Pioneer Days (Tasty Minstrel Games)

On July 24th, people in Utah celebrate Pioneer Day. This day commemorates the entry of Brigham Young  and the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Due to the lack of inclusiveness for non-Mormons, a counterculture movement has created "Pie and Beer Day." With that in mind, it seemed like a good time to review Tasty Minstrel Games' latest release, appropriately entitled Pioneer Days! In Pioneer Days, you and up to three other settlers will guide your wagons along the famous Oregon Trail. Build a capable team, gather your resources and equipment, and see if you will survive the perils of this harsh trek. Pioneer Days plays 2-4 players, ages 14+. It takes approximately one hour to play and retails for $60.

Setup
1. Randomly assign the horseshoe (start player token) to a player.
2. Place the 36 Gold Tokens into the gold bag.
3. Place 1 set of dice (yellow, green, blue, red, and black) and 1 set of dice per player into the black bag.
4. Set the two game boards (main and score) side by side in the center of the table, placing each player's wagon (Scoring Marker) at the beginning of the score track.
5. Put the four Disaster Markers (yellow, green, blue, and red) at the beginning spaces on the disaster track of the main board.
6. Put the 20 Wagon Cards near the game boards.
7. There are 60 Townsfolk Cards (five sets of 12 cards). Pick two sets and shuffle them. Then, deal out six in the spaces under the main board.
8. Shuffle the 22 Town Cards and place nine in the spot indicated on the main board. Return the remaining 13 to the box. Then, flip two of the nine cards face-up in their spots on the main board.
9. Give two Player Boards to each player. From the two, they will pick one and return the other to the box. One side of each board has a standard pioneer. The other side has a unique pioneer. Take your starting resources listed on your Player Board.
10. Put the cattle, medicine, wood, damage, silver, and favor tokens near the game boards.
11. Mix the 27 Equipment Tiles face down and stack them on the General Store section of the main board. Turn one face up and an additional one for each player in the game.

Game Play - The game is played over four rounds (called Weeks) with each round being comprised of five turns (called Days). I guess they didn't have weekends in Pioneer Times! Each Day each player will select a die and use it. Each day proceeds as follows:
1. The starting player draws one die, plus one more die per player and rolls them.
2. Beginning with the starting player and going clockwise, each player will take a die and note the image on it. Check if you have a Townsfolk Card or Equipment Tile that triggers the die. (Note: You may pay three silver to change the die face.) You will then use the die to take silver, take an action, or recruit a townsfolk. Then, discard the die to the appropriate space on the board.
3. After everyone has taken a die, one die will remain. Advance the Disaster Marker on the main board of the matching color. If it is a black die, advance all the Disaster Markers. When a Disaster Marker reaches the end of its track, a disaster is triggered. (Note: Multiple disasters can be triggered.)
4. Pass the starting player token, and repeat the first three steps. After five days, the dice bag is empty and you perform the following end of the week actions (also known as visiting town). Resolve card effects. Score one victory point per cattle. Satisfy the needs of face-up town cards to earn favors.

After each week, refill the dice bag and reset the main board with two new Town Cards, new Equipment Tiles, and six new Townsfolk Cards. If it's the end of the fourth week, before visiting town, advance the Disaster Markers one more time and resolve any triggered disasters. Visit town, calculate your final score, and see who the winner is!

Review
This game has a lot of components in the box. From tokens to tiles to cards and lots of dice, you'll definitely get your money's worth in pieces if you buy this game. But does the game play itself warrant the price? For starters, the game feels like a Tasty Minstrel Games, and that is not a bad thing. If you have ever played Harbour or Harvest, then you will be familiar with double-sided characters. On one side, everyone has the same character and on the other side, everyone has a different one. This same side gives everyone the same footing when learning the game and the different sides gives that little bit of asymmetry that will give you different games and different strategies every time! The different sides are also highly thematic and will provide you with a gambler, a tracker, a prospector, and a trader just to name four. This is a big positive!

Another big positive is the Townsfolk Cards. As I stated earlier, there are five sets, and you only use two of those sets every game. This means that there are ten possible combinations you can play with and again creates more variety in the game. In one game, you might encounter a carpenter, a doctor, and a cowboy, but in a different game you might encounter a swindler, trader, or even a bride! Knowing the cards are different each game and knowing that they will appear in different orders each game, means no two games will ever be the same and you'll have to constantly adjust your strategy.

