Bare Bones

• Designer: not listed
• Publisher: West Coast Bias Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/4vhW0hg
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Bare Bones, players each begin with an identical base set of 7 cards + 3 additional cards they choose. Cards come in two varieties, Dice Cards and Action Cards.  Dice Cards come in 7 colors. Every Dice Card played entitles the player to roll 1 die of the corresponding color. The different colored dice have different values representing points. White dice provide the currency needed to acquire new cards to build your deck. Action Cards grant powerful abilities players can use to multiply scores and enhance other cards in their decks. There are many paths to victory through card and dice combos, but it all comes down to how you build your deck and the luck of the dice. Seven different Action Cards are used in each game, but 20 are provided. After 12 rounds, scores are tallied to determine the victor.

To start, each player is given a starting hand of 4 white die cards and 3 blue die cards.  The remainder of these dice cards as well as the other 5 types of dice cards are laid out on the table.  Each die card shows you the possible faces of the corresponding color die, and some of the dice cards have special abilities on them as well.   The rest of supply for the game is then chosen – there are 20 Action cards in the box, and 7 of these are chosen for the game.  Each action card has a special ability on it as well as a cost in Action units shown in the top banner.  There are a few suggested sets of Action cards in the rules, or you can choose your own.  Each player will now draft one card at a time, limiting themselves to cards that cost 6 or less, until 3 additional cards are added. Each player will now have a ten card starting deck; this is shuffled and each player deals themselves a hand of five cards. The rest of the deck is set aside to become the draw deck. 

The game is played over twelve rounds; each player takes a single turn each round.  Turns have these six phases:

1] Card Playing – play Dice Cards and Action cards in any order.  When you play a Dice card, you may later optionally roll a die of matching color.  If you play an Action card, you follow all the instructions on the card. Note that you are limited to 5 Action Units per turn.

2] Dice Rolling – Roll up to 6 Dice. If you have played more than 6 Dice cards, choose six to roll

3] Scoring – tally up the value of the non-white dice that you have rolled.  Note that Action cards may modify your total or change which dice are counted.  Mark the points scored on the score sheet

4]  Buying – now using your coins (primarily from white dice), you may buy cards from the Supply.  You can buy as many cards as you can afford, but only one copy of any particular card each turn

5] Bonus Matching – if you have played exactly two copies of any card, if your left hand opponent can play a third copy of the same card, they will be able to draw an extra card to start their next hand.  There is no limit to the number of bonus matches that can be made. 

6] Cleanup – all cards played and all cards left in hand are discarded and a new hand of 5 cards is drawn.  If there are not enough cards in the draw deck, draw what you can, shuffle the discard pile to form a new deck and keep drawing.

This goes on for twelve rounds.  At the end of the 12 round, players then count up the point values of all the cards in their deck and add that to the running total.  The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with fewer cards in the entire deck.

My thoughts on the game

Bare Bones is a deck builder game that adds in the luck of dice rolling to the action. Players start with some basic cards and then draft three more to generate their asymmetrical ten card starting deck.  Even in the opening draft, you’ll have to watch what other players are drafting.  The card supply is limited, and if you’re late to the game (say for the red dice cards), you could be left in a position where you don’t have enough of them to be useful!

Over the course of the twelve rounds, you’ll be trying to add cards to your deck to either give you better dice to roll OR cool actions to use.  Most of your games will be different as you have many different card types to choose from – and even more if you have the two small expansions already released for the game.

You’ll try to make the most of each turn, choosing your actions cards wisely – allocating your five action points as best you can.  The “following” concept is a bit tricky to learn at first, but it definitely allows players to get a bit of a jump on their next turn.  Once players get this rule, they might sometimes try to NOT play a pair of cards on their turn, just to prevent the next player from following on…

Early on in the game, you might concentrate more on coin production – as you need coins to buy more cards; but then once you hit say round 7 or 8, you’re probably looking more to simply run the engine you have built to score max points. That being said, you still score points for many of the cards that you buy, and the point total from your cards is not an insignificant portion of your total score – you’ll generally find use for the coins that you do roll…

For me, it doesn’t feel like there is quite enough opportunity to really build the interesting engine that I want to build.  I really want there to be some way to generate more coins, or maybe have the option to turn some dice either coins or points depending on what you wanted to do.  That being said, there are still lots of cool combos to be made and different strategies to be followed.  As I mentioned earlier, each game will likely play out differently as you mix up the cards available in the market.

Bare Bones is a nice twist on the deckbuilding field with the addition of the dice, and if you like this type of game, it would definitely be worth a try. 

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (2 plays): It works but I don’t find it compelling – the cards don’t form interesting combos so there’s not that much going on. Maybe a different mix of action cards would help but I am not convinced, especially given that there are only twelve rounds – you have to buy some better dice cards than the ones you start with, so you just can’t buy that many action cards.

Mario P. (1 play): Guess I’m on the same page here as Dan. It works, but in the end it’s too short to get an interesting ‘deck build’. In addition I completely dislike the ‘Bonus Matching’ part: The player sitting right after you simply has to pick the same cards as you do and will get an advantage that you can’t match. Or all players pick the same cards which would be kind of dull…

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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

Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/4vhW0hg