This afternoon Jonathan met up at our local Costa to play some roll and write games.

After getting our beverages (no frills hot chocolate for Jonathan, and a caramel cortado for me) we sat down to play some games.

Roll and write although not a large part of our collections, is a genre that we both enjoy. Although I don’t actually remember playing Yahtzee, but that is probably the most famous of all roll and writes, and most widely known. The basic mechanic of this genre is you roll a number of dice, and then do something with the result of those dice, usually writing the result down. Hence roll and write.

We started off the afternoon of chucking dice with learning Qwinto. Which was then followed by Rolling America, and finishing the afternoon off with Qwixx. The rules are complicated. On your turn you roll 1,2 or 3 dice, and you get one reroll. If you use the reroll you reroll all the dice you rolled that turn. No saving dice here. The resulting sum of the dice you rolled is then recorded on your sheet in a row of your choosing that matches one of the coloured dice that you rolled. When writing a number down the rules you have to remember are that on a row from left to right the numbers have to be ascending. And in columns you can’t have a number more than once. The game ends when either 2 rows have been completed or a player has 4 marks indicating that they were unable to use the dice on a turn.

It’s a nice light, quick roll and write. Deciding how many dice to roll and which colours is a nice touch. There is a little denial you can do with that, depending on what colours and numbers the other players are after. Yeah a keeper.

We played Qwinto a couple of times and shared the victories one a piece.

Rolling America hadn’t been to the table for a long time for me, and this was a first play for Jonathan. Compared to the other 2 games we played this afternoon this is more of a puzzle, thinky roll and write. And is playable as a solo game straight out of the box. It feels completely different to the other 2 games we played because of that. I took the honours with our play of this game.

We finished off the gaming with a long overdue return to the table of Qwixx. It’s still a very nice game. Plus there is a great app version of the game now days. However Jonathan took the win.

These are 3 great filler games. Fairly quick to play. Perfect for these coffee shop gaming sessions.

It was kinda fitting that after a great afternoon gaming we shared the victories evenly.