Many dogs have spots. Many dice (especially the regular D6) have spots. 1 + 2 = 3 and therefore this game contains a whole bunch of dogs, such a collection of dice and enough dots (spots) to fill a sheet of paper. Are you able to spot the route to victory?
Goal and setup
Players will try to be the first of six dogs to fill in the spots by performing tricks and rolling dice. Luck plays a big role in this dog game, but an even bigger role is how you handle this luck: do you dare to take risks to fill in your kennel with spotted dogs?
A number of tricks are placed on the table. There are different types of tricks and thus a wide variety of possible gameplay variations and possibilities. Each player gets a garden to bury dice, a pair of dogs with the gray side visible and a bone.
Gameplay
Each turn, the active player chooses one of the available tricks and now turns this tile to the inactive side. The active player first performs the top action and then the bottom action indicated on the trick tile. Some actions are optional. If there is only one available trick tile after a player’s turn, a bone is placed on it (the next player to choose this trick tile gets this bone) and the remaining trick tiles are turned back to their active side.
Usually you will roll a number of dice based on a the trick, and often you can choose to quit rolling dice at some point. Often you can control (by your choice of trick, for example) how and with how many dice you roll. Some tricks also produce very different actions.
You place the dice on the correct spots on your dogs by matching the dots on the dice with the dots on the dogs. However, dice you cannot place must be buried, and if you have buried too many dots you lose all buried dice, as well as the dice on your dogs. Turning in a bone allows you to re-roll the dice that have become buried.
If you manage to complete all your unfinished dogs during a turn, you may move them to the blue side. You may also choose to turn over completed dogs instead of performing a trick. The player who manages to complete 6 dogs first wins!
Verdict
Spots is a delightful push your luck game, where the tricks are the absolute highlight. These tricks provide different possible actions, different game options and whole lot of variety, making every game of Spots feel fairly different.
Like a true push your luck, taking risks can pay off, but can also be incredibly unlucky and frustrating. Spots has quickly been cast as one of our favorite games. This, by the way, is partly due to the fantastic illustrations featuring cute and funny little dogs!
