Description

Troyes is a 90 minute middleweight strategy game for 2-4 players where players are families in the medieval French city of Troyes that deploying their human resources to save the city from invading brigands and to finish building the city’s monumental cathedral. Players start the game by placing their initial workforce into 1 of 3 industries in the city: Merchanting, Military, and Religion. They then take dice of the appropriate colour and roll them before losing some to defeat invading brigands. Players then take turns to choose between shovelling their minions into specific profession in each industry, building the cathedral, the aforesaid dealing with more brigands, or forcibly substituting the workforce of other families with your own. Players may take any action by using their opponents dice and paying them for the trouble. The game ends in 4-6 rounds and points are tallied.

Troyes plays like the band of brigands that are purportedly assaulting the city of Troyes were already successful, conquering and masquerading as the large families of the city. How explain to explain why the workers or perhaps the leaders of each family are so susceptible to bribery that no one is safe from monetary temptation?

The highlight of Troyes is the deliberate dice feasting where players are incentivised to buy the high numbers of others’ dice to prevent them from using those dice on their turn, setting off a cascade effect where players who lose dice are enriched, pushing them to purchase even more dice from others or to pay the enrollment fees for their workers to enter into a lucrative profession.

Players used to the peaceful nature of most strategy games, save the usual blocking by taking someone’s space, may find the back and forth nature of dice trading in Troyes abit too chaotic and disconcerting, especially if they are left with little or no dice to start a round due to the unceremonious eviction of the workers in the previous round.

Alternatives:

Ginkgopolis is another medium weight strategy game from the same designer of Troyes that has a surprising amount of interaction for the genre. Among dice strategy games, Castles of Burgundy, Grand Austria Hotel, Voyages of Marco Polo, and Lorenzo Il Magnifico are all excellent choices. For other strategy games of equal complexity, Concordia and Tigris & Euphrates are highly recommended for their ease of play and depth.

Card Sizes

60 59x92mm cards