Take a step back in time to the ancient shores of crete covered in sun-drenched beaches and labyrinthine corridors of Knossos where the fate of human civilisation is yet to be determined. In this game you will be trying to build a civilisation of Minoan people and rise to the title of Minos in order to accomplish this you must develop your settlements, advance on political tracks, upgrade your palace and defeat the sea tribes. Do you have what it takes to be the next Minos?
I first came across the game while doing some research on board games that would be coming out in 2024 early last year and was initially intrigued as I enjoy strategic civilisation games and it sounded as though I would quite enjoy this one. So when the game came available in the UK I had to pick it up and give it a try.
First Impressions
Upon receiving the game I was impressed with the artwork which captures the minoan culture beautifully and the little details really making it pop. The box was reasonably heavy promising a lot of components and the blurb on the back of the box peaked my interest. When I opened the box I felt the game was well stored and the components were well made with designs on the wooden building piece and the quality of the card stock being pleasant to the touch and a good thickness. There was also plenty of storage bags to store the tokens once they had been punched out.
Game Play Overview
Minos: Dawn of the Bronze age is a strategic civilisation game where you will be trying to lead your clan of Minoan people to build the first human civilisation by gathering goods, constructing buildings, establishing trade routes and advance your political power to become the next Minos in Crete.
The game is played over four rounds with players taking turns to activate actions to play cards, develop buildings, expand their territory and gather resources. Every round begins with the dice being rolled and then each player starting with the first player picks one dice to place on the leftmost available action space with dice of a lower value than one already placed pushing all higher valued dice to the right. Players repeat placing dice till each player has placed out four dice on the action spaces. Each player then advances on the Influence (Red Column), Cultural (Yellow Column) and Population (Blue Column) track for each colour group of dice that have a total number of pips equal to or greater than nine, the players may use grey dice as a wild colour to bump the total pips of colour to nine or greater though the group must consist of one coloured die.
Players then move on to taking their actions taking turns to resolve the action where they place their dice starting with the highest valued die on the action board. When taking a die from the action board you may either; perform the action it was taken from or forfeit that action and gain two coins. There are five actions that dice can be placed onto they are:
Prepare - Allows players to gain cards from the offer or deck.
Develop - Players may play a card from either the offer paying three additional coins or from their hand paying the coin cost in the top left corner applying discounts for matching goods underneath the cost.
Build - This allows players to build cities, towers, farms and ships by paying the relevant resources which are depicted on the player board and advance their trade routes with their ships.
Expand - With this action players can place and move warriors on the map to new regions.
Wild - Allows players to use the action points gained here to perform any other action.
On each of your turn there are also several extra actions you can take from spending weaponry to mine, discarding cards to gain money, fighting Sea Peoples and more.
Once all players resolved all of their four actions they then go to the income and clean up phase. To start with players gain an amount of coins and victory points according to their position of their Income marker, they then gain all the benefits from ships on Trade Route tiles, gain the Weaponry tokens depicted on the population track and then place a number a card into their palace from their play area and/or hand according to their place on the Influence track. After resolving this phase players then prepare for a new round, they then repeat these steps till four rounds are played.
Midway through the game at the end of round two there is a scoring a phase before you start round three where you will score points for Farms as well as score for the Regions you either have a Presence in or Dominance in which is determined by the number of warriors of your colour in each region and your position on the Population track. Players then continue to play round three and four before the game comes to an end.
When the end of the fourth round is completed you will then score Farms and Regions again as before though this time you get fight off any level 2 Sea Peoples remaining on the board. Players then move onto final scoring where they will score points for the sum of the victory point value on all cards in your palace, their points from all the player board below each City and Ship they had built as well as one victory point for every five coins, weaponry and cards in hand. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the victor and claims the title of Minos.
Pros and Cons
Explain pros and cons The game has many great qualities to it. One of the main things I loved was how much variety there was in each players options in the game allowing you to device your own strategy to victory as there was multiple ways to score points. Another nice aspect is unlocking unique abilities to you with the progress board as the game progresses and each player starts with a different set of resources depending on the starting card chosen making each player that little bit more unique. The only issue I did find with the game is that when teaching the game it can be a lot to take in at once and it is likely that you will not really understand the benefits of each action and the order they happen in till the second round though once you have played a round we found we picked it up quite well. Another thing I enjoyed about this game was how well the rules and the setup was written for the game so it made setting up easy and after reading the rules you could easily play the game with just the quick reference card without having to flick through the rulebook to much.
Final Verdict
Overall, I personally really enjoyed this game and can see many people who enjoy their strategy games having a really good time with this game. This game does take a reasonable amount of set up and will take some time to play as their is a lot of options to think about and utilise the best ones for you. I would recommend this game for people who enjoy their heavier strategy games due to the depth in the game and the multiple mechanics it uses which makes it less appealing to people new to the board game hobby. If you enjoy strategic civilisation games I would recommend taking a look at this one and see if it is for you.
In conclusion, we would rate this game a 9.1/10
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