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We have all been there, sometimes you desperately want to play a big game, but you simply do not have the time, space or energy to play that day. Many of our favourite games take a little time to set up on the table, and we need the space on the table to play. But recently there has been a drive to create smaller box, roll and write versions of our favourite games. I have assembled a merry band of blogger pals who are going to give us the low down on some of their favourite roll and write games.
Lost Cities Roll and Write - FavouriteFoe
Lost Cities is a legendary 2 player tactical card game from master designer, Reiner Knizia. And it deserves that adjective for good measure; it’s brilliant. Released in 1999, it’s a fast playing, small box game full of big mechanisms; set collection, push your luck, hand management. But it only plays at 2 player count.
Fast forward 22 years to 2021, and Mr. Knizia threw his hat into the ring of pen and paper games. He designed Lost Cities: Roll & Write. No longer limited to a head to head battle for artefacts from forgotten worlds, now up to 5 players can roll their way to Lost Cities victory!
In the game, you are racing to have the most profitable expeditions possible. Each round, the 6 dice are rolled and the active player has first dibs at a number/colour combination. Everyone else then chooses from the remainder.
You may start up to six different expeditions, differentiated by colour/shape. You can only advance each of them by rolling a number higher, or the same as what was written in that column previously. As such, you want to start each one with as low a number as possible. If you ever roll a zero, you can risk an “investment” or two into your explorations. But if the value of your expedition bounty doesn’t outweigh that cost, or you never get it off the ground, you could easily be wiped out by a -100 score!
The more numbers you add, the more valuable your expedition will be. Some spots can help you accelerate up the tracks (or award bonus points). You can pass if you don’t want to fill in a number, but each refusal will risk you dropping from a +70 bonus to a big fat 0 points! The game ends when all columns on a player’s sheet cross over a specified point (bridge) or when all players are “exhausted”.
So is Lost Cities; Roll & Write the same as the card game? The answer is, yes and no. Expeditions, set collection, and a heap of push your luck still shine through. And for such a fast game, those dice picks are surprisingly strategic; the push and pull of the race and tactical choices remain. But it doesn’t feel as mean. And a more light-hearted challenge that can be enjoyed by more players is a great implementation of the Lost Cities spirit! I just wish it had a solo mode too!
Explore and Draw - Hannah Blacknell
I’ll kick us off with one of my more recent finds, Explore and Draw is the flip and fill version of the big box Isle of Cats game. Isle of Cats is a polynomial tile placement game; you attempt to fill up your ship with cats and treasures, arranged to maximize your end game scoring. The original game has a lot of pieces to set up and also takes about an hour to play. The flip and write version, however, is much smaller and quicker. The box is incredibly well stuffed, containing four dry wipe boat boards, four sets of coloured pens as well as a stack of cards depicting cats, treasures or lessons. There is also a deck specifically for solo play too which mimics the multiplayer mode but adds additional challenges to it.
In this game you play 7 rounds, each round choosing a column from the 4x3 display of cat and lesson cards. You place the polynomial pieces into your boat, trying to fill up rooms on the ship creating groups of coloured cats adjacent to each other. Cat families will score providing they are in groups of three or higher. As well as cats, there are also common and rare treasures to place.
Commons can fill up gaps in rooms or cover over rats, but rare treasures also get 3 points each at the end. The other kind of card available in the display will be lesson cards. There are a bunch of these that all score very differently, but have the opportunity to score big if played well. Any unfilled rooms will be worth negative five points as well as minus 2 for each visible rat on board your ship too.
This is a multiplayer solo type game, nothing I do influences what you can do, and we all play at the same time. There is no real down time. You just go around putting your own small cat families into your boat in the best way possible. You just try to get as many points as possible in the way you see fit. For me, this scratches the Isle of Cats itch in a way that is much easier and we have already played it 5 different days this past month.
