Dice City is a “dice-crafting” game, where the locations in your city act as the changing faces of your dice each turn. Use tactics and strategy to press your claim! Dice Tower Review. A game overview and review by Tom Vasel 10:48. User Reviews (1). Grow Your Village! Provide for the economic, cultural, and spiritual needs of your citizens and create a vibrant and growing village. Will you build a large military and defeat bandits?
Dice. City. Two little four-letter words that tell you almost everything you need to know when looking at it for the first time. “Dice City”, as you probably figured out by now, is a dice rolling game to where the dice values indicate which buildings within your city will activate (similar to “Machi Koro“). What’s different here is that the buildings are laid out on a grid and can be replaced with other buildings one may purchase from the supply. Besides gathering resources and gaining victory points, you can attack other players and lock out their buildings. I’m a sucker for city-builders so this was a must-grab for me, but did I like it enough to come back to it again? Keep reading to find out!
Dice City: 1-4 Players, Ages 14+, Average Play Time = 45 Minutes
Components
The game includes 4 Player Boards (6×5 grid, numbers 1-6 on the X-axis and five colors on the Y-axis), 45 Resource Harvest Locations, 15 Regular Army Cards, 60 Location Cards, 18 Bandit Cards, 11 Trade Ship Cards, 30 Resource Tokens, 16 Deactivation Tokens, 1 Start Player Token, VP Tokens, 16 Pass Tokens, 20 Dice (4 of each of the 5 colors – white, yellow, red, blue, and black)
Setup & Gameplay
There’s an entire page devoted to game setup in the manual, so I’ll opt to offer the hi-lites. Essentially, each player receives a board and five dice (one of each color). The lumber mill, quarry, mine, and regular army cards are stacked into their own piles and the rest of the location cards are shuffled to form a face-down draw deck (eight are drawn face-up to form the supply). The bandits and trade ship cards are set up into their own piles by VP. The tokens are separated and form a supply. Lastly, each player rolls their dice and assigns them to their player board by color and number. For example, if you roll a three on a blue die, then find the coordinate on the board where the blue row and three column intersect. Whoever last rolled a die in any game prior to this one gets the first player token.
How to overcome gambling. On a player’s turn, they’ll observe the following steps:
1. Use Dice Step – With each die, the active player can take one of the following actions:
- Use the location beneath the die and resolve its ability.
- Move another die to an adjacent space on that die’s own row.
- Discard four of the location cards in the display that are available to build and reveal four new ones. Important: You may only take this action once per turn.
- Reactivate a deactivated location anywhere in your city.
- Pass and gain a pass token. Important: You may only take this action once per turn.
In addition to using dice, the active player may also spend two pass tokens to take one of the following actions (as many times as you have the two pass tokens to do so):
- Gain one resource of your choice
- Increase your army strength by +1 for the turn.
- Force all other players to re-roll one of their dice of your choice (this happens in clockwise order starting from your left).
- After you use each die, remove it from the location and place it to the side of your player board.
2. Attack Step – Attack bandits, locations, or stock via the calculated army strength. The active player’s army strength is good for that turn only. You can split your attack if you have enough army strength to do attack multiple targets, though your army strength is spent as it is used. Each location/bandit card has a defense value and your army strength must be equal to or greater in order to successfully attack it. Taking from another player’s stock requires two army strength.
3. Building & Trade Step – The active player may purchase buildings and place it on their board, covering up the building behind it. Alternatively, they use the trade ship to export goods for VP.
4. End of Turn Step – The active player may store one of each resource in their stock (the rest are returned). Then, they’ll roll all dice and assign them to their board for their next turn.
Player’s continue taking turns until:
- All of the cards have been taken from all three of the bandits piles.
- All of the cards have been taken on two or more trade ship piles.
- The location deck runs out of cards.
- Two or more rows in a player’s city have been filled with built locations and none of them have any deactivation tokens (optional — the player that meets this condition chooses if he or she wishes the game to end or not).