Playing through the game was fairly quick and pretty intuitive. Turns did not take long, and there was little downtime for players. The art was cartoony but fit in well with the game and the component quality was high. As for the theme, it fell a bit flat for me. I  have seen several people compare this to the old computer game Oregon Trail, which we all know and love. I did not feel that way with this game. Sure you are travelling the Oregon Trail, but I didn't feel the sense of travel or journey with this game. It felt more like solving a puzzle of optimizing my different cards, tiles, and dice I chose. With that said, it is still a solid game and an under-represented theme in the board game world. I look forward to exploring it more, trying new strategies, and hoping there are small expansions that give us more players and townsfolk.

This game was provided to me by Tasty Minstrel Games in exchange for an honest review.

Harvest (Tasty Minstrel Games)

One of my first forays into tiny box games was a game called Harbour from Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG). It is an interesting little economic worker placement game set in the fantasy world of Gullsbottom. I loved the game designer (Scott Almes) and the art of Rob Lundy made this fantasy realm come to life. In 2017, TMG released another game in the realm of Gullsbottom called Harvest. Trey Chambers is the game designer this time around, and Rob Lundy remained on as the artist. The game plays 1 - 4 players, ages 14+. It takes between 30 and 60 minutes to play and retails for $40. In this game, you are farmers living in the community of Fallowsend. It is your goal to have the best farm by use of careful planting, meticulous tending, and special abilities from buildings. Will you have the most successful harvest this season?

Setup and Game Play
Place the Town Board central to all players and organize the crop/seed tokens by type. You have Snap Peas, Scarrots, Phantom Peppers, Rockali, and Plumpkins. (This doesn't look like any farm I've ever been to!) Next, place Farm Boards and Expansions as well as Resource Tokens of Water, Elixir, and Fertilizer near the Town Board. (Yes, there are poop-shaped pieces in this game.) Then, give each play two Farmers in their color, a Farm Board, and two Character Boards, so that they may choose the character they will be this game. (Note: Each character has a generic Wil Plantsomdill side, and this is the recommended character for your first game.) All characters have different starting resources and have special powers, except Wil, whose "power" is that he gives you 15 points at the end of the game. Lastly, you will seed the area (Seed...see what I did there?) with Action Cards (a face-down deck composed of five per player), Building/Field Cards (six face-up for Buildings, and the rest are fields), and Initiative Cards (one to each player), which determine player order and also give a bonus in all rounds but the first. The game play is very simple with four phases each of the five rounds.

1. Action Cards - Reveal one Action Card per player. These cards and the Town Board are the places you can send your Farmers each round.
2. Initiative - Reveal three Initiative Cards. Going in order of current initiative, each player will choose a new Initiative Card and receive its bonus. After everyone has selected their new card, the three cards leftover are shuffled back into the deck. The new turn order has now been established.
3. Farmer Placement - Going in initiative order, you will place farmers one at a time onto a location on the Town Board or an Action Card. This is where the meat of the game occurs and where you will either Expand your Farm, Plow a Field, Build a Building, Plant Seeds, Tend Plants, or Harvest your Crops.
4. Resolution - Reclaim your Farmers. Return the Action Cards to the box. Refill Building supply to six.

The game ends after five rounds. Count up all the stars on your farm and add any bonuses your character gave you. Most stars is the winner!

Review
This game is a lighter, fantasy-themed version of Agricola. The game play is very simple because you only get 10 actions per game (two per round), but because of these limited actions, you must make very good use of each action! Looking through all the moving parts of this game, I find myself very pleased with all the variability of this game and would like to highlight these aspects:

1. Variable Player Power - I love that everyone can have their own unique character with different starting resources and power. Im-Hoe-Tep was a favorite of mine, because I got a free building at the start of each game and my buildings counted as fields too! This encouraged me to go a building-heavy route.
2. Initiative Cards - Having people decide between more of something or being the first player is a constant struggle each turn.
3. Action Cards - Having these be different every game and only seeing one per player per round tightens up the board and makes your decisions meaningful.

Other things I liked about this game were the art and fantasy theme. For someone who owns a lot of board games, I am surprised at how few farming games I own since that seems to be a highly popular theme. I can't say this is my favorite farming game (That would be Fields of Green), but this one is a solid second place and one I would suggest to play or play when asked. There are two things I don't like about this game and both of them are very petty if I'm being honest. The first is I wish the field cards were cardboard and not just card stock. The second is that the box is bigger than its predecessor Harbour. However, I have read recently that there will be a third game in this universe called Embark that will be the same box size as Harvest, so I guess when that comes out, I can complain about Harbour being the wrong size. :) If you are looking for a fun worker placement game with a fantasy-farming theme, check it out!

