Dice Settlers Review
Image: NSKN Games/Board & Dice
INTRODUCTION
To me, few board game designers have managed to carve a name for themselves the way Dávid Turczi has. I rarely indulge in the act of automatically acquiring a game based solely on the credited designer, however I must admit that seeing the name on the box cover immediately piques my interest to take a closer look at the game in general and especially the solo mode. Such is the case with Dice Settlers from publisher Board & Dice, a dice bag-building game of area control and resource management for 1 – 4 players. Has Dávid Turczi managed to design yet another interactive, rewarding solitary board game experience? Let us find out.
Full disclosure: a review copy of Dice Settlers was kindly provided by publisher Board & Dice.
COMPONENTS
I have been a huge admirer of the creative output by artist Mihajlo “The Mico” Dimitrievski ever since the first time I sat down to play Raiders of the North Sea. However, in the case of Dice Settlers I find myself torn regarding my feelings of both the art and graphical design that is on display. Take for example the individual player boards. Although they present each available action in a clear and precise manner, which facilitates the process of learning and playing the game, the sheer size of the boards makes them enormous when compared to the hexagon shaped map tiles that are in fact bordering on being too small. Taking into consideration the caveat that art is most definitely subjective and to a great extent a matter of personal taste, the overall look of Dice Settlers could best be described as uninspiring. In my opinion, Mihajlo Dimitrievski is an incredibly talented artist whose illustrations deserves to be front and centre. It is therefore somewhat ironic that the most interesting and beautiful illustrations in Dice Settlers are the ones featured on the card backs of the technology cards, which is a crying shame considering the fact that you hardly ever notice them as a result of the card tableau being face-up throughout the course of the game…
The iconic character art that The Mico is known far does unfortunately not get the attention it deserves in Dice Settlers. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
Thankfully there are several positive aspects of the components featured in Dice Settlers that are worth emphasizing starting with the stars of the show: the dice which look and feel absolutely amazing, similar to those featured in the Too Many Bones series of board games from publisher Chip Theory Games. Not only are the dice draped in vibrant colours, they are also easy to assess thanks to the use of crisp and clear iconography. As someone who loves dice-based games it is hardly surprising that I thoroughly enjoy the tactile sensation derived from playing Dice Settlers. And even though I wish that the tents had been represented by anything else than a simple wooden cube I do enjoy the larger house shaped tokens used to denote a permanent settlement on a map tile.
OVERVIEW
Beyond the horizon lies the New World, an uncharted land filled with opportunity and riches for you and your kin to explore. With a plot of land and a handful of starting resources you set out to stake your claim with the goal of establishing a secure and prospering settlement. But be on your guard, for you are not alone on this endeavour as other settlers will attempt to expand their own domain and possibly even threaten yours. Go forth into the world and become a Dice Settler.
As one might assume, and rightly so given the title of the game in question, in Dice Settlers players will collect and roll these cube shaped instruments of fate in order to perform various actions at their disposal with the ultimate goal of becoming the most successful prospector of the New World. Throughout the course of the game you will gather resources, explore new territories, build settlements, and even take over areas of the map by force through raids targeted at opposing players. Based solely on this brief description one could make the argument that Dice Settlers to a certain extent fits the mould of game design known as 4X, a term which some might say originates from the world of strategy-based computer games like Sid Meier’s Civilization or Space Empires and refers to the four cornerstones expand, explore, exploit and exterminate. However, the thing that separates Dice Settlers from the rest of the pack is how the game manages to transform the random act of rolling dice into a strategical and coherent gaming experience.
Each die represents people you can recruit for their unique skills and abilities, ranging from trading to raiding. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
At the start of the game each player will have a collection of five dice, allowing them to perform the more rudimentary actions such as explore or build settlements. Over the course of the game, players will add new and more powerful dice to their bag of holding which are drawn at the start of each round essentially expanding their range of opportunities. The actual dice represents people that can be recruited to join your expedition; experienced frontiersmen, merchants and craftsmen who lend their expertise and unique skillset which is needed to perform additional actions. There are five different categories of dice to choose from, each geared towards a particular aspect of the game design. For example, the yellow dice feature the lantern symbol needed to research technology cards whereas the grey equivalent is instead more concentrated towards raiding other settlements. But these dice are not simply up for grabs, instead they come with a prerequisite which stipulates that in order to recruit i.e. add a particular die to the bag you need to have presence in the form of settlements on a map tile that matches the colour of the chosen die. This design choice is really interesting, as it transforms the act of adding new map tiles to the ever-evolving central board from being perceived as a trivial task to an absolute necessity which subsequently creates a very dynamic and evolving game state. In terms of mechanisms, what Dávid Turczi has designed is a board game that neither encourages nor rewards the act of turtling, where exerting dominance over certain map tiles is a vital part of the overall strategy.
But as any board game designer worth their salt will tell you, the act of managing the quantity of your bag is a double-edged sword. Whether you are focusing on one particular action or adhere to the old saying “Jack of all trades, master of none”, at some point during the game you will most likely find yourself in a situation where the contents of your dice bag is disproportionate to the task at hand. Dice Settlers addresses this issue by allowing players to influence the dice they have rolled at the start of a round, albeit at a rather considerable cost. In order to circumvent the sway of Lady Luck and turn the table to their favour, players can opt to spend a die in order to either re-roll a select number of dice alternatively draw additional dice from their bag and add to their active pool for the current round. There is also the option of choosing an active die and setting it to any other face value. And as luck would have it, the dice that are most suited for these acts of manipulation happens to be the ones you start off with making them a valuable asset throughout the course of the entire game and not just as a steppingstone in the earlier rounds.
