Time to put your skills to the test and prove you’re the best in the west! Plan and construct buildings to create the greatest town you can and earn yourself the title of Mayor of Tumble Town! Choose your buildings wisely so that they can help you build more, bigger, and better buildings as you go. Ready to prove yourself? Let’s get started!
What Is It?
A western themed dice rolling and engine building game for 1-4 players. On their turns, players choose a building card and gain dice to attempt to construct that building. They can keep the results they roll or use abilities they have from other buildings to manipulate the results into what they need. Players can earn more ways to manipulate dice by constructing certain buildings, or can go for buildings with one time bonuses or more ways to score at game’s end. Buildings are all worth points on their own as well. When constructing, players can gain additional points for placing buildings in certain configurations on their Main Street boards. Once at least 2 dice colors have 2 or fewer dice, players finish the round and tally their points, with the highest scoring player being crowned Best in the West!
Who Is It For?
- Ages 8+
- Families
- Players looking for something that plays fairly quickly
- 1-4 players — works at any player count
- Fans of dice rolling
- Related to that, players who don’t mind plenty of luck (dice + cards)
Components / Quality
There are 100 dice! All average quality plastic pip dice. The gold dice are the nicest because they’re the only marbled ones, and I wish they had all had that little touch added to them. There’s also a nice dice tower included, which I thought was neat. It was easy to put together, thematically fitting, and it fits in the box assembled, which is a great bonus.
The first player token is a nice, small wooden cactus. The cardboard tokens are all pretty standard quality, iconography is clear on them.
Cards have a nice finish on them, they shuffle with ease and are clearly labeled so you know which deck they belong in. All iconography is very clear, but there are also some nice reference cards which is always great to have.
The Main Street player boards are nice quality and have some variety, which I appreciate. I did think the way they were printed was weird though because when you place the dice in what looks like the designated spots, you can’t clearly see the scoring objectives anymore, so I wish the placement spots had been above the objectives instead of below.
The score card was simple but has everything that you need to remember when scoring laid out well. It also comes with a ton of sheets.
The rules are well written, laid out nicely, easy to learn from. I thought it was weird that the variant and solo rules were in a separate booklet instead of just at the end of the main rule book. It’s not a big deal, but I I just prefer having a single rule book personally. Finally, the box has a great, colorful cover, and is a nice size for what’s in it. The insert works well with the contents which is always awesome.
Variants / Expansions
No Main Street – For this, just don’t use the player boards where you place the buildings you construct for extra points. It’s okay if maybe you’re playing with a younger audience, but in general, I would recommend playing with at least the “easy” board because it’s a nice little way to boost points that isn’t too difficult.
Surplus Variant – When playing with less than 4 players, don’t remove any dice from the supply. This one is good for extending the game by a little bit, because games can often end fairly quickly. Not a big change here.
Solo – There are actually a few solo modes; you can play on your own, against an “outlaw” or in a solo surveyor mode. The game plays fairly similarly to multiplayer, so it’s nice that there’s not much of a learning curve, and it’s nice to have the option of trying it alone. Plays very quickly usually.
Mission Mode – Kind of campaign-esque, players need to reach score goals as well as requirements in order to move on (kind of like Phase 10, for an easy comparison). Tricky because games can sometimes end so quickly that you don’t score very high, but a neat option to change the game up.
Round-Up – A mini expansion of only a few cards. There are some new 3-cacti buildings to add into the mix, which I like for more variety in scoring options. There are also wild horses which can have an end game scoring condition (i.e. 1 point for each building with a unique requirement) or a criteria the player most meet for points (i.e. worth 5 points if they build with more black dice than any other material). These were okay but I didn’t think they added enough to the game to be worth it. Some seemed much easier to gain points off of than others, as some were just too specific.
PROS
- Easy to learn
- Thematic dice tower included
- Art is simple but draws you into the theme
- Lots of variety / strategy options
- Doesn’t force you to be punished for bad rolls – you can take penalties to construct with the wrong numbers/colors, or you can pass and try to construct later. Love that option.
CONS
- My biggest con was that it always ended too quickly. It’s a light engine builder, so I’m not expecting a super long game, but every time I felt like I was getting a good combination of buildings, the dice would run out and the game would be over. I did multiple plays (solo and multiplayer) and while some were longer than others, I always just wanted there to be more time to get an engine going with my cards.
Final Thoughts
I generally like dice driven games a lot because rolling dice is my favorite thing in games. I thought this was extra neat because you also get to stack the dice into little buildings, haha! But really, I thought there was a lot of options for strategies – i.e. starting with 1 cactus cards versus 3 cacti, focusing more on card abilities or your horse’s scoring symbol, et cetera – which was nice. But ultimately, every game ended too quickly for me, leaving me feeling like it was just an okay game, for me. I just wanted to be able to build up a larger repertoire of cards to manipulate my dice, but I’d still recommend this to the right group. If you’re looking for a fairly quick dice game that’s great for a wide range of players and ages, then this might be an awesome choice for you!
My Final Ratings:
Overall Game – 6/10
Aesthetics – 6/10
Replay Value – 5/10
Difficulty – 4/10
*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*
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