Dice Manor

• Designer: Garrett Herdter
• Publisher: Arcane Wonders / Dice Tower Essentials
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Arcane Wonders

The publisher says: World-renowned property developers Mundane Manors Inc. are tired of making the same old boring “dream” homes! The corporate suits are looking to rebrand, and they’ve challenged you, their designers, to dream BIG and create the most lavish homes ever imagined. The player who is able to build – and market – the most magnificent manor will be victorious! Over four rounds, players will use their dice to bid for blueprints, earn advertising space, collect Inspiration tokens and give early tours of their manor. All leading up to the final round where it’s time for the Grand Opening of their completed manors – in the hopes of earning the most praise from the community. The player who gets the most prestige (Victory Points) is the winner!

The project board is set up on the table and one room of each type is placed next to it in the appropriate spots. Each player takes all the stuff of their color (9 dice, Entrance tile).  2 of the dice are placed to the right of the Advertising area on the main board. The other 7 start in the player area. Each player also gets 2 Inspiration tokens and a player aid.

The game is played in 4 rounds, each with 4 phases.

1] Bid – In order, a player will roll all unplaced dice, then choose all the dice of a single value, and place these dice among the legal locations.  At any point in the game, you can use your Inspiration tokens to either change a die by a single value (1 rolls to 6) or choose any number of dice to re-roll.

You can bid for a room by placing dice matching the number of the blueprint on the main board.  Place your dice above any previous bids with fewer dice, and place your dice below any bids that have the same number or more as you.  You can later add to a bid and then move your group of dice accordingly. 

You can place on the Advertising track. There are 3 spaces on the track from left to right. Similar to the blueprint bid, place your bid to the left of smaller bids (number of dice) and to the right of same or larger bids.  In this case, rank can break ties amongst groups of the same number of dice.

You can conduct a manor tour – place a die in your still under construction manor. You must start at the entrance tile and then each room afterwards must be connected to a tile with a die already in it.  You will score prestige at the end of each turn where you place dice in your manor per the chart on the player aid – based on the number of dice placed that turn.

2]  Collect – 

Resolve each Blueprint space, from #1 to #6. The player whose bid is highest (i.e. the most dice) takes the tile. All other bidding players get an Inspiration token.  Everyone takes their dice back.

Resolve Advertising – the player in the leftmost space (1st) moves 2 spaces on the Advertising track, scoring Prestige for each step.  The player in the second space moves 1 space and gets the prestige.  Everyone else gets 1 Inspiration token.  Then, all players move their closest bonus die 1 space to the left for each die they bid.  If a Bonus die ever moves into the same space as your Advertising marker, you get to claim that die.

Reward Manor Tours – score 1 Prestige for each die in your Manor

3] Build – Add newly gained rooms to your manor. They may be rotated, but they must connect door to door and you may not have a door that connects to a wall at any point.  You must also keep your front door free.

4] Reset – advance the round marker, rotate the first player marker and place a new room  tile in each of the blueprint spaces.

After four rounds, there is a special Grand Opening Tour round.  Here, all players play simultaneously.  All unplaced dice are rolled and then all dice of one value are chosen and then placed into the manor. Any dice which are chosen but cannot be legally placed are placed near the front door as an Unhappy Guest.  Repeat the process with unplaced dice until either all dice are placed/Unhappy.  At the end of the phase, you gain 3 Prestige per die in your manor.

The final scoring comprises four different bonuses

Color majority – the player with the most rooms in a color gets 12 Prestige, 2nd most gets 6 Prestige.  Note the Purple Rooms count as one room of each color connected to it.

Manor Diversity – score points based on the the number of different room types you have in your Manor

Leftover Inspiration – Score 1 Prestige for each 2 unused Inspiration markers

Largest Manor – 12 points to the largest manor (most rooms), 6 points to second most.

The player with the most Prestige wins the game, ties broken in favor of the player with the most rooms in their manor.

My thoughts on the game

Dice Manor is part auction game, part polyomino building/puzzle game, part dice placement game – flowing between all of these characteristics as the game plays out.   For me, the game is mostly a tactical one – as you can’t do any planning until you roll your dice, and then if you don’t roll exactly what you want (which obviously never happens for me), you can try to use your Inspiration tokens to mold your roll into something closer to what you want.

The bidding for the tiles works fine, but is also wonky at times.  As you are forced to use dice with a specific value at each of the 6 bidding sites, the perfect tile might be available for bid, but you might not have a chance of winning it if you simply don’t roll the right number.  This means that sometimes auctions are fiercely contested as players have the ability to roll and re-roll a specific number, but then at other times, someone just sneaks in with a few dice to get a building piece that no one else was able to bid on.  

While that sometimes feels odd, the upside is that you always have something to do with your dice.   At worst, just chuck it down in an auction to get an Inspiration token.  You can also try to place them in the advertising track, gaining both Inspiration in the short term as well as working towards unlocking more dice in the long term – and of course, in a game where you bid with dice, it’s always better to have more of them to roll!

For me, the game also has a bit of a deckbuilder transition feel to it – there comes a point in each game where my manor is large enough that I start to think that it is worthwhile to run tours to score points.  Of course, you’ll have to have built your manor in a way to line up rooms that take the same number – and then you have to be lucky enough to roll the right number – but it’s a good way to rack up points if you can do it.

The challenge of getting the right rooms in the right path is the big challenge for me – and again, the way the game is set up – it more often turns out to be dumb luck (rolling the right number) than good planning that gets you those rooms.  There’s nothing wrong with the way it happens, and you can certainly try your best to modify the rolls with Inspiration tokens, but Lady Luck will definitely be your co-pilot on this one.

All that being said, the game plays really fast – much faster than I would have expected from reading the rules. It’s rare for a game to go past 40 minutes, and in that time frame, reliance on dice luck is acceptable for me.  

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers:

Dan B. (1 play): It works but I didn’t find it especially engaging – there’s a lot of luck, so getting the right rooms is not something you can really plan for. Running tours during the game seems like a fairly poor consolation prize for not having other useful actions. I could play it again – as Dale notes, it’s not long – but I don’t feel any need to.

Ted C. (Several plays):  I actually like this one quite a bit.  Let’s face it, if you don’t like the randomness of dice placement (like others have mentioned) this game is just not for you.  I do like dice games and do not mind the tactical and luck nature of the game.  Do you remember Vegas? Or I think it was also released as Las Vegas where you had six casinos and you rolled and placed dice to earn the money placed there?  If you did not care for that game, you will not like this one as the mechanisms here are clearly taken from Vegas.  Well, guess what?  I enjoy Vegas and this game has taken Vegas to a new level which to me, almost knocks Vegas out of play time.  The fact that you have chips to help manipulate dice is a good idea.  Building the mansion and adding dice and touring the mansion are all great additions to the pure dice placement in Vegas.  Dice Mansion is a keeper for me…..at least for a while.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers:

• I love it! 
• I like it. Ted C
• Neutral. Dan B, Dale Y
• Not for me…