Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7871541/arctic-roll

Designer: Ian Brocklebank
Publisher: Rolling Rhino Games
Artist: Luis R. Blanco

Arctic Roll is a cute little roll and write about traversing the tundra. You start at an igloo and use your dice rolls to move a certain number of spaces, place fishermen, and activate special items to earn points. The gameplay and mechanics connect really well to the theme, which I appreciate. I love animals anyways, but the artwork is lovely and adorable (a fishing polar bear?! C’mon!).

There are nine rounds, and each round has two phases, a draft phase and a hunt phase. When drafting, you roll four dice – three of one color and one of another (or just make sure one is separate from the other three). Then you organize the three in ascending order and place their values in the little ice cubes for the round. The fourth die has its own cube as well.

Now begins the hunt phase (and the decision making!). You are required to use the fourth/unique die, but you can choose which one of the other three to use. The two dice you select are used to complete a turn – one for movement and one to send out fishermen. The movement is self-explanatory – you move the appropriate number of spaces in a straight line. For the fishermen, you get to mark spots on the map with fishermen (at the end of your movement) based on the number die you select. As expected, if you roll a three, you’ll mark three spaces. The catch (pun intended): the pattern of the fishermen will have to match the pattern of the pips on the die (rotating is allowed). Some values also give you a fishing hole which is important for scoring. Besides
movement and placement, the other consideration when selecting your dice is the associated reward(s). Each of those three ascending dice values will have a different reward that can
provide points at the end, influence your movement, or give you useful items.

At the end of the nine rounds, you score your points! You get points for fishermen around fishing holes, points for fishermen next to open water, there are point values associated with the number of igloos and shells you found, and in the solo game, there’s a chart where you cross off the special items you used to potentially receive bonus points.

Although beat-your-own-score games aren’t my favorite, for this one, I feel like each game can be different enough in general (set-up, dice values, etc.) and you can try plenty of new strategies to ease the potential repetitiveness. They also have a cute little animal score comparison chart for solo games which is adorable and thematic. Otherwise, there’s no major driving factor to keep it
coming back to the table consistently. Maybe I’d feel differently if I played multiplayer. 🤷‍♀️

Arctic Roll is a nice, short, straightforward game that’s fun and challenging. I definitely plan on playing more here and there. After my most recent games, there’s still a lot of room for improvement! I only made it to the Arctic Fox level 🦊 but I’m coming for you, Narwhal! Oh, and supposedly more content is coming later this year!