Washington D6 - building the city one die at a time

GenCan't Roll and Write Library - Washington D6 

Washington D6 isn't so much a game as it is a collection of mini games. However, you are playing all of them at the same time. In the game, you are renovating the different monuments in Washington DC but they all have different requirements.

Washington D6 was a finalist in the GenCan't Roll and Write Contest, which means it's a free print and play game. All you have to do to make it is print out the two pages and add dice and a pencil. It is also a solitaire game and I really can't think of an effective way of making it multiplayer.

You need six dice to play the game. One red, two white, and three blue. In addition to being a cute thematic touch, most of the monuments have specific color requirements. For instance, the White House is going to only use white dice. It is a nice but simple way of tying the mechanics to the theme.

And the mechanics are pretty darn simple. You have sixty square boxes, which stand for work days. You check one off every time you roll all the days and each time you make a reroll. 

There are sixteen number of circle boxes and eight number of star boxes, representing overtime and holiday. They allow you to do different dice manipulations at the cost of points. Mechanically, they are the same. However, you lose more points for using holidays.

Roll the dice, perform any rerolls and manipulations you feel like and assign dice to the different monuments. For each left over dice (and near the end of the game, you are going to have some), check off another square box.

After you have used all the square boxes, the game is over. Complete monuments are worth twenty points per space, incomplete ones are worth ten per completed space and negative five per incomplete space. Some monuments have possible bonus points and you lose points for overtime and holiday use (and you are going to use them) A winning score is at least 1776 points.

Okay, the real stars of this games are the monuments. Every one is different, it's own little mini-game. I'm not going into each one because then I'm just repeating all the rules. But they are all distinct and many of them make interesting use of color of dice. And they do a good job reflecting the monuments they are based on.

I'm genuinely impressed at how integrated the theme is with the mechanics. For a game that's two pieces of paper, some dice and some Yahtzee, that's pretty impressive.

I've had fun with Washington D6. It's not perfect. I'll be honest, I like my solitaire dice games on the short side and it was a bit long for my tastes. However, it is a very clean design with a lot of theme. Good show.