.blogspot.com/2009/03/prototype2publi...
I don't mind the comparison at all, however, and am glad you found a dice game that you enjoy playing now!
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Paul Harmon
United States
Rochester
New York
The ultimate in Co-op Gaming.
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I placed an order for this at the beginning of the week (just shipped yesterday) The game looked great for my family gaming unit and as a fan of resource/Worker euros and Dice euros this looks to be one ill enjoy.
Of course I dont know that FOR SURE but since I already bought it The Die is Cast...
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