At The Office

• Designer: Renier Knizia
• Publisher: Trefl
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Trefl

At the Office is a roll-and-write game in which you roll five dice, choose a result, and assign it to a member of your team on the score sheet. When the active player chooses one result of the roll, it becomes unavailable to others. You need to consider the big picture and manage your team to score as many points as possible and win the title of Boss of the Year. Grab some pencils and dice, and get to work!

To start, give each player an empty sheet.  The office workers are found in a pyramid in the majority of the sheet.  To the right, there are competence bonus squares.  To the left, you will see bonus spaces for efficient use of resources and a leadership track.  At the bottom, you see spaces for efficient organization of your teams.

The active player picks up the 5 dice and rolls them; examines the roll and chooses one of the colored to be his personal dice – it is unavailable to the other players. Any other colored dice that show the same number are also unavailable.  The remaining colored dice and the white die (which is always available) remain on the table to be used.

Now, each player uses the numbers available to them and writes it on their worksheet – there are three possible options:

• You can sum a colored die and sum it with the white die; then this number can be written on a worker space that matches the color of the colored die
• You can write the number on the white die on any space
• You can use a colored die alone, write that number on a space of matching color, also crossing off an efficient-use square with a number in it equal to the number on the white die.  You will score points if you are able to not use the same number 4 times.

If you write a number on the fifth (and final) worker of a color, announce it. If you are the first player to do this, you score 20 points and write this number in the colored box at the bottom of the pyramid.  All players who do this on the same turn get the 20 point bonus.

If you write a number on the fifth (and final) worker with glasses, announce it. If you are the first player to do this, you score 20 points and write this number in the grey box with glasses at the bottom of the pyramid.  All players who do this on the same turn get the 20 point bonus

As you finish a row of the pyramid, sum the numbers of the workers in that pyramid, and write the number in the first box on the right.  If your sum is equal or above the threshold for that line, score 10 points in the rightmost box.

Pass the die to the next player who then rolls all 5 dice and the process is repeated.  This is done 20 times until all the spaces on the worksheet are filled in.  Then the game is scored.

• Efficient use of resources – 10/20/30 for sets of not using 1s/2s/3s
• Color and Glasses bonus – 20 points for each achieved first
• Competence – sum both columns on the right of your sheet; you score these sums
• Leadership – starting at the second row, look at each space. Tick the leadership box for a space if the number in that space is equal or greater than both workers directly below.  Then count up how many boxes are ticked and score based on the chart on the lower left.

The player with the most points wins. There is no tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

There have been a lot of roll and write games in the past few years, and I’ll be the first to admit that I once was in love with the genre, and then they started to feel a bit same-y, and my enthusiasm was dampened.  I haven’t played as many of the new RAW games in the past few years, but I was convinced to try this one out due the fact it had been designed by Reiner Knizia.

The first few plays have been interesting enough, again in part possibly to having taken a relative break from the genre.  But, the scoring here feels multilayered without being confusing; and, as a result, the player has a number of different things to think about with each decision, and this is what makes the game interesting.

On most turns, you have the option of both small and large numbers (usually depending on whether or not you choose to sum dice or not).  Then, depending on which number you choose, this will probably determine where on the grid you want to slot the number. 

On the whole, you lean towards high numbers as each number you write down scores itself at the end.  However, careful placement of the numbers will let you get more leadership squares ticked which can be a huge bonus – and this of course causes you to want possibly the smaller numbers.  Smaller numbers also may let you work towards an efficiency bonus.

While you’re thinking about all of these things, you are also in a race of sorts for the organization bonuses of the colors and the glasses.  Thus, as you can see, there are lots of different things to think about with each roll.

As the active player gets to set aside a die (or dice) for themselves – the sheets diverge fairly quickly; I’d venture to say it is nearly impossible for sheets to be identical after the first round of turns.  everyone ends up wanting different things; and this keeps everyone interested in the goings on.

Scoring is what you’d expect for a Knizia – complicated but not confusing.  And again, the multiple ways to score points gives players plenty of options.  At the Office admittedly feels pretty old school for a RAW, but it was a breath of fresh air to me, and one that I’m glad I picked up at Spiel 2023.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (1 play): This feels like a throwback to the early days of the RAW boom, with a reliance on an interesting scoring system rather than on unlocking bonus actions and filling in tracks. This is fine with me since I tend to like those more; many more recent RAW (and flip-and-write, etc.) games strike me as too complicated for their own good, layering too much on top of the basic RAW mechanism. It can’t support that much weight.

Craig M. (2 plays): I’m pretty much in agreement with everything Dale said and Dan too. Roll and writes have started to feel like more and more of the same thing, especially those that have you shooting for unlocking and chaining bonuses for extra scoring or actions. At the Office takes a simpler approach which focuses on tough choices and as a result the game feels fresh. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Mark Jackson, Dan B., Craig M. 
• Neutral. Steph H
• Not for me…