15-20
minutes
€27
cost
1-4
players
Game overview
The Border is a roll & write game in which you draw borders around buildings.
Each player starts the game with a whiteboard and a pen. The starting player rolls the dice. You may roll 3 dice in total and decide which dice you want to leave behind. The active player may only use the dice of a colour if he can complete that area. So if you have an area of 3 yellow dice and you roll only 2 yellow dice, you cannot use them. You may use more than one colour, as long as you can complete the area in that colour.
The other player(s) may then use any dice that the active player was not allowed to use. Here, the rules are different. The passive player can choose any colour that is adjacent to another crossed-off square, so they do not have to complete anything. If the active player can use all the dice, the other players can choose only one of them. As a passive player, it is therefore advantageous if the active player cannot use any of the dice, because then you can draw 5 colours!
If you have completely surrounded an area on your player board with crosses, you score the points for it. If you are the first one to do so, you score more points.
The game ends when a player has drawn the border of 6 or more areas. The player with the most points then wins the game!
Our thoughts
One of our first addictions in the world of games was Bravo!. When we got that simple dice game, we literally played it over and over again. More than a year later, we play Bravo! regularly. It is a simple game that actually does everything right. For a while, we didn't play a game that came close to Bravo!, until we tried The Border! The Border is a new dice game that positively surprised us.
The Border is simple and fast, and gives us a bit of the same feeling as Bravo. Still, The Border is different. Despite the many roll & writes on the market, we still find innovative elements in The Border. The game contains a nice push your luck element and offers fun interaction between players. Even when playing with 4 people, everyone is involved in the game the whole time. Every throw is also important for your opponents.
The interaction in The Border is what makes the game so enjoyable. A frustrating roll for you, can turn out very well for your opponents. Of course, this also works the other way round! This makes for a funny atmosphere at the table with lots of laughter. With simple games, there is often the danger that people will reach for their phones. In The Border, every roll is important, so people will always keep paying attention. Fortunately, for people who don't want to miss any messages on their phones, a game only takes 15 to 20 minutes.
We still like The Border after several games. However, you should not expect high replayability in terms of variety. All games are basically the same, just like in Qwixx and Bravo. There are no possibilities for variation. We personally do not miss this in this game.
Another positive point about The Border is its production. Unlike many roll & writes, The Border comes with dry erase boards and special markers. It doesn't stop there! Flip the lid and you have a dice tray. No more clattering dice on the table. We can certainly appreciate this little extra.
We will not turn down a roll & write easily, especially not one as nice as The Border. By now you could say we have enough roll & writes in our collection, but we still welcome them with open arms. As far as we are concerned, you can never have enough accessible, easy games in your collection. There is always a moment when you want to have a quick game of dice on the table. With The Border in your collection, you have another great choice!
Pros and cons
+ Fast and simple
+ Fun push your luck element
+ No downtime
+ Dry erase boards and dice trays
- No variation in gameplay
