Base price: $18.
2 – 7 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Rollie was provided by Hachette Boardgames / Randolph.
After an unseasonably bright and warm week we’re back in the throes of rain and gloomy clouds, which is perfect. My car needed a rinse anyways and I’m hoping this tamps down some of this pollen that’s driving me absolutely nuts. I moved here to enjoy the rain. Ideally, in the hopes that enjoying the rain would lead to more board games. It’s led to more video games, at least, and we’re working on the rest. Still, though, another week means another couple reviews, and I do love a routine, so let’s check out Rollie!
In Rollie, players have it very easy. Bank or push? Each turn you’ll have that choice, usually, but be careful! The more you push, the more you can make, until the bust comes. Have the wrong money? You’ll crash hard and lose it all. When do you take a risk and when do you play it safe? It’s impossible to say, but at least you have some dice and likely some opinions to guide you. So buckle up and bet it all to try and win in Rollie!
Contents
Setup
Easy. Set out the bills of each type:
Set the dice nearby:
Set the bonus chips under the bills of the same color, with the highest at the top and the lowest at the bottom. Note that there are no bonus chips for the 10s.
Shuffle the tiebreaker tokens and reveal one:
You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
Another simple one. Here, your goal is to score the highest by collecting the most money and the most bonus chips. The problem is you’re almost always one bad roll away from losing big!
Rollie has seven rounds, each with some number of turns. On a player’s turn, they roll the dice. If it’s not doubles, they can either bank their money or take one of the bills on the dice. If one of the dice is an R, they can take any bill. Every player gets to make this choice, even if they didn’t roll, and even if you’re out for the round, you still get to roll!
When you bank, take all the money currently in front of you and flip it to the wallet side, placing it aside for safekeeping. You’re out for the rest of the round! This prevents you being affected by the other outcome: busting. You also take the highest-value available tiebreaker token.
When doubles are rolled, a bust occurs! If you have even one of the bills on the die, you bust and lose all your non-banked money! If two Rs are rolled, everyone busts (provided they have any bills that aren’t banked). If you don’t have any of the bills on the dice, you’re safe for now, but your money stays in front of you. The round ends and you flip another tiebreaker token, regardless of whether or not one’s been taken already.
After seven rounds, the game ends and bonus chips are awarded! Any unbanked bills still left in front of players are discarded; tough. Then, the player with the most bills of each type takes the highest-value bonus chip (and so on). If there’s a tie, the tie breaks in favor of the player with the higher-value tiebreaker token. If neither tied player has a tiebreaker token, they’re ignored and the next player with the most bills of that type gets the highest-value bonus chip.
Then add up all your bills and your bonus tokens; the player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
Practically, nobody really can affect you during the game, but you’re still competing with them for a finite resource: Bonus Chips. This means that you do have to pay attention to who’s grabbing what bills when, since that can affect whether or not you get a big bonus or you’re just taking -5s for no discernible reason. That particular one you want to watch out for, since it’s really a race to the bottom as soon as everyone has one or two. Theoretically, nobody’s going to take 19 -5s, so you’re always guaranteed at least 5 points if you decide to go all-in on that, but you’re more likely to bust by then and make it all pointless? With more players, there aren’t more Bonus Chips, so your decisions matter a lot more. This makes things more exciting but also necessarily more volatile. You don’t have that at lower player counts; essentially everyone’s going to get something as long as they have any bills. Can feel a bit lower-stakes. I’d chase the higher end of the player count for this one.
Strategy
- When you’re taking money, one important thing to think about is limiting the number of types of bills you have. The wider the variety of bills you have, the more risk you’re taking on (as you might be able to dodge a bust if you have only two or three types of bills). Try to reduce that vector if you can and not just take one of every bill as you have the opportunity to do so. You’ll miss out on, say, a 2, but that might be the number that causes you to bust!
- Get a high-value tiebreaker if you can, but don’t lose the game over it. Tiebreakers are critical to making sure that you actually get to keep a Bonus Chip in ties. You certainly don’t want none, since if all tied players have none they get skipped, but don’t bank out of a round too early just to get one. That calculus might change if the 7 tiebreaker is in play, though; that’s quite useful if you can win every tie.
- Especially at lower player counts, you want to have banked at least one of every bill. With that, you’re loosely guaranteed to get a Bonus Chip of every type (as long as you have a tiebreaker token), which is an easy ton of points. Naturally, you want to get the higher-value ones, but starting from a good foundation is never a bad idea.
- You can play out of order, but you have a right to insist on the player order being followed if it would affect your actions. If one of your opponents is going to bank, you may want to see that before you decide to move forward or not. Especially if you’re behind them score-wise, you might not want to risk busting for a mediocre gain.
- You really don’t want to bank too early, but “too early” doesn’t really mean anything. Too early is any turn where your opponents don’t immediately bust after you bank. Banking too early just kills your ability to make money that round. If you bank and then everyone else busts, you’re prescient; if you bank and everyone else takes another $50, you’re a fool. There’s no way to predict which one happens though.
