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Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze AgeList Price: $34.95
 
from 3 customer reviews
Product Awards:
Games Magazine Awards
Best Family Game, 2010
Spiel des Jahres
Nominee, 2010
The Dice Tower Awards
Best Family Game Nominee, 2009
International Gamers Awards
Multi-Player Nominee, 2009
Designer(s):
Manufacturer(s):
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Build a thriving civilization -- in under an hour! Collect goods, assign workers to build cities and erect monuments, advance your civilization through cultural and scientific developments, but don't forget to harvest enough food to feed your growing population.
Grab those dice and Roll Through the Ages! in this addictive and strategic new game from Matt Leacock, the designer of the incredibly popular Pandemic. Roll Through the Ages plays in 30-45 minutes. The game is for 1-4 players, ages 8 and up.
I played this game last weekend and absolutely loved it. It is a well- thought-out and laid-out game. Everything is literally at your fingertips and you don't have a problem learning it in about five to ten minutes. It involves building a civilization with dice - wonderful!. There are some areas in the game that need to be tweaked a little in my opinion, though. For example the game can end if one player buys five developments. I thought this made the game end too quick. I also thought this made the strategy go to buying developments as quick as you can because you would usually would win because of this. Maybe if this rule was taken out and have it that the game ended only when all players have built all the monuments collectively the game would be a little longer and the strategy might change. Overall I liked the game and think it is probably the best dice game I have ever played (certainly better than Zombie Dice).
For the simplicity that a Dice game needs to be playable in a short time (that's why we play dice games, right?) this game does an amazing and subtle job of capturing the rise and fall of civilizations.
Here's one of my favorite mechanics -- the relationship between trade and calamities/disease. If you just get a "trade" result then you only get one amphora symbol (so not much trade), but if you get a SKULL result, then you get TWO amphoras (lots of trade). One SKULL by itself is actually harmless, but then two is kind of a bad result. It's great subtlety that the more trade you do with other peoples, the more you're vulnerable to famine/invasion/etc! And even more fun is the guns/germs/steel reference of... if you manage to get EXACTLY THREE skulls, you spread disease to your opponents rather than yourself!
Meanwhile you're trying to get enough food to feed all your cities (one city equals one die roll per turn), and deciding whether to allocate your workers to more cities (expanded economy) or wonders of the world (more victory points right now). And there's a wonder race in the sense that the first person who builds each wonder scores double.
And finally all your trading goes towards buying technologies which of course slightly change the rules just for you.
I love this game, and play it with both hardcore gamers and my wife & kids.
Brian Reynolds
Roll Through the Ages is a dice game, so if you are opposed to such games, stop reading now. I enjoy dice games occasionally, but they’re not my favorites. This particular game has quite a bit to offer though, and I think it will see a great deal of play at home with my family as well as with my local gaming group.
The game was designed by Matt Leacock, who some may recognize as the designer of Pandemic. One of the first things you notice about Roll Through the Ages is that the publisher, Gryphon Games, used a huge amount of wood. I swear the box might as well be solid wood. The dice are wood. The scoreboards are wood with holes for wooden pegs.
The goal of the game is to be the first to build up your civilization by developing your infrastructure with new technologies while you create monuments to your glory. Your possibilities for each die are:
Skulls aren’t good, they just come with a couple of goods so you don’t feel so bad. You can re-roll any die or group of dice up to two times, but you may not re-roll skulls.
The number of dice rolled is determined by the number of cities you control. You build more cities by accumulating people, then you roll more dice. However, the more cities you control, the more you have to feed the people in the cities, so you have to keep rolling for food as well, or your people starve! Money allows you to buy developments which protect you from the effects of skulls or give you bonuses on rolls. Accumulating goods allow you to sell them for more money. Skulls are generally bad, and will create problems for your civilization, like plagues, invasions, and other disasters. Skulls may also affect your opponents civilizations.
A game typically takes about half an hour, and you get enough chunks of wood to play with up to four players. Roll Through the Ages is a great game and may just scratch a little bit of your Civilization itch. It may seem a like a lot to pay for a dice game, but good grief, the thing is beautiful and weighs a ton. Happy gaming!
