Nations: The Dice Game Review

In 1968, Marvin Gaye raced up the pop charts with his hit “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” which later became the anthem of all hit board games that tried to turn their smashing success into a card or dice version. Yeah, I realize designers are attempting to use cards and dice to make their great title smarter and faster, while still preserving the flavor and feel of their more complex inspirations. Alas, they should have heeded Marvin as he lamented, “I read your letters when you're not near me, but they don't move me, and they don't groove me like when I hear your sweet voice whispering in my ear.” Ooh, baby.

Now before it sounds like I’m about to go all Gordon Ramsay on this one, let me be clear. Nations: The Dice Game is a fine design. However, if you’re a fan of the original Nations, be aware that its cube-chucking offspring is a completely different experience. It may use the same artwork, concepts and terminology. But as with anything else that tries to fool you into believing it’s the real thing – like pyrite, Coke Zero and the Vice Presidency – it ain’t.

The unfortunate thing is it doesn’t have to mislead people. Nations Dice is a light, fast-paced, down and dirty dice game. You’ll develop your empire with the flick of a wrist, rolling custom dice to acquire the most fundamental of imperial resources: gold, food, stone, knowledge and sharp swords. Everyone begins the game with the same pool of basic dice. You’ll roll these and spend your results to draft/buy development tiles from a central market. These represent buildings, historical figures, wonders of the world and colonies. All of them give you better dice and/or renewable resource tokens towards future purchases. You can also acquire re-roll chits to try your luck at altering unhelpful tosses.

Dice are not used only for purchasing tiles, though, so you might want to reserve some of those resources for later phases. At the end of a round you score books, earning points for having more wisdom than other nations. Then you need food to adequately feed your people, scoring more points. You can also score from war if you have an appropriate number of swords. Famine and warfare are extremely abstract. A random tile dictates how much of their respective resources you need. You don’t lose anything from failing to meet that demand and you’re not attacking other players directly.

The game endures four ages. That’s four as in number of rounds, not for ages as in the expression meaning it goes on forever. With each new round, tiles provide better swag and victory points, but the costs to prevent famine and wage war go up, too.

Nations Dice is a solid dice game with all of the genre’s advantages and limitations. It’s easy to learn and moves quickly. There are smart choices to make, yet it doesn’t overwhelming you with options. The well-organized player boards, and how the design uses tiles and tokens, are very intuitive. Both are helpful because there’s more going on here as compared to other, simple dice games. As you improve, you can gauge your civilization’s development at a glance. The growing display of tiles, tokens and dice evince a real sense of progress.

While it conveys the sense of nation-building, it’s rather generic and won’t appease anyone looking to replace titles like Civilization, Clash of Cultures or its namesake Nations. Simply put, this isn’t a civ-builder with dice, as much as it’s a dice game with a brushed on civilization theme. In one sense, that’s fine. The elements work together and the only disadvantage it has to other dice games is it lasts a tad longer than it should. On the other hand, it could have offered just a couple tweaks to really stress its civ-building attributes. It suffers from scripted turns, obvious choices and stale play over time. A little variation in buildings, wonders and leaders would address those problems, although it might also add unnecessary fiddliness. However, the biggest missed opportunity is a lack of variable player powers. The four empires include Rome, Greece, Egypt and Persia, yet I have no clue why. There is absolutely no difference between them. Each culture could have a unique ability without sacrificing simplicity. The oversight is rather glaring.

Still the largest issue is its brand recognition, which ironically most companies strive to achieve. Therefore, the biggest public service contribution would be to warn people not to expect simply a distilled version of the Nations board game. I demoed this probably 50 times at Origins and overwhelmingly comments expressed disappointment that it was not. Unfortunately, that preconception clouded most players’ view on the design. They experienced a restrictive and generic abstract when they expected a civ-builder with some rich and deep strategy, only quicker. Rather Nations Dice is a very light dice game with the thematic veneer and symbolism of empire building. As a dice game, it works. As a civilization game, it passes for what it is. As a successor to Nations, it falls flat. Rather than trying to cash in on the name, designer and publisher may have found broader appeal with a different title and look, even while retaining the civilization theme.

I’m not a big fan of porting popular board games to dice and card versions. Most seems like a blatant cash grab based on the real thing’s success. With some of those, sadly the ploy isn’t even necessary. Nations: The Dice Game stands apart from its inspiration. Indeed, it has little to do with it, and that’s fine. It is limited in its scope, as dice games are inclined to be. Yet it offers a bit more than usual. And as longs as you’re not expecting an immersive civ-building game, or even a streamlined one, this quick roller can still be smart and groovy.