Minos A Dawn of the Bronze age, from Board and Dice, called Minos from here onwards is a dice placement game, that also throws in area majority, combo building, variable player powers and well the only thing it doesn’t include is tile laying. Now it’s important to say upfront that I have enjoyed Minos, and I’d happily play it again, but for its faults. It’s probably not that great, or maybe you can overlook them.
On the face of it, Minos is its most thinky in terms of dice drafting and placement. Although there is a fair bit of thinking when it comes to utilising those dice, but you’ll have your actions and action order determined, so you’ll just need to plan what you’ll do with them.
Minos takes place over 4 rounds, and each round works the same way. Apart from the end of rounds 2 and 4, there’s some scoring. You’ll start the game by drafting player powers and starting resources, taking it in turns to choose one, and then, next time, picking the other, allowing you to prioritise powers or starting resources. Although, if you’re later in turn order, you’ll basically draft whatever everyone else didn’t draft as you know what you’re getting.
Each round follows the structure of rolling dice, drafting, and placing dice, actions, and then production. The most interesting of these phases are dice drafting and placement, and actions. During dice drafting, you’ll take it in turns to choose an available dice, place it in one of your colour stands, and then place it on an action. If you’re the first to place, you’ll take the left most. Of there’s already another players dice there, and your dice is lower, you’ll bump them to the right. Or if your dice is the same value or higher than previously placed dice, you’ll place to the right. The left most action of each type is generally the strongest. However, the other actions generally have a bonus, which can be just as appealing.
After everyone has claimed dice, you’ll then look to progress on technology tracks. For every value 9 or more you can make in a colour (with grey being wild), you’ll progress up the matching track. So again, another consideration when drafting dice, lower values mean you’ll most likely get the better versions of the action. But higher dice give you the action, a bonus, and potentially a combination of value 9.
The action phase sees players in turn order using their highest dice and taking the corresponding action. These actions; prepare (draw cards), develop (play cards), build (place things on the board), expand (place and move warriors), and wild (do any other action). Now, I could go into each action into more detail, but I’m not sure there’s a real benefit to that. Rather, let’s talk about some of the key considerations.
Resources in Minos are interesting, in the sense that they are permanent unless you claim a temporary good. And you’ll need these goods to essentially make everything cheaper. You don’t need resources, so to speak to play cards, it just makes them cheaper. You equally don’t need resources to place buildings. It just makes them cheaper.
Throw in royal traits, which are essentially cards you’ve placed in your palace or, in other words, below your player board. These are generally whenever you do x get y. Royal traits are interesting in that you can, during income, move a number of cards into your palace. These can come from above your player board or your hand at the cost of victory points. There are other ways you can place more cards into your palace, predominantly by playing cards.
There’s a sense of enjoyment I’ve had with Minos in its combo building and way that you’re almost able to plan your actions and what you’ll do once dice are placed. As there’s largely little to no player interaction apart from the blocking during dice placement, and I guess someone may take a card you want from the market. But otherwise, you can largely get on with your game plan. Now, there is a central board, but as I’ve alluded to above, this is area majority rather than control, or maybe just “dominance” and “control.” There’s no conflict or battles between the players. It’s more a check during building to make sure you’re able to build.
There’s a level of enjoyment as your combos come together. And see yourself working towards several goals. Maybe plans are better (I’ll come back to that). And I’m all for a combo style game, Minos feels Deus like, but also, there’s a sprinkling of Terraforming Mars here for me in the card play. Essentially, you’re going to always going to end up with more stuff, and resources generally never felt in a super short supply. As the game progresses, your income generally increases, and it becomes a decision of what should I do, instead of what can I do, as the options are plentiful.
However, for all that planning and stuff, I’m not sure there are really all that many paths to victory. See, you’ll score points for area majority, area presence, farms, cards, player boards, and resources. However, two of those offer the most points cards played into your palace, assuming you didn’t pay points to play them. And the area dominance/presence, which will score you big points. Having a presence in a region will score you points based on your position on the blue track, plus bonus points for dominance if you’ve placed towers. Effectively meaning you can easily score 30-40 at the end of the game.
This creates the scenario where, if you haven’t gone in fairly heavy into area presence, you’re probably not going to win. The other ways to score don’t compare. A card might score you anywhere from 2 to 6 points, which you may have paid those points to play! Having a warrior in a region at the end of the game is 4 points versus saying, putting 2 or 3 warriors in a single region for 6 points (potentially 8 if you upgraded your towers)
Now you might say, but Aaron, not everyone can build towers. Here’s the thing, there’s enough spaces on the board that everyone can build all their buildings. The only prerequisite for buildings is generally the area that needs to not have one of those building types already. So there’s more than enough spaces, and as there’s no direct conflict, you’ll never remove someone else’s stuff. You can look to control a region by overloading it with warriors, but when you get so much more for presence at the same progress level, you’ll probably go via that route.