This game was provided to me for free by Tasty Minstrel Games in exchange for an honest review.

Orléans with Trade and Intrigue (Tasty Minstrel Games)

Orléans is one of the Top 25 games of all time and might quite possibly be my #1 game of all time, and not just because it is one of the few games where I win against my wife. The game takes place during the medieval ages in the city of Orléans (fitting) and the area of Loire around it. It is a game for 1 to 4 players (with an upcoming expansion to add a 5th player) that retails for $60. There are two expansions for it - Invasion ($50) and Trade and Intrigue ($25), as well as numerous mini-building promos ($6 for each set of three). Today, I would like to tell you about the base game and Trade and Intrigue.

Setup and Game Play
Before the game begins, you have to seed the main board by putting Goods Tiles face up on the Road and Waterway spaces of the map. You also sort the neutral Character Tiles by their profession and place them on their appropriate buildings. Each player then receives a Bag, 5 Coins, 7 Cubes, 1 Merchant Token, 10 Trading Stations, a Player Board, and one set of Followers (composed of a Farmer, Boatman, Craftsman, and Trader). Your Merchant is placed in the city of Orléans on the map, and your cubes are placed on the starting spaces of the buildings with all the neutral Character Tiles. Next, you'll want to put the Beneficial Deeds board out. Lastly, you'll want to shuffle the Hour Glass Tiles, which dictates the event of each of the 18 rounds

At the beginning of each round, you flip over the top Hour Glass Tile, which tells you what the event will be that round. The events are mix of positive and negative, ranging from earning Coins to losing a Character Tile. Each player then reaches into their Bag and draws out a number of Character Tiles equal to their level on the Knight's building track. (Note: The first round you will only draw your initial four tiles.) Each player then arranges their Character Tiles on their Player Boards. After everyone has done this, the tiles are removed and actions are performed based on where the tiles were placed. Most of the actions revolve around recruiting a new Follower and moving up the building track of that Follower. However, you can also travel from Orléans to another city, collect a Good, and possibly build a Trade House. You can automate some of your buildings with a gear so you use fewer Character Tiles to activate them, construct a new building, which gives you the ability to perform actions that other players cannot. Lastly, you can send some of your Followers to the Beneficial Deeds board and receive a small benefit. You then take all your used Followers and new Followers and place them back in your bag to start the next round, until all Hourglass Tiles are exhausted.

Review
Orléans was my first introduction to a bag-building game. For those unfamiliar with this mechanic, it is similar to a deck-building game, except instead of having a deck of cards that you keep adding cards to, you are adding discs to a bag. The biggest difference between Orléans and a traditional deck-building game is the unpredictability of what you draw. With a traditional deck-builder, eventually you will cycle through all your cards, shuffle them, and go again. With Orléans, you keep putting the discs back in the bag, and you never know what you are going to draw. Yes, you can increase the number of discs you draw, but you may have some Followers in your bag that you only draw once or twice in an 18 round campaign. It's beautifully frustrating! This is where thinning your bag out of unnecessary workers is crucial. Not only does using the Beneficial Deeds/Trade/Intrigue board give you a boost, it also pares down your bag where you can control what you draw and optimize your points engine.

What I like best about this game is the many paths to victory. Yes, there are certain things you need to do each game, such as getting more Knights to be able to draw more discs each round, but after that the game is pretty wide-open. Gain more goods and a coin each round by getting more Farmers. Use lots of gears to automate your buildings and perform more actions. Travel every round through France and build all your Trading Houses. I repeat...many different paths to victory. What my wife likes best about this game is that there is very little player interaction (also known as multiplayer solitaire). Very little of what you do affects other players, and that is how my wife likes her games. What I didn't really like about the game was the predictability of the Hour Glass Tiles and the Beneficial Deeds board being too wide open. There are 18 rounds in a game, but only six unique events (three sets of six), so you can roughly count the Hour Glass Tiles and get a good idea of what event is coming up next. Yes, the order is different every game, but it's still a degree of predictability. As for the Beneficial Deeds board, it was nice to retire workers there, but in a 2-player game, you were hard pressed to make real progress on these boards and ever complete a lot of the tracks on that board. The Trade and Intrigue expansion fixed both of these problems.

