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Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers
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Description
In Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers, players use eight symbol dice to develop their province, gather goods, and sell them at the market; win over influential personalities in the palace; and sail up and down the Ganges River.
As in the original game, you win this race for wealth and fame if you are the first to have your fame marker and your money marker intersect on the two tracks running in opposite directions.
A 3D Dice Holding Elephant? I’m In!
Haha okay so there’s way more to Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers than a jubby jumbo. But it’s definitely an eye-catching bit of kit!
If you aren’t aware, Rajas of the Ganges is a popular dice worker placement game with a very pretty setting. The Dice Charmers takes the core dual track (wealth and fame) element of that OG gameplay and mixes it into a puzzly, roll and write which has stayed in our list of favourite games since we got it back in 2021.
I won’t cover the set up and gameplay in detail here as there’s a separate How to Play tab which will take you through the basic steps of a round. But essentially, Dice Charmers is a good old-fashioned race. And each round, you will be checking off boxes and trying to maximise both your wealth and your fame so that you can be the first player to have your wealth and fame tracks overlap. Why? Well, you do want to be crowned the Righteous Raja don’t you?
Combotastic Crossing
I know there are a lot of games out there that let you trigger multiple things on a turn. But this is a combotastic game that will have you chaining actions together like a BOSS! One turn can rain bonuses down upon you like nothing you have ever experienced. And ultimately that’s a good thing because you will need all the extra actions you can get! You see, this is a game where you want to do everything, but you can’t. Because you only get to pick 1 (or 2 if 2P) dice per round. So finding ways to maximise what you can access, unlock, trigger, and convert into money and wealth every single turn is essential! And you can’t blame anyone else if you don’t. Well, you could grump at an opponent for taking the die type you wanted. But it’s mainly multiplayer solitaire, and you can karma dice back into the fold. So whose fault is it really? Hmmmm? Haha
Residence, River Or Royal Favours?
With the sheet separated into different areas, Dice Charmers feels like it has a number of different placement optimisation puzzles going on. But ultimately, they all feed into each other. You need to connect roads to trigger sales at the market and building bonuses. But to make use of the markets, you need to have collected goods first, so you can’t ignore the purple die. Palace aficionados can help you along your way, but there are only so many favours they are prepared to give. And the river has some jubby stuff sailing by, but do you need that right now? Could some money or a T road trigger the next chain of moves that could push your tracks along to that sweet victory laden intersection? The choice is yours, my friend. And if you don’t make the most of it? Well, it’s no money mo problems for you!
Final Thoughts
Hands down, we love Rajas – Dice Charmers. The ability to turn 1 action into a chain reaction of box crossing fever is such a satisfying feeling. It makes us feel smart and (dare I say it) some of us quite smug! When it happens to you, that is. When it doesn’t and you’re left watching you opponent(s) whizzing around their sheet like a paper pinball it can be teeth gnashingly green-eyed monster time. But with so many ways to score, fear not as you won’t be left waiting for long.
The fact that almost every main action provides additional bonuses after triggering it multiple times is another nice touch. And everyone loves a game where you feel like you’re getting stuff. And not just any stuff. But the good stuff. The stuff that will let you score money and fame from all sorts of sources.. And, whilst you might think it doesn’t matter what you do as you’ll get money and fame somehow. It absolutely does. This isn’t a cakewalk. You’ve got to strategise from the first die pick to the last! You need to work those actions to make them pay off in multiple ways. And that’s particularly true because you need to pay attention to both tracks. Going hard on money or fame is a strategy. But ultimately you need the two to meet. And meet by a big overlap if possible. Because when everybody takes their final turn in this race for renown and riches, somebody might just make their last move count in the crossing off department!
Having two sides of the board is also cool. There’s no need to learn any new rules (phew!). It just shakes up the in-track bonuses a little which shapes the rest of your box-crossing capers in a slightly different way. And not that Rajas needed any help on the replayability front – the variability that comes from the drafting sees to a different set of decisions each time you play – having a second board feels like the publishers left no opportunity wasted. Which is awesome.
When we don’t have time for a Hadrian’s Wall epic experience but we want the same satisfying feeling, Dice Charmers is one that hits the table before most of the others. It’s colourful, easy to learn, and we never tire of chasing those tracks!
Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers is one of the most combotastic roll and write games we own. Seriously, one turn can take days……haah only kidding! But it can definitely take a few minutes to complete your chain of box crossing goodness. And there is nothing more satisfying than turning 1 action into 4, 5 or more!
Good thing too as you’ll need to if you want the money and the fame you need to win the game! SO how do you become a box crossing boss? Read on to find out!
Set Up
This game has minimal set up (once you have assembled the 3D dice holding jubby jumbo elephant (oh yeah, there’s one of those!).
Give each player a sheet (daytime or night-time – they work identically but there are a few track bonus differences) having chosen which side to play, and a pencil. Each player also gets a dice depot tile. Having assembled the elephant, place that and the 8 gorgeous custom dice on the table. There are two of each colour showing posh palace folk (orange), road sections (green), market goodies (purple), and/or river icons (blue).
Roll Up
Each round, the active player rolls all 8 dice and picks one to activate on their turn. The matching colour die goes up on the back of the elephant which means it is also unavailable for other players to use that round.
Then in clockwise order, every other player selects a die from those remaining and performs the action(s) their chosen die triggers.
If any action(s) grant you wealth or fame, you immediately cross off the next available space on the relevant track. And remember to check the tracks themselves for bonuses too!
Note that if you have some Karma stored up (one of the bonuses to collect as you go through the game), before selecting a die, you can spend it to re-roll the dice stored on the elephant as well as one unused die from the pool. The unused one goes back up on the elephant until the end of the round.
Note also that 2Player mode is a little different – in that instance, the active player chooses 2 dice per round so you alternate picking until each player has taken two. There are also a few other minor tweaks regarding karma and end game scoring but I’ll let you discover those!).
The dice in Rajas do different things to the various sections of your sheet:
Purple – these give you 2 goods (tea, silk and/or spices) to sell at the markets located in your province. In order to sell goods to make money and rocket up the wealth track, however, you need to have collected them first.
Green – these are sections of the routes you will take through your province to trigger bonuses – you must connect your residence to various buildings and bonus actions including markets where you can sell up to 3 goods you have previously collected, and upgrades that will allow you to collect more fame every time you connect a new building! And you can only connect new road sections to either your residence or an existing road. Note that one single half road section can’t be used to pass into a new province square.
Orange – these influential palace folk each offer favours like selling goods, sailing on the river, drawing half road sections in your province etc. which you then use as immediate actions (there’s even one that allows you to trigger another palace dweller!); and
Blue – the river track is another way to trigger bonus actions, and the bonus you get to use elsewhere on the sheet is that shown in the next unoccupied space.
Crossed Paths
The game of Rajas continues with players picking dice each round until someone’s fame and wealth tracks cross over. At that point, all other players finish their turn for that round and then it’s track tracking time! If more than one player’s tracks have crossed over by the end, the true winner is the one with the biggest overlap between their money and their fame!
I hope this quick guide helps you through the main elements of your first game of Rajas and gives you a flavour of the flow. There are quite a few icons to familiarise yourself with (which I can’t cover here), but rules booklet is very thorough. As such, if you have any queries over a particular action, head there for all the details!
Zatu Score
You might like
- Simple rules and super satisfying play
- Gorgeous components
- Works really well at 2P
Might not like
- No solo mode