Roll In One

A golf game where you create courses, roll several dice to represent different clubs and knock your opponents balls into the water, what could go wrong? Read on to find out if Roll In One is a ‘Hole In One’, or a ‘Double Bogie’.

A Good Walk Ruined

First impressions for Roll In One are good. It has a lovely small box with good artwork, the components are well made with specially designed dice, the tiles you use to make your golf courses are very well illustrated and the golf balls are functional and colourful. Then you open the rule book and things start to fall apart a little. While I appreciate a small set of rules (especially for a simple game) it would have been nice to get more illustrations describing how the game plays out. I had to refer to some online forums for clarification of a few rules and judging by the questions being asked I can see I wasn’t the only one.

Once I was confident I knew how to play I got ready to ‘Tee Off’.

FOUR!

Each player is dealt a golfer card which are characters with unique special powers such as the ability to ignore a penalty once per hole. Then each player is dealt three caddie cards which are one time use special game modifiers (example allowing you to re roll your die once). Then the starting player will design a course using the various tiles. The course is finished off with a green and then the rolling can begin.

Place your ball on the tee and face the arrow in the direction you want to travel (it has to point at a flat edge of the hexagon not the corners). Then choose a club from the selection of Putter (3 sided die), Wedge (6 sided die),9 Iron (8 sided die), 6 Iron (10 sided die), 4 Iron (12 sided die) and finally Wood (20 sided die). Once you have chosen your club you cannot change it during this turn. Each club has different characteristics and will move the ball in unique ways, but the most important rule to remember is each roll of a number must be higher than a previously rolled number. You keep on rolling and moving your ball one space at a time until you either fail to beat a previously rolled number, you roll a dot (or several dots), you hit the trees with a triangle on your dice, or you go out of bounds.

When your ball lands it may still roll forward one more space if you landed on a fairway. If you land on another players ball or roll into it you push that players ball into the next space. If that would push the ball out of bounds you leave it where it is and stack the balls. But if you push the ball into the water the other player takes a penalty. Penalties are also awarded for going out of bounds. Penalties are represented with little red cubes which effect your final score.

During your turn you can play your caddie cards to assist with your ‘strokes’ but you only receive one new one per hole so careful timing is required to make the most out of these game modifiers.

The round ends when a player stops on the green. If your ball is still moving (you are still rolling) it is not on the green yet. It is very easy to overshoot the green with the higher clubs so it is best to just use the putter when you get close. Once someone has stopped on the green the other players who haven’t had a turn this round go once more and then scoring is calculated.

Your score is the number of penalty cubes you have plus the number of players that have reached the green before you and who are closer to the green than you. You write your score on the cute little score card with a golf sized pencil. Then the next player becomes the course designer and you play again.

The game is definitely a race to the finish with your own number of strokes not really mattering at all as long as you beat everyone else to the green. Because of that you will more than likely push your luck with the bigger clubs knowing that a penalty for going out of bounds is ok as long as you get there first.

Shall We Go To The 19th Tee

This game has a very small venn diagram of people who would like it. Firstly you have to be a golf fan to enjoy Roll In One, secondly you have to enjoy constantly chucking dice, lastly you have to be ok with luck really not going your way every so often. Just like the real world golf it is 50% fun and 50% frustrating as when the game plays well it is a laugh and when it plays badly it is boring.

If you like real world golf and you like board games give this game a go, otherwise I would probably stay in the club house and have another drink.