I went back to Board Game Arena for the first time in a long while in order to get in some different games for Dicember. Mind you, what it really meant was that I binged Jump Drive but I noticed some quick and dirty fife games has been added since I was last on the sites
Here’s my thoughts on the first few I tried.
Road to 300 looks and feels like a game that was designed on a spreadsheet. Which isn’t a knock or necessarily a bad thing. However, it does lead to very dry and abstract games.
You use three dice to move around a grid and to block off squares. It’s very simple and most of the decisions are obvious. The best thing I can say for it is that it’s inoffensive. Which sounds pretty weak but does put it above the other two games I initially tried.
Pentaquest is a deck of cards with monster artwork that looks like it’s from a 1970s Dungeons and Dragons supplement (Which I do like) and each one has a Yahtzee scoring goal. Roll five dice, get one reroll and collect a card that qualifies.
Here’s the problem. In the first couple turns, it’s pretty easy to not be able to get a card and automatically lose. But you can discard cards you win for various dice manipulation powers. If you get a few turns in, the game gets dramatically easier. To the point where it’s boring.
Inverse Dice is a simplified Yahtzee scoresheet where you are scoring the die faces you DON’T roll. For instance, rolling 2-2-4-5-6 would let you score the four box since you didn’t roll a 1 and 3.
Inverse Dice is aggressively, perhaps even offensively, counter intuitive. Counting the numbers that aren’t there just isn’t how human brains work. The game felt frustrating but without the numbers that weren’t there, it would be nothing but a dumbed down Yahtzee.
I think Inverse Dice does do something interesting but I don’t feel rewarded gojng through with the experience.
Honestly, this reminded me of one of the things that makes Board Game Arena so useful. It gives you a chance to try out games you gave no idea about.
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