Roll for Adventure Board Game - A Fantasy Adventure With Dice | Review

In the Roll for Adventure board game, you fight together against tree strangler, ghouls and cave trolls, using your heroes’ special abilities to gain enough power tokens before the enemies overrun you..

Help. The Master of Shadows has already reappeared and is attacking us and not only that, all the other enemies that have not yet been defeated as well. All the more important now to agree exactly what the active player’s priorities should be when using his dice. First heal in the desert area to prevent imminent death and thus the defeat of all? Or would it be better to let the master flatten the shadow first? And what about the almost full point bar in the forest area, shortly before reaching the next power stone?

Roll for Adventure is a cooperative dice game with a fantasy theme for 2 to 4 players. At first we were a little sceptical: simply rolling the dice in turn doesn’t sound that exciting at first. But let’s get one thing straight from the start: the Roll for Adventure board game is much more than that!

Does this game come down to dice luck or strategy?

How successful is the implementation of the fantasy theme?

And for whom is the Roll for Adventure board game suitable?

We explore these questions in our review, also explain the most important game principles and give our final assessment in the conclusion.

Note on transparency: Kosmos-Verlag kindly sent us a free copy of the game for review. However, this is neither remunerated nor agreed upon in terms of content and reflects our honest opinion.

The Roll for Adventure Board Game at a Glance

• Game type: Cooperative fantasy dice game, family game
• Age: 10 years and up
• Players: 2 – 4 players
• Duration: approx. 30 min.
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Game author: Matthew Dunstan & Brett J. Gilbert
• Year of publication: 2018
• Game objective: Fight monsters and collect power stones together in four fantasy areas to finally defeat the Master of Shadows.

Kosmos Spiele 692988 Roll for Adventure

49,90 EUR

How to Play the Roll for Adventure Board Game

The game plan consists of 4 areas

The Roll for Adventure board game offers many possibilities for variation. For the first game, however, it is advisable to choose the simplest variant, as the rules of the game suggest. To do this, you assemble the board from 4 pieces, which you turn to the side marked A and put together. They represent 4 different areas in which the adventurers or players can gain power stones or bonus cubes, but can also be attacked by enemies at any time: a forest, an ice cave, a desert and a gloomy castle.
In each of these areas there are now different arrangements of dice fields where you can place dice with a matching number. Once you have fulfilled the objective of the area, you can earn a power stone or, in the case of the ice cave, bonus dice. The aim of the game is always to obtain a certain number of power stones, in the simplest variant “Book of Power” this is 5.

But that alone is not enough to win Roll for Adventure! Because from a deck of cards, each turn a new enemy is revealed and attacks the heroes in one of the areas. And that means: either a cube is removed from the area and ends up in the vortex of oblivion in the middle of the game board. Or if there is no cube in the area, the enemy causes damage here, which is indicated in each of the regions by a damage bar with a mini skull moving forward. If even one of the 4 damage bars is full, all players immediately lose.

A Turn in the Roll for Adventure Board Game

Only dice with the same number of points may be set at any one time

At the beginning, each player has 5 dice of his player colour (yellow, green, red or blue). He now rolls the dice and sets the dice, always setting one or more dice with the same number of points together. He repeats the whole thing with the remaining dice until all his dice are in place. There are several ways to do this:

1. To an area in order to unlock a power stone or bonus dice here at some point and also to offer “fodder” to enemies in this area and not collect death points
2. On an enemy not yet defeated – Each enemy must be defeated with 6 or more eyes, so e.g. a 6, two 3s, a 2 and a 4, a 3 and a 4 etc.
3. On the Whirlpool of Memory – If there are 10 or more eyes here, the dice from the Whirlpool of Oblivion come back into play and are dealt to the respective players
4. For some special abilities, e.g. Heal, a die must be placed on the player’s hero board

When using the dice, it is important to consider how best to proceed strategically. The dice placed in an area are only returned to the players when it is full or the respective condition in this area has been fulfilled and a power stone or bonus dice has been gained. If enemies attack in an area where cubes are lying, one of them per enemy (in the forest also two) goes into the vortex of oblivion, from which they can only be retrieved with the help of the vortex of memory.

