Roll Through the Ages – Review

Roll Through the Ages was first published in 2009 and is designed by Matt Leacock who also designed Pandemic. This game attempts to simulate the building of a civilization from the early Bronze age to the present in about 30 minutes! This review was originally published on BoardGame-Reviews.com.

Roll Through the Ages:

• Designed by: Matt Leacock
• Published by: Gryphon Games
• Number of players: 1-4
• Playing time: 30 minutes
• Player ages: 8+

A Quick Overview

Each player is the leader of a civilization starting out in the Bronze Age. Through the use of dice, players accumulate citizenry and food, build monuments and cities and develop technologies to advance their civilization.

Of course, civilizations are not prone to disasters such as war, drought and pestilence.

As a leader of a new civilization, do you forsake your citizenry and force them to develop monuments and cities? Or do you slowly advance and ensure a peaceful development?

These are a few of the questions you need to ask yourself while playing this game!

Game Play

At the beginning of a turn, a player:

• Rolls special dice
• Feed the populace
• Collects commodities
• Builds cities
• Purchase developments

The dice in this game are the fun part! They are oversized, wooden, six-sided dice and have beautiful carvings on them. Each side provides an important aspect for a cvilization’s growth.

Dice can be re-rolled up to two times unless they are disaster icons (shown by a skull and crossbones) or a specific development is purchased.

After the dice are rolled, players then make the best use of the items on the dice to advance their civilizations. Of course, the populace needs to be fed and it is important to keep an eye out on the food stores.

Observations

Roll Through the Ages is a quick game. It comes in a compact box and is very heavy owing to the cribbage-like, wooden player boards and dice. Included are many sheets to keep track of your civilization’s progress.

It is a nice twist to “simulate” civilization development through the use of dice but it is not satisifying for players who enjoy civilization type games.

One of the things other players have suggested to me is to extend the game ending conditions just a little bit to give a “fuller” experience of the game.

The last round is typically the round where five developments are bought. By extending this from five to six developments, players can feel a bit more satisfaction to the end of the game.

I like this game. It’s not as challenging to play and player interaction is limited. However, my younger gaming group (11 and 13) love it! They love rolling the dice and allocating resources and goods and feeding their populations.

There is a solo-play option to this game and it is satisfactory; I prefer playing with others over the solo-play.

For use as an introductory game or as a nice way to start (or end) an evening, I would recommend it.

Happy gaming.

Thushyanthan