Miami Dice, Episode 152 - Rattlebones

Tom Vasel and Sam Healey examine this

00:00 - Introduction
01:48 - Game overview
06:27 - Final thoughts

[wroot_lt]

I love how Sam always fixes Tom's games and checks that lid is in correct position according to the bottom :D

[gurtana]

I had to thumbs up this video just for Sam reading the back of the box in that way! :D 

[steveg]

Sam, if your opinion would reduce the price of a cup of coffee to 50 cents, then it's actually fairly valuable. ;)

[davekoehnlein]

when rattlebones is made into a movie, sam must be contacted to do the voiceover 

[platinump]

I've read on the geek that the 14+ is on some games, when the publisher doesn't want the game to undergo certain tests to have an age indication on the box. Indie boards and cards' Dragon Slayer is also 14+ for the same reason. That's my guess at least.

[yangaa]

Nice. Kind of reminds me of Mario Party with the dice movements, stars, customizing dice.

Also, love the screaming of kids in the background. Haha.

[JasonHartgrave]

These guys are kind of hard on the game, it's basically a deck builder with dice. The gold coin is a bit under powered as mentioned but it could be easily remedied with a house rule. As with lots of dice games, at first it can seem to be a chaotic, random lucky mess. However, after a few plays and initial rounds have passed seasoned game players can look at the game board composition and what die facings other players are drafting and form a very focused strategy or counter strategy to win. While everyone from ages 7 and up CAN play and have fun rolling dice, you can easily have a player who knows what they are doing and create a blowout situation. That is one of the reasons the "1234" die face exists to curb the run away leader situation.

I would say this is easily at the same level of strategy and complexity as King of Tokyo. In my mind the reason this game is so polarizing among game reviewers is that game starts off as seemly random dice fest and becomes less and less over the course of the game. It's like watching a caterpillar morph into a butterfly as the game goes from Yahtzee to a Eurogame.  

 

[dannykdri]

Playing 2 player, we were both able to complete the changing of our die before it was our turn again. Changing it was very easy.

[sylum]

i also think it depends on the game group. i enjoyed it though....thanks for the review!:D

[srv]

Will have to give this a try with my nephews.  Also, what's with the weird green screen effect look of Tom's black shirt?

[Hojumuju]

What's with Tom's shirt? Glitched upload?

[Stephen-Fox]

I'd assume the age on the box in this one is for the benefits of not having to child test the components... Particularly the easily swallowable die faces... Rather than being reflective of the game's weight or language dependence like it often is.

[ruesifus]

The dice mechanic would probably work better on spin dials.

[KeithRK]

Yes, sometimes the age recommendation is not always due to game complexity.  It could be for something like a mature theme or suggestive art.  My guess, in the case of this game, are the small colorful plastic parts that small children might be tempted to put in their mouths.

[philheaton]

If you have a doubling die, you may well want to roll a die to double.

[ayahoo]

I played the game once and I cant say I liked it. To the games defense I was exhausted and might have been in a state that made me less receptive, but I couldn't see any stradigy. So I'dd have to give it a thumbs down.