And I’ll be first to admit, I have enjoyed my time with Minos. There’s an enjoyment here that has grown with more plays. But I feel like I’ve probably seen everything the game has to offer in 4 plays. Now, that isn’t a bad thing, but it feels like the way to play for a win is a clear one. I, of course, haven’t seen all the cards, and I probably haven’t seen all the tokens, but there isn’t anything else to mix up the game play. Yes, there are player powers, and each changes one element of the game. None of these feel particularly stronger than the other. They generally offer a “get stuff” power, and I wish they were a bit more than that.
My other issue is that after 4 plays, each game has generally seen everyone achieve a lot. I mean, pretty much all their buildings on the board, completing vases and making good progress on all the tracks (progress and trade), completing a few of them too. This also comes in where in two of those 4 games, taking the warrior move as the last action in rounds 2 and 4 feels incredibly strong as you can math it out quite simply for the reasons I’ve outlined above.
Now, despite this, Minos’ biggest appeal is probably also its biggest flaw inducing mechanism. The dice drafting and placement is thrilling and offers a level of decision-making that is engaging but also oh so time-consuming. See your drafting dice to:
a) later take that action
b) consider the value to determine what level of that action
c) Consider the colour of the dice for progress tracks
d) consider the value of the dice for potential progress on tracks
That throws in multiple considerations, which creates some great decision-making space between values of dice, action selection, and track progression. But that falls apart once you realise you’ll likely achieve a lot in each game.
And let’s not ignore that the action phase itself also takes some time. Yes, you know what order you’ll take your actions in, so in theory, you might plan. “I’ll play this card with develop and this card. “I’ll then move that warrior to there and then build a city.” However, it quickly adds up in terms of game time, our games have ranged from about 90 minutes at two players to closer to 5 hours with 4 players and 2 1/2-3 hours with 3 players. And that doesn’t include a teach, as we agreed each time to prelearn the game for playing.
I’ve been trying to understand why, and I think a player in our game last week got it in one, “it’s fiddly rules.” (Fiddly meaning awkward or detailed or complex). And I think that’s it. Every action has a sub step or further explanation that just adds that a bit more. Now the rulebook isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great.
For example, the round structure is explained up to clean up, but then scoring phases/next age preparation is skipped and at the end of the book. Scoring and setup for the next age should probably be mentioned in the round structure. We also debated in two different games what “uncovered benefit is.” Now this is clarified on the iconography index as to the points being end of rounds scoring and resource being immediate, but the rules as written say gain the uncovered benefit. You don’t technically uncover any benefit as they aren’t underneath buildings but rather printed below. time will tell.
On a really practical level, the components are great and great quality, as are all Board and Dice games. But, as much as I love the individual player, dice holders. I found that sitting above the board is actually a challenge because you can’t see all the action icons (I thought it was just me thing and asked a player to swap seats, they agreed). I also personally found the rules referring to “score the value in the left, scores the values in the right,” and doing that upside down meant I needed to reverse it. Normally, that’s clarified on a player aid or rulebook in scoring. Here, it’s not the case. It’s clarified on the progress tracks.
I think it might sound like I dislike Minos, and I’ll be honest, I don’t it just has its flaws. As much as I’ve enjoyed the way all the mechanisms come together to allow you to build these combos and for that reason alone, I’d happily play again. I think I am in a few weeks’ time. But it’s things that I think need to be considered or at least have an awareness of.
As you know, I rate games on a scale of:
Buy or play
Wait for sale or play if you like game XYZ
Avoid
Minos isn’t a game I hate, far from it. However, I don’t think it’s a £60-70 game. It’s a £40 game for me, and that’s one reason why it gets a wait for sale recommendation. But it’s also a play if you like Coimbra (I think the dice mechanism has similarities), I think the Artemis project also has a very similar mechanism here. There’s also combo building here that I found immensely satisfying, with the potential to do thing after thing, feels Tiletum like. I’m also confused by the 3.79 weight rating, Minos doesn’t feel like it meets that level of complexity, so I suspect it’ll come down. The complexity is definitely in the dice placement. The designer also designed Dice Hospital, and there’s some similarities here. Although there is more going on here, the way the dice are utilised feels similar.
Overall, I’d play Minos again, but I’d never play at 4 players, and I’d probably need to ensure that there’s no AP prone players at the table. As Minos would just grind to an even bigger halt!
