This week, we played the dice version of the 2003 Spiel des Jahres, Alhambra. However, the only real similarities with the board game are the scoring mechanism and the theme. Alhambra – The Dice Game was designed by Dirk Henn and published by Queen Games.

The game plays over five rounds with a scoring after the 1st, 3rd and 5th round. Victory points are awarded for majorities of allocated buildings (very similar to the original game). To get the buildings you roll 8 dice each showing the six building-symbols. Each player has 3 rolls on his turn to get as many of one symbol as possible (up to a max of 8). The results of the dice rolls from every player are marked on the game board so everybody can compare his dice rolls with those of the other players. Once each player has placed three markers (in a 5 or 6 player game), the round ends. After a round is completed, for each building type, the player with the highest dice-roll can choose between 2 buildings of the respective category or 1 building and a special counter giving a certain bonus. (Bonuses can be: additional 1-3 VPs, extra dice-roll, exchange one building, determine Starting player, etc.) The second best player in that category will get the other reward. After round #1, #3 and #5 the majority in each building category is awarded VPs. The player with the most VP's after the fifth round wins the game.

This would have been a fun dice-fest if it had lasted 20 minutes but our game took way too long and I think everyone was relieved when it ended. After the first couple of rounds, once people had committed to which buildings they were after, the main decisions were already made. Your fate was then down to whether or not you were lucky enough to roll the right colours. Although seeing someone fail to get the dice rolls they really needed was fairly amusing, it just didn’t make up for the tediousness of the rest of the game. Nige won this by getting ahead on a couple of the high scoring buildings and then just protecting his lead.