When one of the conditions is met, the players continue until everyone has had an equal number of turns.
When the final round ends, each player counts the VP tokens they have in front of them and the VP from the trade ship and bandits cards they have taken, and adds the VP values of all the locations in their city, both active and deactivated. Locations that have been discarded by building other locations on top of them are not considered to be part of the city any more so they do not count towards scoring. The player with the most VP, wins!
Editor’s Note: The above doesn’t cover all of the rules found in the manual, but should give you an idea as to how the game is played. Dice table game.
The Review
“Dice City” hits that “not too difficult but not too easy” sweet spot with me, making it a game I’ll be coming back to as time permits. I just love how many options one has at any one time in the game, regardless of your strategy. For example, you could opt to go a military route and cover up resource generating locations with military structures. It might sound like it would be a simple “Hulk Smash” scenario once you get that established, but you still have the option of going after bandits or shutting down/stealing your opponent’s locations/resources. Alternatively, you could cover up the existing military spaces with more economic buildings in the hopes of easily nabbing those trade ships with an influx of resources. Of course, a mix of the two is more than viable.
Getting back to that options bit, the dice are not always going to give you the values you want at any point in time. While it may seem a bit harsh that you have a one in six chance of rolling the space you want on a colored row, you do have the option of moving dice by giving up other dice. This makes the one and six spaces a little less popular for the structures you want to hit on a regular basis. If you want to roll a three for example, you could roll a two or four and only have to give up one die to move it. The one and six don’t have a value on the other side of them, making them a bit harder to roll onto. It’s all a matter of odds really, but the moving dice thing really makes me feel like I have more control over the dice after I roll them.
“Dice City” is fantastic, plain and simple. I love the way everything comes together and the components are both colorful and eye-pleasing. It’s “Machi Koro”, but taken to a whole new level and then some. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some “Machi Koro”, but folks who want more of a punch would do well to check out this dice rolling city builder.
Final Verdict: 9/10
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Dice City is a dice-driven (surprise!) resource management and city building game for one to four players, designed by Vangelis Bagiartakis. Game length can vary as there are several ways for it to end, but it tends to take around an hour.
The game is listed as 14+. I have no idea why – I can only presume it’s something to do with laws about components. I’m sure your average 10-year-old would be fine with it in terms of complexity.
Each turn players roll their own set of dice and place them on their city board, which is set out as a grid (numbers and colours matching the dice). They then use these dice to improve the buildings in their city or to otherwise earn themselves victory points.
The art is cutesy and won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but it’s well executed throughout. There are four large player boards, 20 dice, 70+ cardboard tokens and more than 150 small-sized cards. The components are solid throughout, making Dice City pretty good value for its sub £30 price tag.
Teaching
Dice City Review
Gamers well versed in standard tableau building, worker placement and resource management mechanisms will find nothing to worry them here in terms of complexity.
![City City](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wn-g4F5eHbI/hqdefault.jpg)
While not quite a family game I can see Dice City fitting into the ‘gateway’ category, as you tend to have pretty limited choices each round and the depth of difference in the actions you play is relatively limited. There is also no hidden elements other than some of your scored points, so it’s easy to walk less experienced players through the early rounds.
Your individual player city is laid out in a 6×5 grid – you have different coloured six-sided dice, so once you roll them they have clearly defined spaces on which to put them. Each space represents a building and these variously give you resources (for building new buildings), military strength (for combat) or straight victory points.
You can just use each dice where it lands – or you can spend dice to move other ones to adjacent spaces which may be more useful to your current plans (as well as for a few other standard mitigation actions). You then get to claim points and put any new buildings over spaces on your original board, allowing you to improve the odds of rolling the things you want for your chosen strategy.
You need to make it clear that keeping an eye on other players’ boards is often crucial, as when a player has filled two of their rows with new cards the game will end (there are other ways, but this has been the most common with us).
