The Hungry Gamer's Rolling in Wonderland First Impressions
Transcript
Oo, that looks tasty. Welcome folks. J the Hungry Gamer is back with another mini preview and today we are doing a mini preview and first impressions of Rolling in Wonderland from Bellow's Intent. Now, this is a game that, as I said, is a first impressions video based on a play that I had and teaching session that I had with the publisher on Tabletop Simulator. So, please keep that in mind. That said, this is a pretty light, simple game, so I feel pretty confident in my first impressions being things that would carry through. But again, keep in mind this is just a first impressions video. Now, with that said, what this is is this is a game of dice drafting that takes place in the world of Alice in Wonderland. And there's a whole bunch of different things going on. There is recipe fulfillment. There's area control. There is well, there are tracks and so on and so on. Not to mention dice drafting being the kind of main mechanic of the game. What's going to happen is each turn each player is going to roll six dice. And then those six dice will be placed around the board based on what faces and sometimes colors are on the dice. Then each player will be able to take a turn drafting the dice from one of these different areas. And eventually every player will draft six
dice. So you may have one turn, you may have six turns depending on how many dice you get and what you do depending on the sections. I'm kind of talking about from the left to the right on this board if my memory is serving because I'm not actually looking at it right now. But start at the left you have the Mad Hatter which is going to depending on how many dice you draft going to let you draw some cards. Then next to that we have the white rabbit. Depending on the number and colors of the dice that you draft is going to move the white rabbit along its little rabbit hole track which is going to get you more and more points as you advance on the track. Then in the middle of the top that's where you have a cheshure cat. And then depending on the exact colors of dice there and how many dice you take, that will let you activate some of the four different abilities that are up there. Again, specifically based on what colors are available. The more dice, the more actions you get to take. Then the bottom middle is Alice, and that will allow you to get a new kind of contract, which is simply get the same colored dice as are shown on the card. And if you do that by the end of the game, you will get the points on there. And every time you draft them, you'll get to take the top one from the deck. Then we have the queen of hearts. That is a pure area control. That's where you get to send out your troops to different places on the board depending on the number of dice you take. And then all the way on the right is the caterpillar and that's going to depending on number of dice you take let you advance on the caterpillar track which will give you some points but also let you activate a whole bunch of other stuff. Now, in addition to that, each round there will be a Jabberwocki attack. And the Jabberwocki will show up somewhere. And if you have troops there to kind of defend against it, you'll get points based on first and second place. And you're simply going to
go until every region has been attacked by the Jabberwocki. So, six different turns. And then you will add up all the different scores or secret objectives and stuff like that. And whoever has the most points is going to be the winner. Now, I'm pretty confident I just hit on the bulk of the rules of the game off the top of my head from one play. So, that's why I'm feeling decently confident talking about this game right here. But with that said, what do I like about this game? Well, first off, I like the art and the color of almost all of the There's one thing that I don't love as much, and I'll talk about that when I get down to the quibbles, but I love the caterpillar and the white rabbit and the cheshure cat and the Mad Hatter, and I love the color on the board. It's just stunning.
The bright, wonderful color. I love love love that. Next thing I'll say is though I have not seen a physical version of the game, I do have the deluxe version of an age contrived which was a stunning production and I'm putting up some pictures right now that you get to see that are pictures of the components of the game for the prototype. Again, these are prototype, but you get an idea of what the game is going to look like. So, I think it's going to be a very, very pretty game. I know in the deluxe version, it's not going to be a board. There's going to be neoprene mat. There's going to be custom little card soldier meeples and things like that that you're going to have kind of out on the board. So, it's going to look really, really nice. But moving beyond that, as I mentioned, the rules are pretty intuitive if you've played a lot of games before like I have. It's very easy to pick up. It's very easy to understand. It's easy to play. Turns in general do not take a long time. In fact, on TTS with being taught the game, I think it was probably an hour, maybe a little longer. And everyone who's played on TTS knows that is a tax of at least 20% time. So, very fast, very easy to play. We only played two players, but again, turns just aren't very long. And I always, always love that when a game is quick and easy, and at the same time, it has some interesting choices.