In Trade and Intrigue, there are 34 Hourglass Tiles, divided into groups of A, B, C, and D. You will take four from each group, and two preassigned ones for a beginning and end and make a unique game experience each time. Within these tiles, you will find some repeats from the base game, but you will also find tiles that restrict which Followers you can hire, allow you to pay coins to hire a Follower, pay money for Goods, pay a tithe of your coins, or even shorten the game from 17 to 18 rounds. With no duplicates in this bunch, you never know what kind of experience you are going to end up having, and it provides new challenges to not only build your engine, but maximize it too!

There are also two new boards, one being a new Beneficial Deeds board and the other being an Intrigue board. With the former, it basically tightens up the number of spaces in a 2-player game and provides more/better rewards than the base game. The real game changer is the Intrigue board. If you didn't like the multiplayer solitaire aspect of this game, this board fixes it! Now when you send Followers here, instead of getting something, you take or destroy something of your opponents. There are actions like arson, where you can remove one of their Trading Stations, tax collector where players pay you coins, or hangman where you get money and they lose a Follower (yup, you were the one who hanged their Follower). It adds a nasty and take that element to the game, which my wife will never play, but I appreciate it being included, because it gives options for different groups and different playing styles.

The last changes to this expansion are "more of the same" and "something new." The more of the same is the new buildings included in this game, which I always appreciate because it gives me more variety to choose from each game. I own all the mini-promos, so I have a lot of buildings and this helps adds to the replay value of the game. The new aspect is called Orders. There is a deck of 23 Order cards that you shuffle and deal five face-up. On these cards is the name of a town, some goods, and a point value. On your last action, if your Merchant is in that town, and you have those goods, you may turn them in to complete the order and score points at the end of the game. This is a module of the expansion I don't play with often (or ever when teaching the game), but it feels like it adds some theme to the Merchant traveling around the map. Before, it was just a necessary thing to do to collect goods and score points. Now, your Trading Stations are actually thematically tied in and also help your goods provide more points than they would by themselves at the end of the game.

Before Trade and Intrigue, Orléans was already my favorite game in my collection. Afterwards, it just solidified my decision. This was the expansion I was hoping for with Invasion. It has everything I look for in game expansions - "more of the same," added replay value, and new twists to keep the game fresh and help me discover new paths to victory. I will never play Orléans again without the Trade and Intrigue expansion. Highly recommended!

Orléans was purchased on my own, but Trade and Intrigue was provided to me for free by Tasty Minstrel Games.

Ars Alchimia (Tasty Minstrel Games)

One of my favorite Japanese manga/anime was Fullmetal Alchemist. The story was solid and the idea of alchemy has always been an interesting to me, even if I don't put any merit in it whatsoever. Recently, Tasty Minstrel Games released a game called Ars Alchimia. Ars Alchimia is a game for 3-4 players, ages 10+. It takes approximately 100 minutes to play and retails for $40. In this game, you and your fellow overseers work at an alchemy factory. Your job is to take orders, gather resources, and transmute them. Sounds simple, but efficiency is key! Let's get to the setup:

Setup
1. Give each player a player board, one resource cube of each color, and nine workers and the point marker of their player color.
2. Place the resource cubes on their respective starting positions on your player board.
3. Place the remaining workers to the side. (Note: You can never have more than 20.)
4. Prepare the board by shuffling the order cards, shuffling the locations, shuffling the assistants, and shuffling the forges.

Game Play - The game is played over four rounds (years) with three steps in each round:
1. Start of round - Determine player order. Gain as many workers as your Factory card says. Pay the upkeep of any assistants from the previous round. If you don't want to pay, return them to the bottom of the deck.
2. Main step - Take turns placing your workers on the board. (Note: When placing workers, you must place the # of workers +1 already there.) These spots on the board consist of gathering resources, taking orders, employing assistants, and transmuting materials into items.
3. End of Round - The round ends when all players have passed due to running out of workers or not wanting to place anymore. Once everyone has passed, return all workers in play to their owners. Refresh any assistants. Shuffle the face up cards on the board by type. Then, refill the board with cards, as was done in setup.

Review
When playing through this game, you realize that it has a lot of elements of a traditional worker placement. You deploy workers to gather resources. You use those resources to make items, which are worth points. However, there are slight differences in this game than more traditional worker-placement games. The first difference is worker escalation, or going to the same place someone else did, but using more workers than someone else used. This means that no space is entirely blocked off, and it also means that you can mess with someone by going to a spot before they can and sending a lot of workers. The second difference is a die. At some locations, you can roll a die. If you get the number on the die required, then you gain an additional resource/benefit. This can be mitigated by the amount of workers you send to a place, but it still adds a random element to the game, which can be fun or frustrating depending on your luck of the die.

