Game a Week: Religion Rally

This Tuesday we're taking a look at a game I made in a few minutes based on a Game Design Showdown prompt of (basically) Religious Micro Game.

This game is a dice and card game which involves fifteen cards and twelve dice.
In it you take on the role of a religion trying to gain followers. You do this by rolling dice.

2-4 players, 10-15 minutes

Game contains:
12 custom six sided dice
15 cards
Rules

The Values of the 12 dice are:
1 Follower x12
2 Follower x8, Priest x4
3 Priest x8 Event x4
4 Revolt x10 Event x2
5 Cruelty x12
6 Crusade  x12

In this game players play as their own Religions, attempting to gain followers.
Players put all the dice into a bag and shake them up. They then blindly select one, two or three dice to roll. They roll them one at a time, resolving the faces as they come up.
If a player rolls a follower, they put that die in their pool
If a player rolls a Priest, they select one other player to reroll a follower in their pool. If they roll anything other than a follower that die goes back in the bag.
If a player rolls an Event, they draw a card. These cards force you to reroll the next die you roll that it names. There are three each of the following cards
Reroll next Cruelty
Reroll next Crusade
Reroll next Revolt
Reroll next Follower
Reroll next Priest
A player may only have one event at a time, and are required to draw a new one when they roll an Event face.
If a player rolls a Revolt they must put one follower from their pool back into the bag
If a player rolls a Cruelty, that die is removed from the game
If a player rolls a Crusade that player must reroll a follower from their pool. Anything other than a follower goes back into the bag.
Once a die is resolved it is either placed into the player’s pool (followers) or returned to the bag (everything else)

Play continues until there are no more dice left to roll. The player with the most followers at this point wins.


I've playtested it a few times to try and even out the dice faces, and this is as good as it is getting, as I am busy working on another game. I hope you enjoyed this week's Game a Week, and I'll see you on Thursday for Gimme Games!

Gimme Games: Alien Frontiers

This week on Gimme Games we have Alien Frontiers!
Now, I don't own this game, so I cannot take pictures of it. However it is the game I played at game group this week.

Opening the box you are presented with a board, a rule book and several smaller boxes. Four boxes hold the player pieces and another holds fuel and ore, while a sixth holds other game components such as the center alien die, the planet tokens and the docking tokens. You also have a score track to keep track of player scores. The player pieces are split between six dice, ten colony domes and 1 rocket for the score board.

The game is played by rolling your dice to see what actions you can preform. The different actions are listed on the board, as well as 'docking' slots. Only a certain number of dice in certain combinations can do specific tasks, such as gather ore, collect fuel or build colonies. The board also shows a desolate planet with sections marked off. Each of these sections is named after a famous sci-fi writer, such as Asimov's Crater.

You start the game with three dice and have to use your dice to build the other three by rolling doubles and paying fuel and ore. We played the three player version which has each player start with seven colonies to place. As the game goes one you can collect more ore and fuel, as well as alien artifacts. These alien artifacts allow you to effect other players and the board.

As you manage to build colonies on the planet the player with the most colonies in a specific area earns points and the title to that area. These deeds give you bonus special abilities and are quite worth having. Each colony you place also earns you a point. The game is over when one player has placed all of their colonies upon the planet, and the player with the most points then wins the game.

The art work in the game is first rate sci-fi, and the pieces are good quality. The pieces that get moved the most are chits, while the cards are strong and matte. The colony pieces are two part plastic with a little city inside of a clear dome- a great way to enchant younger players. The game has optional purchasable "rocket dice", which are basically barrel dice to add to the theme of the dice being your ships.

All in all it was a very fun game, with a lot of strategy and a fair helping of luck. It took us about an hour and a quarter to set up, learn and play the game, between three players. The man who taught us kept referring to the game as "space Yahtzee", and I must admit that term has merit. I would certainly play this game again, though I might reduce the amount of colonies needed to be placed for a shorter play time.