This is Colony.

After the Nanopocalypse took out most of humanity, you must rebuild, and the best rebuilder among you will be crowned victorious!

Or something. Despite the slick retro-western future and the graphic design conveying a sense of wear and tear while still being fairly clean and readable, Colony’s theme never *quite* comes across, which is highly frustrating to me because designer Ted Alspach’s Suburbia is kind of a masterclass in how to make a eurogame feel highly thematic.

I was so ready to love this theme.

In Colony, players are trying to construct additional buildings, services, and resource production facilities. They may also hire shady characters to disrupt your opponents, or use exotic technology to enhance their chances of success. You do all this by rolling dice, then using those dice to buy additional facilities from the center.

Colony is a game that understands the drama inherent in dice rolls - make-or-break plays and great cries of ‘OMG I DON’T BELIEVE IT’ - but tempers this with a drafting system (I roll 3 dice, then choose only one to keep and pass the rest.)

Buying new cards let you make more dice, or modify your rolls, or steal dice from your opponents, or prevent dice from being stolen. All of these are fun to use and satisfying to build and to upgrade - more on upgrading later. It is my favorite part of the game.

There are 28 different facilities in Colony, and you use only 13 each game - so straighaway you've got lots of replayability out of the box. Which cards you use is up to your group’s playstyle preference - or you can even randomize setup with the very excellent Colony Setup App.

Create setup restrictions, alter probabilities of cards appearing, tap for card text. It’s a really good app.

For a dice game, Colony manages to avoid most of the pitfalls of bad luck by letting you store unused dice from round to round. The game even rewards you for not building anything with a CHIPI token which you can spend on future turns to roll extra dice.

Colony gives you a lot of control: you can base your decisions on what dice you have, what you want to buy, what you don’t want your opponents to get, how likely you are to roll what you need. It does require a bit more on the fly adaptability especially if you suddenly get a stupendously good roll, but overall the feeling of building a machine that spits out better and better dice is strong and plenty of fun.

Finding combos and upgrading your cards is highly satisfying - each card in the game can be flipped over to its 2.0 side making it much stronger. I love upgrading. It just feels nice, and it's fairly cheap dicewise too so you feel like you get value for your rolls.

While I normally dislike direct attacks in games like this, Attack cards in colony introduce a sense of control since you can dogpile someone who's consistently rolling well and Trade cards allow players who are behind to effectively gang up.

And now we come back to the theme issue. In my interview with Ted Alspach he illuminates why the dice needed to be standard six-siders - custom symbols and visuals would quickly render the play area an overwhelming mess. I understand the problem but dearly wish it were fixable - I cannot think of any solution that would tie the thematics closer to the mechanics - a huge consideration of mine when playing games.

But once I let go of my expectations and just allowed myself to enjoy the game that was there, Colony soared in my estimation. It is really just solid.

It feels like a strong solo or two player game - often you're too busy staring at the dice you've got and you've got that problem where you and your friends are sitting in silence glaring at the dice. Higher player counts also reduce the point goal required to win, so you end up feeling like your machine has barely been put through its paces before the finish line is crossed.

A lot of effort obviously went into this game. The box has silver foil on it, the playtesting list takes up almost the entire back page of the manual. The card list feels carefully restrained as though there were dozens and dozens of cards and then cut down to size. The app is very well done, the insert and token storage passes the shake test. (I did drop it once. Do not recommend.)

But in the end, it's a neat game that's plenty of fun to play. I actually think this is a pretty decent gateway game into the engine builder genre. It’s fairly easy to pick up especially if you play with the recommended beginner set of cards and you can eventually graduate into the trading and attack cards for extra depth.

Colony is highly dedicated to reducing the power of luck - even through embracing it. On each of your turns, you can discard any card, even after using it, to roll a number of dice equal to the difference between you and the leader. I once rolled a giant eleven dice and used the resulting difference to jump 10 points in 1 turn, coming in juuuust under the leader (who then won next turn, but with a slightly better roll it might have been close!) Each game of Colony has been fairly close - even a test game where one player built no engine whatsoever ended up 20-19 because of the last ditch rule and the power of upgrades.

Colin the Board Game Bear sets up his new Colony. A Coliny, if you will.

In the end, Colony is solid. It's not super flashy or thematically crunchy, despite the cool space western art. It's just a solid, solid game that deserves your attention.

Calvin's Corner - Colony Review

Calvin Wong

Episode 48 - Cthulhu Wars: The Definitive Review (For Now)

Raf Reviews - Cthulhu Wars

Calvin's Corner - Putting the Cape in Caper: Age of Thieves

Calvin's Corner - Fog of War: the Twilight Struggle Killer

Episode 47 - Other People's Fun

Charlie's Take - Gloom of Kilforth

Episode 46 - Wasteland Express Delivery Service Review

Raf Reviews - Spoils of War

Raf Reviews - Oaxaca