The Castles Of Burgundy The Dice Game - Neil Proctor
One of my first more complex games was The Castles of Burgundy and, once I had finally understood the rules, I played it so many times I lost count. This was back a few years ago when it was not uncommon to play for 90 minutes and then set it back up for another go. Life has moved on and very rarely do I get the chance to play this Stefan Feld point salad. Thankfully there is a brilliant Roll and Write that scratches my Burgundy itch in just 15 minutes. I always think a Roll and Write should give the experience of playing a much grander Game, in a fraction of the time. The uninspiring titled ‘The Castles of Burgundy The Dice Game’ does just that.
The game caters for 1 to 5 players and involves very few components (once again a staple of any good Roll and Write). A player sheet, pencil and 5 dice is all you need to play a full and exciting game with lots of important decisions to make each round. Everyone starts by secretly marking one of the green castle spaces and circling the relevant bonus and then all of the dice are rolled. From these results, you combine a colour with a number and mark off a space next to your starting castle.
The genius of this game comes through with the different locations. They each have numerical requirements, so the blue boats require a 5/6, the grey mines require a 3/4, the purple monasteries require a 1/2, the orange cities require any number (no repeats), the green castles must share the same number as a space surrounding it, and finally the yellow pastures require any number but must be the same as any other pasture connected. Whenever you complete one of these areas, a bonus is provided and a score is obtained; the score reduces during the 2nd and 3rd round. Rounds are not a set length but depend on the result of the time dice. This means a round could vary between 5 to 10 turns.
This is a really good Roll and Write that gives you the feeling of playing its namesake without the time commitment. If you like The Castles of Burgundy or are a fan of Roll and Writes, you should play this game.
Catan Dice Game - Luke Pickles
If you’re wanting a smaller version of a classic game, I can think of none other than the Catan Dice Game. Now you might be saying “Isn’t Catan already a dice game?” and to be fair, yes, it is. But what Catan Dice does, is it turns the large hexagonal board with a load of tiles into a notepad smaller than a postcard and six dice. Each of the dice has six symbols on them, the traditional five Catan resources of wood, sheep, wheat, brick and stone, as well as gold, acting as wild. Much like in Yahtzee or King of Tokyo, players are rolling the dice up to three times, taking whichever combination of resources they roll.
In usual Catan fashion, players are using the resources they gain to build roads and cities and hire army members and marking them off their sheet as they progress around their island. As they do, they can unlock free resources that can be used as a one off to fill in anything that’s missing. Victory points are filled in each round, so you can track your progress against your opponents.
With the added bonus of the maps being double sided, you can really get the Catan feel in a micro game. A micro game is usually less than 30 minutes, depending on your player count. The whole game is quick and light and does feel like a game of Catan, without the aggressive inclusion of the robber which can ruin someone’s day. But don’t worry, the dice will do that for you.
And that's it! Those are our top 5 big box roll and write games. Check out the games mentioned and we're sure you'll agree.
Kingdomino Duel - Rob Wright
I’m not sure if this counts as a big box game, but at least Kingdomino is bigger than most Oink Games.
Kingdomino Duel takes the idea of putting dominoes on a board to earn points for matching crowns and territories and completely gets rid of the dominoes. I mean, they’re only part of the game’s title, so who needs ‘em? What it does give you, however, is four chunky dice with different patterned shields on each face, some with crosses, some without. Nice.
As well as four chunky dice, the game comes with a pad of double-sided play slips – this is a two-player game so they should last you a while. One side has the map that you fill in. The other has special abilities that activate when you have coloured in enough of a particular shield design on your map. You share one between the two of you. They look nice and Medieval World, too.
In the game, players take it in turns to roll all four dice. The roller takes one dice; the other player takes two dice together; then the roller takes the final dice. These then make up their ‘domino’, to be placed in a way on the board where at least one side matches. The castle in the middle acts as the wild starter seen in the big game(s). The crosses on the dice are the crowns and act as the multipliers at the end of the game. Once the board is filled to capacity, the game ends, the points are totted for different areas and boom! We have a winner!
It plays in a similar way to Kingdomino, but the special powers that allow you to do things like mismatch shields or choose two dice at once make it more Sagrada-like. Not quite the full Sagrada, but a nice Sagrada/Kingdomino hybrid for two. Definitely one of the top roll and write games.