Castle Dice review

It's a light dice game, produced through Kickstarter. Seemed fun enough that I'd play it again several times, but not deep enough that I need a copy if a friend has it. (Comparable to the base 7 Wonders game in difficulty and amount of time.)

Players have 7 turns to get victory points from building Castle cards and turning in animal sets for random chance cards. Every turn, players take certain dice based on the turn, and add several of their choice.  (Players make this choice based on Castle/Village cards in their hands, and what they hope to build with the resources they get that round.)

Village cards increase or adjust your production. Castle cards are primarily VP, sometimes with a minor game effect. You might guess that Castle cards are more expensive to get out.

Once everyone rolls their dice, they take any dice-killing barbarians out to add to the players' own turf. In turn order, players then draft one die at a time, adding the appropriate resource to their bank. (3 wood from the wood die, increases your wood stock by 3, then discard the die for the round.) The 4 different animals let you break the rules in small ways, or you can turn in a set of 4 (different) to get a chance card. After all of the dice have been drafted, players build their cards from their hand - and any leftover resources might be raided by your barbarians (a brown barbarian would only raid for 1 wood).

The game goes fairly quickly. The player interaction is limited to counter-drafting - very indirect. The chance cards seemed like a fairly light return, but then again, the random draws from Castle and Village decks make it difficult to have a consistent hand of building what you want to build.

It would be interesting to see what would have happened if players could choose which specific "Village" card that wanted to draw. For example, if you wanted to build soldiers that turn, you could draw soldiers. (Same for farmers, merchants, workers.) Heck, maybe even be able to choose to draw "wall" cards vs. random Castle cards.

The game, as-is, is very light on strategy. I think it'd be fun to play with kids who are getting into board games, as the reading is light and there is a luck factor that isn't overwhelming.