Roll Through the Ages

Customer Reviews

Roll all the way to victory Review by B

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This is a game based on luck. It is like Yahtzee with different dice and a different score sheet. If you enjoy Yahtzee or dice games you will enjoy this game. You roll dice building up your empire of cities, monuments and gathering special features to help you out.

The basis is to gather more victory points than all the other players after someone has collected satisfied the requirements to end the game. There are different ways that someone can claim victory which makes the game interesting and with different amounts of players it makes the game play differently. There is luck involved in the game but your choices do change the outcome, it is not all luck. The game is pretty quick too so if you want to play a game in less than an hour this is a good game to play.
(Posted on 8/5/11)

Yatzee meets Civilization Review by Andrew

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Roll Through the Ages is a dice game by Matt Leacock (designer of Pandemic) which follows the theme on the well regarded Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization (by Vlaada Chvátil). Players compete to score the most point by building monuments and cultural developments.

The game’s dice represent cities which produce resources. A die face depicting workers is used to build additional cities (i.e. you will roll more dice next turn) or monuments, coin is used to buy developments which each bend the game rules in your favour, grain is needed to upkeep your cities’ food supply, etc. Yatzee-style, a player has up to 3 rerolls of their dice each turn.

Some downsides to the game are that it only supports 4 players, the theme felt tacked-on at times, and the strategies may be a bit too simple. However, if you wanted to play with 5-8 players, using 2 copies of the game or improvising a peg board alternative should work. Also, sometimes simple is a good thing!

The game is quick to play, easy to learn, and family-friendly. Everyone I have played with has immediately asked “Can we play again?”, surely the mark of a great game! The game bits are well-made; the wooden dice are big and chunky, and the peg board resource trackers are a nice touch.
(Posted on 9/22/10)

A compelling solitaire game Review by Murray

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Don't be fooled by the numbers, this is nothing but a solitaire game with waiting inbetween turns as other players roll the dice and make notes on their pads. However, if you are a Civ fan, this should be a familiar notion already.

In Roll Through the Ages, you start off with three cities and three food. Each city you control allows you to roll a wooden D6 with custom symbols. With the roll you can earn workers, food, resources, coin, or disasters.

Workers are used to build up more cities or monuments. As mentioned before, more cities means more dice to roll, but it also means more to feed at the end of your turn. Monuments grants victory points and you'll earn more if you are the first to complete a monument.

Food is required to feed your cities. If you do not have enough food, then there is a famine and you must check off demerit boxes at the bottom of your sheet for each unfed city. These demerits will count against your VP total at the end of the game.

Resources and coins work the same way, except that resources can be stockpiled while coins must be spent the turn you earned it. Resources are marked on your peg board. There are various resources, from the lower tiered wheat, to the higher tiered tools. The first resourced rolled will grant you one peg movement of the lowest tiered resource and the next resourced rolled on the same turn gives you the next tiered and so on. Coins and resources can be traded in for development, which can give you points and grant abilities for managing your cities and rolling.

The game is over after a certain number of monuments or developments are attained by a player. All the points are tallied up (and subtracted from disasters and famines) and the winner is the one with the most points.

There is no interaction with other players save for racing to build monuments and forcing the end of the game. This is actually a pure exercise of solitaire and I prefer to play the game this way, as it would otherwise end prematurely before the good stuff are available. Players will constantly be monitoring the scores of each other and looking for an opportunity to end the game while in the lead and this seems to take away the fun a little. I would much rather build up the best civilization that I can.

The components for the game consists of 7 wooden jumbo dice, 4 wooden peg boards as player resource trackers, and a pad of paper for marking your cities, developments, etc. Overall, the components are bland. Some players may also find the theme and game play to be bland as well. (Posted on 9/21/10)

Roll Through the Ages is a a dice based civisliation game that runs fast and rolls well Review by TR

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Roll Through the Ages has very little to do with FRED's Through the Ages beyond being a civilisaton game. As a dice game, players roll the dice attempting to generate specific faces to give them food, workers or goods (or in some cases, goods and curses) to mark off specific developments.

It's very fast, since what you can build is entirely dependent on your rolls and since you can only re-roll twice; each turn passes fast. The developments are well thought out, and the addition of plagues / ill effects and the ability to pass those effects on to your opponent adds a fun interactive element to the game.

In addition, the new Advanced Bronze Age rules makes the game go longer, which is great since it doesn't leave players hanging as in the basic rules. Overall, Roll Through the Ages is definitely a great 2 player dice game. (Posted on 5/17/10)

a perfect quick game Review by Martin

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Roll through the Ages if easy to teach, very quick to set up, compact, challenging, and enjoyable (even when playing solo).

A perfect game to play with one or two other people when you want to pass 30 minutes. (Posted on 1/19/10)