Review
You can also roll for rubies
Istanbul Das Würfelspiel
Dice as assistants
After Istanbul the Board game was awarded Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2014, a card version of the game and another smaller version were only to be expected.
To begin with: Istanbul the Dice game relates to the board game only as regards to the graphic design and the topic but is excellently made and lots of fun.
My expectations about the game have been very high, as I like the board game exceedingly well. While reading through the rules I was a bit sceptic as I noticed immediately that Istanbul the dice game works very differently from Istanbul the board game. But already during the first game I was more than positively surprised by the game.
As in the board game, you must collect rubies in the dice game to win. The assistants, represented by discs in the board game, are here represented by dice.
Aim of the game is to be first to acquire six rubies, or, in case of four players, five rubies. Dice show four commodity symbols in colors of red, yellow, green and blue, the fifth side shows money and the sixth side a card symbol
At the start of the game you place the board on the table and place rubies on it according to the symbols on the board. Money (Lira) and commodity tokens are set out next to the board. Then the Bazar cards are shuffled and put face-down next to the board. You also shuffle the Mosque tiles and display six open-faced next to the board, the rest is stacked face-down.
The game is played in rounds. The active player rolls five dice.
He then has two actions to use the result of the roll to acquire money, crystals, cards, tokens or maybe even rubies.
You can use your dice result to:
· Take a commodity token for two dice showing this commodity symbol; a commodity token can be used instead of a die.
· Take a crystal for two different commodity symbols on dice; if you discard a crystal you can re-roll any number of dice.
· Take a brown commodity token for any three different commodity symbols. Brown tokens are jokers and replace any other commodity symbol or token.
· Take two commodity tokens for four different commodity symbols.
· Take two Lira (Money) for each money symbol.
· Reveal 1 Bazar card for each card symbol. Select one of the cards and resolve its action; if the card shows actions for all players, they can resolve the indicated action.
· The Mosque tiles show symbols in their top rows. To acquire a Mosque tile you must have rolled the indicated symbols or supplement the dice result with suitable commodity tokens. Mosque tiles are vey powerful and give you additional income or additional actions.
· The last and most important action is the acquisition of rubies by spending money or discarding of commodities; lacking symbols on dice can be replaced with commodity tokens.
Mosque tiles provide various additional actions:
· You receive three Lira at the start of your turn
· You may reveal one Bazar card at the start of your turn and implement the action indicated on the card.
· You receive one crystal at the start of your turn.
· When you do the action „take money“, you receive a commodity token of the depicted color.
· You can do one additional action in your turn.
· You roll one additional die.
The actions provided by Bazar cards are also very different and some of them are very powerful, especially the four cards that enable players to acquire a ruby directly, as you can take any ruby of your choice off the board.
Naturally, the chance element in this game is very dominant, as the dice results are the deciding factor. But as you must decide which dice you use in which way, the tactical element in the game is equally dominant, and the game is even strategically challenging.
In your turn, you always have several options and there are many different situations in which it it not easy to find the optimum move. Very often, the dilemma of selecting an optimum move for your result is challenging, as you of course cannot predict the result of the dice roll in your next turn and you therefore have problems to decide which commodity tiles to keep for next round.
The Mosque tiles very much enhance the tactical-strategic options, and yet it can happen that players who manage to achieve very good dice rolls can win without owning such Mosque tiles.
Nearly all games vary a lot during phases of the game, therefore the game has an extremely high replay value and provides fun for beginners as well as for experienced players.
Rüdiger Dorn has created a cute and fun game, which more than enough caters to high tactical-strategical demands of players despite its rather simple rules. The graphic design by Andreas Resch is very nice and also adds to the replay value of the game.
A rather interesting factor in all our games was the very different ways in which various players made us of similar or identical dice results for their actions. The options for the use of dice results are manifold and - depending on the player type of rather cautious or willing to take risks - the dice results are used very differently.
Conclusion: After quite a lot of plays, I like the dice game maybe a bit better than the board game, despite the fact that the board game is plannable a bit better. I can recommend the game to all kind of players; I would rate it as a family game, but it can provide lots of fun for very experienced players as well as for beginners.
Maria Schranz
Age: 8+
Time: 40+
Designer: Rüdiger Dorn
Artist: Andreas Resch
Price: ca. 18 Euro
Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2017
Web: www.pegasus.de
Genre: Roll dice
Users: For families
Version: multi
Rules: de en + fr nl pl
In-game text: no
Comments:
Simple, easy rules
Many action options
Chance balanced by tactical and strategic decisions
Compares to:
Cant’s Stop
Other editions:
AEG (en), Matagot (fr), Portal Games (pl), White Goblin Games (nl),
My rating: 6
Maria Schranz:
An excellent dice version of the board game, which transports the essential mechanisms very well; the board game, however, is a tad more plannable.
Chance (pink): 3
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 1
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0