It's sometimes hard to decide what you're going to do. Sometimes it seems really, really obvious. Based on my character's asymmetric power, I knew that anytime I could get at least four dice, there was value in that. So, sometimes it was really easy for me when I look at the board and say, "Oh, there's four dice there. Well, that's what I want to take." But that said, that didn't necessarily mean it was always the best choice because sometimes you want to do a lot of different things. And so, Chris, who I was playing with, he had a lot more turns than I did. And so it was an interesting choice to kind of figure out how I wanted to play that. Did I want to chase down some more secret objectives or did I want to just leave it alone? Did I want to try to get a bunch of Mad Hatter cards which might give you an ongoing power, might give you a one-time thing you can just play whenever. It might give you something that is very very situational. Like only when you do the Cheshure Cat were you able to use it. So lots of interesting choices in what is a very quick and easy game and I really really like that. But really, the main thing is there's so many fun choices to make with the dice. I mean, they're all very quick and simple, but all of them I thought were fun. I loved going down that white rabbit track. I pushed that thing hard and got a ton of points. And at the same time, I was sad I didn't get to go up the caterpillar track very much cuz I was focused on this other track. And then I had a secret objective that had me trying to get some troops out with the Queen of Hearts, but because I really had to control the Queen of Hearts region, but if I was just focusing on that region, it' be obvious that's what I was doing. And so kind of spreading those troops out, all of it, they were all fun and interesting choices, even down to just Alice's fulfilling the recipe because it is
satisfying to get points. And then you mix all of that in with just this little bit of area control that really kind of pops up at the end. And because they have the jabberwocky attacking each turn, there are those points every single turn that you are trying to grab and hold on to. And by doing that, that means that you're still putting some of your influence out on the board, which means that you're not getting smashed at the end if you weren't really paying attention to the area control because you probably already have some troops out there. And I think that's a very very very clever little bit of design. And along with it, I I really do kind of enjoy that it feels like there's a little bit of almost everything in this game, right? You have your dice chucking because you're rolling the dice. You got dice drafting, which also kind of turns into a worker placement almost. You have area control. You have these cards that are doing stuff. You have tracks.
There's a little bit of everything in there. Which brings me to what are my quibbles with the game. Well, there's a little bit of everything in there. That might not be what you're looking for. Sometimes you want a really focused game and this one feels kind of a a broad swath of a bunch of euro mechanics which are quite delightful and I really enjoyed, but that might not be what you're looking for. I also mentioned with the art, it has the chibi art on most of the characters. has it on Alice and then the characters they actually playing that kind of also get pulled into Wonderland. And some people hate chibi art. Really hate chibi art. So either you like it or you don't, I guess. But for me, I really like the art of those other characters a lot more. And for these characters, I wish they looked like the other ones. Those are just so so cool. Next thing I'll say is the game screams for mini modules. And I talked to the publisher a little bit. and he told me some of the plans and potential things that could be there, but this is one that every game is going to be different because of that's how the dice are going to shake out and that's how other people are going to draft the dice. So, every game's going to be different. I think it screams for a bunch of mini modules and it's really easy thematically because it's Wonderland and there's so much stuff that goes on in Alice and Wonderland. So, there's lots of different options out there and so I'm really hoping that more of those get added kind of down the road. Next thing I'll say is there's not a ton of mitigation for the dice rolls. And there is some I didn't talk about there's mushrooms that you can use that just can change the face of a dieice and pull it somewhere else or you can do some rerolls. There's not a ton of mitigation. So this is a game that you are trapped by the chaos of the dice,
which again fits for Wonderland. And I am someone that loves dealing with the chaos. Here's this thing that happened. How can you deal? But there's not a lot of dice mitigation. And so if you're someone that really needs that, you're not going to find it in this game. Last thing I'll say is I really love that there's asymmetric powers on the different characters, but they're minor. I wish they were major. I wish they just pushed it to the edge or maybe I could flip over the player board or something and said, "Okay, yeah, there was a little minor thing here, but this side of the board, go all out. Here's a strong power and everyone has a strong power." I always love that. And maybe that's just me being selfish, but there you have it, folks. That is Ruling in Wonderland. I was really pleasantly surprised by this and I even told the publisher he had reached out to me this summer and I was just so busy with travel at the time. And so it kind of fell on the back burner and he reached back out and said, "Oh yeah, yeah, let's do a TTS module." And I was grumpy as hell today, y'all. Grumpy as hell. And it's been a hard start to the school year. I have this huge stack of stuff that I have to cover and suddenly all these videos are coming do at the same time and I just was stressed out, wasn't in the mood and it really cheered me up.
It really turned my day around. It was a game on TTS. So, I think that really does say a lot. Now, the only thing I'm going to toss out there, which is not in my quibbles, because I've only played once, this is first impressions, is that is this game going to start to feel sy as it goes on? And I don't know. I don't know if the different dice rolling is going to be enough with the way each game plays out. I don't know that, but it's just something that I'm thinking about and if I were doing a full review, I'd play a few more times to really kind of figure that out. But, as I said, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. In fact, the publisher offered to go ahead and send me a physical prototype, and I said no again because I just don't have time. That would be not kind to the publisher to take a prototype that could be somewhere else. But I kind of wish I had it simply so I could just play it because it was fun.
It was delightful. I think Mrs. Hungry Gamer will like it quite a bit as well. But there you have it, folks. That is first impressions of Rolling in Wonderland. All in all, I liked it. Go check it out. If you like dice chucking, you like dice drafting and you like a little bit of area control and a little bit of tracks and a little bit of tableau building. It's pretty darn cool. So, there you have it, folks. As always, if you found this video useful, please like, subscribe, share, maybe become a channel member. As always, thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.