If you’re planning a convoluted ‘engine’ strategy, for example, it pays to make sure someone else isn’t hurtling towards a quick-fire low scoring military coup…
The four sides
These are me, plus three fictitious players drawn from observing my friends and their respective quirks and play styles.
- The writer: Dice City is a solid gateway-style game for would-be city builders. Much like Lords of Waterdeep is to worker placement, it takes all the ‘101’ components from the tableau building toolbox and rearranges them with a light, friendly sheen. The point scoring balance between strategies seems tight and if you’re in the market for a light game of this style you’re unlikely to be disappointed – but nor are you likely to be wowed. It simply does what it says on the tin.
- The thinker: Have we really not moved on from rolling a six-sided dice and hoping for the best, especially in a civ building game? Every modicum of control I may want is either brought to me by a lucky roll or, the opposite – having to waste a dice to get what I want. Here, fortune favours the fortunate – and I will consider myself such if I never have to play this game again. There is nothing here for the serious strategist.
- The trasher: I love me some dice rolling and player interaction and Dice City has plenty of both; so why do I find myself unsatisfied? Taking the combat route can be quick and dirty, as in Race for the Galaxy or Deus, and you even get the chance to damage opponents’ buildings while still getting (slightly less) points – forcing them to spend a dice to repair them if they want to use them again. But your turns are so basic it renders the game boring, as you spend most of it watching others build up their clever engines while you lightly annoy them. It left me a little cold, and bored.
- The dabbler: I enjoyed Dice City. There are plenty of decisions and while you can get a bit screwed on luck you know that when you go in – it’s a dice game, right?! The art is light and colourful, like the game, and while you can have your buildings attacked it’s not devastating – and you can build your defences up if you want to. The icons are clear and people tend to pick it up quickly, while there is enough variety in the different buildings to stop it from getting boring. Thumbs up!
Key observations
Dice City is random. You can buy great buildings and never hit them, while your opponents hit them every time. If this is a problem for you, see the MASSIVE clue in the title. Again – this game is random. You’ve been warned.
Dice City Board Game Review
It is also a bit of a table hog. With four players, on a 5x3ft table, every inch of space was used and two of us had to have our boards at a right angle. Not a problem for most, but worth mentioning.
Even with a big table, four players is too many. If a few people are doing some serious resource conversion on their turns the downtime is pretty painful and it’s hard to focus on one other player’s board, let alone three (remember each player has 30 spaces for small card buildings on their board). Two and three is manageable.
Even with three though, downtime can be an issue if you’re not rolling well or doing much in the way of resource manipulation. After the initial five or six turns a potentially winning military strategy could largely turn to dealing damage – which is often a simple “I hit X for X damage” and that’s it. If the next player is turning X into Y to get Z, then turning Z into P and caring the Q things can get boring for you fast. And you know it will be your AP friend who will be lured in by the more complex cards…
The solo variant is pretty good, forcing you to try and score as many points as possible in a limited number of rounds and where the cards are being cycled through quickly. The basic game isn’t a challenge, but the harder version was enjoyable and if solo gaming is your thing – and you like the genre – Dice City is well worth a look.
Conclusion
For me, as a self-confessed gamer, Dice City is a very ordinary game. As a fan of Race for the Galaxy and Deus I have no desire to play this over those ever again.
Dice City Game Review
But I would, of course. If I was often in groups where gateway games were required, then this would be a reasonable choice to get across some of the more complex terms used in the wider hobby gaming world. I can handle a bit of random and, with the exception of some downtime, I didn’t hate my experiences with it at all. But I also didn’t care.
Everyone in our group agreed that something was missing. Despite nice art and components, the game lacks a soul. It doesn’t tell a story, it has no real personality and never feels exciting to play. In a time when 1,000 games are coming out each year, what does this offer? It doesn’t ooze theme or bring any original concepts to the party – it is a simple rearranging of the tool box. Sadly, it simply doesn’t do enough.