- Don’t keep taking -5s! The most you should have is, like, six. At more than that, you’re now losing money relative to the Bonus Chips and their relationship between them. Let someone else take care of getting the most -5s.
- I’m neutral on taking 10s; unless you’re rolling really well, you don’t need that many. They’re useful, but at lower player counts everyone’s already getting Bonus Chips and they don’t add much to that conversation. With more players and things being less guaranteed, that math might change as well.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- I have a real soft spot for paper money. I think it’s because I grew up on Monopoly and still love Millennium Blades, but paper money really never goes out of style in games. I think it’ll just always appeal to me.
- Another really portable game. I like these small games a lot! Great for a variety of reasons.
- I was told that this was envisioned as a pub game, and that makes perfect sense to me; it’s a great pub game. You can spread it out very easily without it taking up a ton of space and everyone can keep their banked money and their at-risk money easily visible. It’s also quick to pick up and very easy to play; all works in its favor.
- The high highs and low lows of a push-your-luck game are always very exciting. It’s hard not to cheer when the player in the lead busts big or when you bank with perfect timing. Push-your-luck games are prone to that kind of emotional rollercoaster, though, so it generally works out in their favor. It’s part of why I like them so much.
- The challenge of when to bank and when to keep going is super fun, also. If you bank too early you get to watch your opponents run away with even more money. If you bank too late, well, you risk losing big and busting out of the round and effectively the game. You’re almost never going to hit it perfectly, though when you do (bank and then the next turn someone busts) it also feels incredible.
- I really like that there’s a negative money option? Diabolical. Challenging players to participate in a race to the bottom is cruel, but fun. Even getting the 100-point bonus chip may not be worth it if you’re not careful!
- To really up the tension, roll the dice one at a time! The odds are the same but it’s always fun to have one die value fixed and know you have a 1 in 6 chance of busting. It increases the tension for players at a minimal slowdown to the overall game. I pretty much always recommend it, though I think it’s best in a game like Betrayal at House on the Hill or something.
- I like the aesthetic of the game as well. It combines classic and old-timey in a way that makes it seem timeless without it being too retro, I think. The color scheme is pleasant and engaging, and the use of red for the -5 makes it clear it’s Not Great but still there might be something there.
Mehs
- It probably doesn’t make a huge difference from a scoring standpoint, but I do feel like removing chips for lower player counts would make the game a bit more exciting. It just seems a bit dry if everyone gets a bonus chip, even if there’s still a major scoring differential between player counts. Just dropping the highest-value in some cases still preserves some of that while making the bonus chips feel more critical to get.
Cons
- If you blow it big-time, you’re just done for the game. That is one bummer. Since there are only seven rounds, if you’re playing a big round and you suddenly bust, you’re just kind of out for the rest of the game, assuming your opponents banked their money sufficiently. If everyone busts it’s a no-op, but if only one person has some bad luck, they’re stuck for a few rounds in a game they have no shot of winning.
Overall: 7.75 / 10
Overall, Rollie is a fun little game! It’s very similar to a game I already like (PUSH, from Ravensburger), but this has dice in lieu of cards and that’s honestly the big difference, in my mind. That’s not necessarily bad; if you’ve read enough of these reviews you’ll know that I’m very much a “two cakes” kind of guy. Plus, everyone has their own entryways and pathways into gaming, so more variety helps a lot. I can imagine a very specific kind of person being into this and games like it (the Platonic ideal of this being Las Vegas, in my opinion). I just like push-your-luck games and the entire genre of great games that have spawned from them, from Quacks to Cubitos to what have you. What elevates this game a lot is presentation. It’s designed to look classic and feel classic from the get-go, with streamlined rules, pithy catchphrases, and paper money, the ideal gaming implement. Could we have used money tokens? Yes. Would that have been less fun? Also yes. The place where players might get a bit frustrated is going to be, well, the dice. It’s a dice game. Some rounds are 10+ turns, some rounds are 0 because you rolled doubles immediately. You might swing big and have it not pay out while someone else does the exact same thing and wins. If you are willing to play a dice-driven game, you’re fundamentally trusting them with your fate. So enjoy the ride, to some degree? That’s the beauty of short dice games. You’ll get the high highs and the low lows and everything in between. I’m a huge fan of how even then, the game presses you to make tough decisions in that limited space. Do you risk taking lower-value money to try and win big later? Can you plan at all when dice are involved? Useful questions to know the answer to, I’d say. But all that really encapsulates Rollie: it’s tricky, it’s at times brutal, and it’s short. A winning combination in my book. If you’re looking for a quick and portable game, you enjoy dice-driven push your luck, or you just love paper money, Rollie might be a great play for you! I’ve certainly enjoyed it.
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