The game itself is tiny in nature in terms of box, components, and footprint, which is nice for someone with a lot of games and not a lot of shelf space. Since the game saw its origins in Japan, this makes absolute sense. The artwork is also a Japanese anime/manga, which I like. The components are basic in nature (standard pawns and cubes), which is a drawback compared to some of the more recent games, but the colors are at least unique, bright and vibrant, making them pop on a somewhat busy board! I also like that you can have up to 20 workers in the game. Now, granted, you won't be taking 20 actions per round, but you feel a lot less limited in what you can do when you see that army of pawns! The last element I really like about the game is the shifting places to visit. This creates a nice in game dynamic and need to be on your toes at all times. It also adds a great replay value, because even though you will see the same cards in different games, it won't always be in the same order.

It's no surprise if you have read any of my other reviews, but I love worker placement games. This was a very fun game and had unique twist on worker placement, which you must have to differentiate yourself from the myriad of other worker placement games. If you are looking for a compact worker placement game, that packs a punch, I highly recommend Ars Alchimia.

This game was provided to me for free by Tasty Minstrel Games in exchange for an honest review.

Flip City and Flip City: Reuse (Tasty Minstrel Games)

Of all the different types of games there are to play, there are some that I just inherently enjoy more than others. Deck-builders fall into that category. In a deck-builder, generally everyone starts with the same small deck of cards (usually 10). Throughout the game, you use those cards as resources/currency to purchase more cards, which allow you to buy even more cards and eventually score enough points to win the game. They are simple to learn and quick to play. Today, I would like to tell you about one from Tasty Minstrel Games called Flip City and its expansion Flip City: Reuse. In Flip City, you are using your deck of cards to build and improve the neighborhoods in Flip City, carefully balancing how quickly to build and how much to collect in taxes. The game plays 1-4 players, ages 8+. It retails for $20 for the base game and $10 for the expansion, and can take 30 minutes to an hour to play. Let's get to the setup!

Setup - All cards are double-sided, so make sure you are using the correct sides during setup.
1. Form the Starting Decks - Give each player 4 Residential Area cards, and 1 each of the following - Convenience Store, Factory, Apartment, Hospital, and Central Park. (Note: When playing with the expansion add 1 each of Plumber Shop and Flea Market.)
2. Form the General Supply - Form the following stacks of cards in the middle of the table: 12 Convenience Stores, 12 Hospitals, 8 Factories, and 8 Central Parks. You may also optionally include the 10 Offices. (Note: When playing with the expansion add 10 each of Plumber Shops and Flea Markets.)
3. Starting player is said to be whoever last flipped a table, but I prefer to just pick randomly.

Game Play - During your turn, there are two specific phases. Play then passes clockwise. The game is won when one player gains 8 points (denoted by a medal symbol).
1. Play Cards Phase - Play cards from the top of your deck onto the table one at a time. Check each card for additional rules/functions. Cards you play can provide you with cash (coin symbol), points (medal symbol), and/or unhappiness (frowny face symbol). After each card, you must decide whether to play an additional card or not. (Note: You may look at the top of your deck when deciding).
a. If your deck runs out of card, you can stop or shuffle your discard pile and continue.
b. You can have a maximum of two unhappiness. If you reach three unhappiness, your turn ends immediately and all played cards go into your discard pile.
c. If you have any cards in your discard pile with a down green arrow, you may recycle those cards by flipping them to gain their effect on the other side of the card.

2.  Building Phase - With the cash you gained from your Play Card Phase, you may choose one of the following actions.
a. Buy - Choose a card in the General Supply. Pay its cost (found in the top right corner), and put the card into your discard pile.
b. Flip - Choose a card in your discard pile. Pay its Flip Fee (found in the bottom right corner), and turn the card over to its other side. The card will remain into your Discard Pile.
c. Develop - Choose a card in the General Supply. Pay its Flip Fee to turn the card over, and put it into your discard pile.

Review
At its core, Flip City is a typical deck-builder in that you are using cards to buy other cards to score points and win. HOWEVER, that is where the game stops being a typical deck-builder. For starters, the cards are double-sided. This means you have access to twice as many cards in half the space. It also gives you interesting choices to make, like whether you should flip a card or not. Second, you are not limited to a hand of five cards each round. You can keep playing cards until you choose to stop or are forced to stop. This is known as a "press your luck" element. I'm a bit of a chicken when it comes to this game element, but it can pay off big time, if you're lucky. Lastly, there is a "take that" element in the game, which allows you to mess with other players. This is seen slightly in the base game with the Apartment card, because you can load up your opponent's deck with Residential Areas, which produces more unhappiness for them. It can really be seen in the expansion with the Plumber Shop, especially in a three or four player game, because you can discard the top cards from their decks and make them potentially start with fewer coins or points and more unhappiness.

