Welcome to The Game Shelf!

After getting into the board game hobby at the end of 2014, we've decided to share our thoughts on the games we're collecting on our shelves. The collection has certainly expanded over the last few years and we've been making up for lost time!

Sometimes our opinions differ, so Amy will be posting reviews every Tuesday and Fi will post on Thursdays. We hope you enjoy reading some of our opinions on board games - especially those for two players.

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Tuesday 7 May 2019

Roll on down to:- Corinth

Game: Corinth

Publisher: Days of Wonder

Designer: Sébastien Pauchon

Year: 2019

Corinth is a 2-4 player roll and write game in which you are a merchant seeking your fortune by selling your wares in Corinth. You'll do this by rolling and drafting dice to gather goods to sell, spend money on infrastructure and sending your steward out to gather goods for you. At the end of the game you will score points for the resources gathered, and bonus points if you completed each type of resource first. In addition built buildings, spare gold and goats and locations visited by your steward can all score you points.

Corinth consists of 6 rounds (4 in a 4 player game) each of which has each player taking a turn as the start player. The start player will gather the 9 standard D6s and roll them. In addition they can spend gold in order to roll the yellow dice which can only be used by the start player. Dice are then placed out on the central board. All dice of the highest number is placed on the top row, then all dice of the lowest number are placed on the bottom, continuing upwards with each row getting all dice of one number. This serves to make certain resources rarer as the yellow resource won't be available unless at least 1 of each number was rolled this turn.


You can pay gold for the extra yellow dice which only you can use, but gold can be used for other things or saved for points too!

After rolling dice players take turn to take dice from the central board. When you do this you take all dice of one number and mark off 1 resource of that type for each die on the space. Should you not like the dice you have access to you can instead move your steward, they will move a number of spaces equal to the number of pips on the die. Wherever the steward stops they will gain you bonuses which vary from points, to resources, to the right to roll a gold die every turn for free. In addition every turn players can spend combinations goats and gold to build buildings which give you bonus powers. Once everyone has taken a set of dice (the 1st player gets to take twice in a 2 player game) then the start player changes and the game continues. The game ends when each player has rolled the dice 4/6 times.

Corinth is a lovely roll and write game, the dice drafting is simple but end up being very fair throughout the game. The way the dice are allocated naturally makes certain resources rarer than others, in fact in our experience the yellow resource barely turns up at all. While there aren't a huge number of different strategies available to you those that are present are viable with the possible exception of the steward. While the steward gives some nice bonuses and is a great way to get some use out of a bad roll, by themselves they take too much effort to score too few points.

At the end of the game you add up your points for each section of the board to get your final score

There is a lot to like in Corinth, while it isn't the most complex game the mechanics are different enough from most roll and writes to make it stand out from the crowd. The game is easy to learn and quick to play which makes it a great filler game. The two player variant is unobtrusive and works well to keep the same number of choices in each game as there would be at higher player counts. Overall I'd highly recommend playing Corinth if you are a fan of Roll and writes or on the look out for an easy-to teach filler.

7/10

Corinth was a review copy provided by Asmodee UK. It is available at your friendly local game store for an RRP of £18.99 or can be picked up at http://www.365games.co.u

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