Dice Forge actually reminds me more of Colony, except that I like Colony a lot more; this is not entirely because it uses combinations of many dice rather than two dice with changeable faces, but I suspect that the former does in fact allow for more interesting decisions than the latter. And when he’s not doing that, he’s goofing around with Steph, his loving wife, toddler son, Jay and Chester the Corgi. There are a couple exceptions to this, usually supplied through the card system, that will do something big like triple the result of your other die, but most of the time you’re hoping for a relatively marginal improvement over your previous turn’s roll.

The dice rolls, though, are random, but not in the Castles of Burgundy way where there’s usually different ways you can roll with the punches, so to speak. This one dropped on the scene at Gen Con a few years ago, and I remember it being a game I really wanted to pick up there.

Lastly, the final area will give an extra glory point if a major or minor blessing awards glory points. Reinforcements - After rolling their dice, the active player may use any special powers gained from purchased cards. That gold is then quickly transitioned into more lucrative and strategic faces which further enable the purchase of relics, which really are the ultimate offset to the whims of chance. I'm happy to trumpet Everdell, in all its charm and glory, as the insurmountable favorite of my collection.

Love how like the dice it’s very tactile and locks together so if the table is bumbed everything stays where it should and doesn’t all roll away. Whether or not you enjoy it, then, will be directly correlated to which elements draw you to the game. The only knock I can make about the quality of the game is the fact that the player tokens are just generic wooden pawns. If you want the Heroic Feat, I mean, it’s worth it to kick your opponent back, but if you don’t explicitly need that card, maybe consider not going for it.This also has the nice benefit of letting you know if you haven’t matched up the correct cards, yet. Glory Points (GP) - Green - Contributes directly to your score; can be earned by rolling the appropriate dice face, activating certain reinforcements, and at the end of the game the Glory value of all collected cards is added to your score. There’s not a whole lot you can intuitively figure out through the card iconography without consulting the rulebook, which makes explaining all of the cards slow and tedious. At two players, you roll twice per turn (helps a lot), and at three you get ten rounds, rather than nine.