Back to Minos!

❓Have you played 🏛️Minos: Dawn of the Bronze Age? 

It is a really fun euro mainly thanks to its dice action selection mechanism and the way you can tuck in cards to gain ongoing bonuses. We talked about some details of these so you can check our previous post on Minos if you missed it:

Let’s go back to the Bronze Age

We’ve had two colorful nature themed games from Board & Dice this year which are beautiful and fun, but I was happy to see them return to their staple ancient history theme for their 3rd big release of the year. 😊 This is 🏛️Minos: Dawn of the Bronze Age which is

Board Game DiariesReni & Kristóf

The game is played over 4 rounds, with a scoring phase at the end of the 2nd and 4th rounds. In a round you will first draft dice 🎲 in turn order and place them on actions, then execute actions one at a time, each player starting with their highest value dice first. When every action is done you get some income and prepare for the next round.

Resource management is interesting. 🧐 While there are only 2 main resources, coins 💰 and weapons 🪓, there are also 6 types of goods 🌾 that give you discounts when constructing buildings or playing cards. You can have one-time goods tokens or permanent ones - ☝️ getting a nice array of permanent goods is essential.

Another big element of Minos is the map 🗺️ on the main board. There is no direct combat in the game, yet there is a contest for multiple things. Each region can only hold one city and you can only build towers next to cities. There are also Sea People you can defeat for bonuses, who are limited in numbers. For building Farms there are actually less overall regions than farms of players, so you have to be fast. It can get a bit tight. 🤼

📊Tracks have a major role too, both the 3 columns of civilization and the 3 ship trading tracks. Ascending on them is both helpful for ongoing income and one-time effects, and each step feels good. 👍

The only negative I can mention is the size of the board. While I generally think bigger boards are better, some games definitely overdo this, so a big table is a must. 🙉 Other than that I am not convinced that all the asymmetric player abilities are on a par in power level. 🤔

In summary, Minos is a fun time, one of the surprises of the year for us. The dice drafting action selection is really creative and the setup has a big variability. That coupled with the clever card play results in a replayable and engaging mid-heavy euro. 😊