This is a clever little card game that tweaks your traditional deck-builder just enough to make it a fresh game mechanic. The expansion, as noted earlier, provides some more "take that" action, but also provides you with ways to generate more cash and have a little bit more control of your deck and discard pile. The cards of nice quality, which is vital in a deck-builder, because these cards are going to be shuffled...A LOT! The artwork feels a bit retro, like an NES game, but it serves its purpose without distracting from the game play. With a decent price point and a unique twist on deck-building, Flip City and its expansion Flip City: Reuse are worthy additions to the genre and worth trying if you enjoy deck-builders.

These games were provided to me for free by Tasty Minstrel Games in exchange for an honest review.

Martian Dice (Tasty Minstrel Games)

Martian Dice is a pocket-sized filler game with a press your luck element to it. For those unfamiliar with those terms, allow me to explain. Pocket-sized means it's a tiny game, which is composed of only 13 dice and nothing more. Filler game denotes the time to play the game, and this one takes approximately 10 minutes per player. So if you have two players, you're looking at 20 minutes, but the more you have the longer the game is unless you buy multiple games. (If you have a large family, you might want to as you can have as many or as few people as you want with this game.) The press your luck element means you roll your dice and you can keep rolling them to get a desired result, but by doing so, you might get an undesired result and your turn would end, and/or you would not score any points.

The 13 martian dice in this game are custom-made with unique images on each side. On two sides of the die is the image of a Death Ray. The other images on just one side are a Human, a Cow, a Chicken, and a Tank. On your turn, you pick up the 13 dice and roll them. Immediately set aside all Tanks. These dice cannot be re-rolled. You then must then choose, which single image you want to keep - Human, Cow, Chicken, or Death Ray. If you set aside Humans, Cows, or Chickens, you cannot set them aside again on later rolls. However, if you set aside Death Rays, you can set those aside on later rolls. After you have set aside the tanks and one of the other four symbols, you take your remaining dice, roll, and repeat until you can no longer set aside dice, or you choose to stop rolling and not press your luck anymore. Then, you score your set aside dice and it is the next players turn until someone reaches 25 points.

So how do you score? For starters, you must have at least as many Death Rays as Tanks or else, you will score 0 points. After you have performed that check, you then add up the rest of your dice. Each Human, Cow, or Chicken counts for 1 point, but if you set aside at least one of each, then you score 3 bonus points. Some people play a variant where you get 3 bonus points for each set of Human, Cow, and Chicken, but that can be overpowered, if someone has really good dice luck. To further illustrate the scoring I am going to do a quick sample turn.

First roll (13 dice) = 4 Tanks, 3 Death Rays, 2 Humans, 2 Cows, and 2 Chickens. The 4 Tanks are automatically set aside and I choose to set aside the 3 Death Rays.

Second roll (6 dice) = 1 Tank, 2 Death Rays, 0 Humans, 1 Cow, and 2 Chickens. The 1 Tank is automatically set aside and I choose to set aside the 2 Death Rays.

Third roll (3 dice) = 0 Tanks, 1 Death Rays, 2 Humans, 0 Cows, and 0 Chickens. I choose to set aside the 2 Humans and then opt to roll no more, as I don't want to press my luck.

The score is 2 points, because my 5 Death Rays were at least as many as my 5 Tanks, and I had 2 Humans.

Overall, this game will scratch an itch if you have a hankering to chuck some dice and gamble with how lucky you think you will be. The theme is clever and the actions makes sense. The designer - Scott Almes is excellent and one of my favorite designers of little games (particularly the Tiny Epic line). The packing makes sense (dice come in a cardboard cup, which doubles as storage and a dice cup). The price point is low ($15 MSRP, but $11 on Amazon). Children can play this at a very early age. 8+ is recommended, but younger can play. And it's just fun! (Unless your Tanks outnumber your Death Rays) So if you are looking for a clever game to take on the go or just gather your whole family around the table, pick up a copy (or 2) of Martian Dice and see who the best alien in your family is.

This game was provided to me for free by Tasty Minstrel Games in exchange for an honest review. If you found this review helpful, please click here and hit Yes!