The Role of the Dice

There are worker placement games aplenty out there, but that's a big umbrella under which a lot of clever new innovations can be added. One that I'm beginning to see more frequently is using dice as the workers to be placed. The latest example I got to play is Coimbra, from designers Flaminia Brasini and Virginio Gigli.

Coimbra is set in ~16th century Portugal, and is about cultivating prestige around the country to capitalize on New World opportunities. It's likely more thought was put into theme than this, but the game presents in a fairly crunchy, mechanical way (which is a-okay with me): go here to do this, go there to do that, etc.

The mechanism for taking actions takes some getting used to, but provides some great decision making in a novel way. A pool of colored dice is rolled at the start of a round. Then play proceeds with each player drafting one die, snapping it into a plastic base of their own player color, and placing that as a worker. Color and value of the chosen die each play a role in what happens with each placement, and scarcity of either will affect your choices, limit your options, and increase competition with your opponents.

I won't go into all the things you can do with these dice workers, nor venture into the weeds of exactly how color and value affect things. Suffice it to say, there is a lot here. In fact, when the game was first explained to us, the sheer volume of everything prompted my husband to compare the game to the complex Teotihuacan: City of Gods. It's not that involved, though there is the similarity that both games use dice as workers -- and it is true that until you grow familiar with the system, you may forget aspects of your turn each time you take one. (That never cleared up for us with Teotihuacan; it mostly did in Coimbra.)

What I found tricky about Coimbra is knowing how well you're doing. It's easy to see what any one action you take does, understand what it gives you, and imagine that it'll probably be good for you overall. But it's much harder to tell if choice A or choice B really gives you more long-term benefit. The murky relationships between game elements, and the potential for what opponents can do to "mess things up" between your turns, are great enough that you really just can't know. That probably bodes well for the replayability of the game, but it does make the on-ramp steep... and with that comes the risk that you might not play it enough for that replayability to matter.

Another nod to replayability gives me similarly mixed feelings. The game has a lot of customizable, randomly selected elements in its setup. In each playthrough, different endgame conditions will be worth points. Also, four "king of the hill" reward tracks will be worth different benefits. Also, a shuffled deck of special abilities will change what you have access to and when (and though that deck is made up of shuffled stacks placed in the same order, the variance within a stack feels significant). Again, all of this feels great for replayability; this is not a game you'd be able to approach with the same strategy each time. But it also feels like there are so many levers that can be set in so many ways that not every combination could be fairly balanced or equally fun.

I would absolutely play Coimbra again. There is novelty in it that I am curious to explore further. But I also remain cautiously skeptical of the game. I feel like someone else in our gaming group would have to push playing it again to make that happen. I give it a B-.