Over the course of the game, the central play area will expand as players discover new territories and establish colonies. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
Although the dice are undoubtedly the stars of the show both in terms of visual appeal and how they constitute the core game mechanism, another element that makes Dice Settlers such an interesting piece of board game design are the Technology cards. Much like the dice, the various technologies and their effects are categorised based on colour coding. For example, green technology cards tend to provide abilities that have an impact on the act of adding new map tiles to the central display or allowing the player who researched the card in question to make better use of the icons on their starting dice. Meanwhile, the red technology cards have a significantly higher cost associated with them in terms of number of lantern symbols and resources but in return provide opportunities to score additional victory points at the end of the game. The fact that Dice Settlers includes more than 50 technology cards and present players with the option to either draw them at random or play with one of the premade sets makes for a game with ample amount of replay-ability. The game even comes with a mini-expansion out of the box called “Explosive technologies” which adds a new type of technology card marked with the grey seal that can be used either for end-of-game points or one-shot instant effects which spices up the variation even further.
THE SOLO MODE
One reason for my interest in Dice Settlers originates from the fact that the game was designed from the ground up by Dávid Turczi, undoubtedly one of the most prominent and prolific individuals within the solo board gaming community. It has been my experience that he tends to design solo modes and neutral opponents that lean more towards interlocking mechanisms and interacting with the human player, as opposed to the creative work of the Automa Factory where the hallmark of a solo mode is streamlining. As is the case with previous design work by Turczi like Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest and Petrichor, the solo mode in Dice Settlers focuses on creating a high degree of interaction between you as the solitary player versus the artificial opponent known as Diceoneer which is something of a mouthful when it comes to the fine art of labelling neutral players.
Much like yourself, the bot in Dice Settlers will try to perform the same set of available actions albeit in a slightly modified modus operandi compared to its human counterpart. At the centre of the solo mode, literally and figuratively, is the Action hex which is used to determine what specific type of actions the artificial opponent will attempt to perform and also to what degree of in-game power it applies. At the start of each round, based on the sum of its dice pool the bot will roll a set number of dice which are then distributed around the hex based on the icons showing. Each Pioneer icon is considered “wild”, allocated to action spaces around the hex that are currently empty alternatively containing the least amount of dice, a similar principle applies to when the bot rolls a resource icon. In theory this sounds simple enough but in practice I had a devil of a time trying to remember the nuances to this particular step of managing the solo mode. Counting the number of available hexes, then cross-referencing to the amount of available actions, then checking for tie-breakers dictated where the action marker currently is situated on the hex… Again, this aspect of managing the Diceoneer should not feel this complicated and to its defence the rulebook does an admirable job of providing clear examples of how to resolve the roll phase but my brain still finds the process somewhat “fiddly” for a lack of a better description.
The Action Hex dictates which action the bot will perform on its turn. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
However, once you have overcome this intellectual hurdle of sorts you are then treated to a really enjoyable solo board game experience. On the bot’s turn you roll a custom six-sided die ranging from 1 to 4 in value which indicates the number of steps the arrow shaped action marker moves clockwise around the hex. Each resource token or die present at a location counts as step, meaning that action spaces currently containing a larger allocation of dice and/or tokens is more likely to trigger and also indicates to what strength the bot performs said action. It takes a couple of rounds to completely internalise how to execute the bot’s actions seeing that there are some nuances that needs to be taken into consideration, but overall I have to say that the experience of playing Dice Settlers solo is surprisingly smooth whilst simultaneously providing a high degree of interaction with the neutral player. I do have one negative point to address regarding the overall randomness which entails a dice-based game, specifically the technology cards. Although it never benefits from the effects of a card, the Diceoneer still must adhere to the requirements of having enough lantern symbols, presence on specified map tiles and also any additional costs in the form of paying resources. Depending on the composition of the technology card market and also the dice rolls, there have been several instances where the bot ends up at a non-trivial disadvantage as a result of not being able to place markers on technology cards.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In many ways I find Dice Settlers to be something of a strange beast. On the one hand, playing the game instils me with a sense of familiarity regarding how the design approaches several of the board game tropes of resource gathering, action selection and interlocking mechanisms. Anyone who has played a modern Euro board game worthy of its salt will undoubtedly experience a sense of déjà vu when sitting down at the table to play Dice Settlers. And yet, there is something intangible about how all of the pieces fit together which ultimately makes for a solo experience that is as interesting as it is cohesive. Nothing about Dice Settlers comes off as earth-shattering and yet everything just… works and quite elegantly I might add. That being said, having played the game in excess of ten times solitary I do wonder as to the longevity of Dice Settlers in terms of its novel implementation of dice. Fortunately, publisher Board & Dice has released an expansion titled Western Sea which adds several new modules to the base game. I for one am really interested in exploring this expansion further to see which direction Dávid Turczi takes this design.