The Enemies and the Master of Shadows

The dreaded Master of Shadows appears

If the enemies are not defeated quickly enough, they pile up all around the playing field and the common thing is: every enemy of a higher rank always triggers the attack of all still undefeated enemies of a lower rank.

Most dangerous, however, is the Master of Shadows – this arch-villain is shuffled into the middle of the enemy pile at the beginning of the game, but after he has attacked the first time, he always comes back into the rest of the pile. Not only does he himself attack an area with double strength, he also always triggers the attack of all enemies still on the table. That can be quite devastating.
The normal enemies are always of a certain type, which determines where they attack, e.g. a sandworm unsurprisingly in the desert, a tree strangler in the forest, etc. But which area the Master of Shadows attacks is chosen each time with a special die. This shows each area once, once all four and once none at all. We had the great luck with his first attack that he did not attack any area at all, but only triggered the not yet defeated enemies.

Heroes’ Special Abilities

The Daredevil gets to roll dice again

There are 10 different hero boards in the Roll for Adventure board game, from which players can either deliberately choose their character or draw them at random. Each hero has a special ability, although these proved to be of varying strength in several rounds. I was the healer in the first game and so, if I wanted to, I could place any of my dice on my hero board every time it was my turn and thus heal one point of damage in an area. To do this, you simply move the little skull backwards by one point.

The shieldmaiden can defeat an enemy with 4 or more points instead of 6. The frost runner may move a cube from the ice cave to another area if he also places at least one cube there. Other roles include the swashbuckler, the protector, the summoner and others.

Other Possible Variations

The treasure chest contains power stones and removed blockades

On the one hand, each area (desert, castle, forest, ice cave) has a different A-side and a slightly heavier B-side, so that by combining them you can build up a total of 16 different playing fields. On the other hand, there are further options for providing variety and new challenges through the choice of hero boards and the possibility of mixing other particularly nasty special opponents such as dragons, giants and the phantom into the cards in addition to the Master of Shadows.

The level of difficulty can be scaled via these decisions, as well as additionally via the selection of the adventure map. This shows how many power stones (from 5 to 8) have to be collected. In this way, the Roll for Adventure board game can be wonderfully adapted to the group of players with whom one is playing.

Rating and Conclusion

Four 2s remove the eleventh blockade in the castle and bring a power stone

Rating

The Roll for Adventure board game is all about good teamwork and playing as a team. In general, it can be said that it is a good faster alternative to other cooperative fantasy games or even pen & paper games that take several hours. You don’t have to block the whole weekend for this game 😉

Pro and Con

The Whirlpool of Memory brings back lost cubes

The game instructions are extensive, but you get into Roll for Adventure really quickly, even if you don’t have all the rules in your head right away. Kosmos also offers an app that conveniently reads out the rules. It’s also a great help because you don’t play alone anyway, but together. This means that you can consult with the others at every turn, which also makes the game extremely communicative. This is one of the great strengths of the game. Even though each player is ultimately responsible for how he uses the dice he rolls, it is crucial to play well together and develop a common strategy.

The implementation of the fantasy theme and the artwork of the game is extremely well done, so that not only younger players’ imagination is stimulated. Even the markers in the death bars are designed as miniature skulls. What more could you want?

The only thing that could bother you about the Roll for Adventure board game is that everything revolves around rolling the dice, which of course means that dice luck plays a very important role. However, this is balanced out by the many strategic possibilities to use a dice result. And thanks to the numerous variations, Roll for Adventure offers a high potential for replay.

For Whom Is the Roll for Adventure Board Game Worthwhile?

We enjoy all kinds of games, but rarely has a game caused so much spontaneous enthusiasm in the group right from the start as this one. The fact that this is a cooperative game automatically makes for a nice community experience and therefore also makes it a great family game according to the motto “together through thick and thin”.

If you don’t like dice games, find fantasy silly and prefer to play competitively alone against everyone else, you won’t be able to do anything with Roll for Adventure. For everyone else, we can only warmly recommend the board game!

Conclusion

With the right team of intrepid and imaginative heroes, the dice game Roll for Adventure becomes a gateway to a world of adventure and never-ending fun

Cooperative fantasy games like Roll for Adventure are just what you’re looking for? Then take a look at The Legends of Andor. You’ll also find lots more family board games on our website, as well as general ideas for activities with friends, activities with kids or even as a couple.

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