Push Your Luck to Claim Mines Without Busting in Claim It!

Roll the dice and claim a mine. End your turn to play it safe, or risk busting and roll again in hopes of claiming more or even stealing one from another player!

Published by Wattsalpoag Games, Claim It! is a push-your-luck dice game for 2-5 players that plays in 20-40 minutes.

Gameplay

The board is a grid, with columns and rows numbered 1-6. There are six squatter markers, also numbered 1-6. On your turn, you roll three dice. You assign one die to a column whose number it matches, one die to a row whose number it matches, and the last die to a squatter token whose number it matches. You then place the squatter marker on the space of the grid where your chosen row and column intersect (if it has not been claimed by another player). You may then choose to roll again or end your turn. If you already have a squatter token on a space you have rolled or you have one of your own pieces from a previous turn on that space without a claim token, you instead place a black claim token on top of it. The number of the die you assign to the black claim token does not matter. If another player already has one of his player tokens on a space you roll, but no claim token, you may place a squatter token on top of his piece.

You may keep rolling as many times as you wish until you cannot legally place a token on the board — for example, if there is not a free squatter token that matches any of the dice you rolled, or all your dice combinations result in spaces already claimed. When this happens, you bust and lose all the progress you made this turn.

If you end your turn without busting, you replace all squatter tokens with a player token of your color. If there is another player’s token beneath your squatter token, you return his piece to that player. Any claim token you placed is moved beneath your player token on that space, and that space is now claimed and is yours permanently and cannot be stolen.

The game continues until one player has a certain number of claimed spaces and everyone takes one final turn. The player with the largest number of connected spaces with his player tokens on them (they do not have to be claimed spaces) wins the game.

Review

Claim It! is a mixture of abstract strategy and push-your-luck dice game. You’re trying to balance odds with ideal placement of your tokens, both to block other players and also to build the biggest grouping of your spaces.

There is a lot of back-and-forth interaction between players, as you vie for the same spaces, especially those in the middle, and jostle each other for key spots. You do tend, especially in the early game, to have multiple choices on your turn of places to go, although sometimes if you roll doubles your choices are less exciting.

The game does slow down some near the end, as more and more spots get claimed and therefore your odds of busting on your first roll increase. We wouldn't recommend this game with a full count of five players, as you’re going to be waiting around longer for your turn, making those immediate busts more frustrating when they do occur.

Overall, we enjoyed Claim It! and its push-your-luck elements. It was fun choosing when to go for that one more space, which got more dangerous the further the game progressed, or when to bank your spaces. Claiming a space was particularly tempting since that would make it yours permanently, but if it wasn’t in an ideal location, it might not be worth it — especially if it pushed you towards ending the game when you weren’t in the lead. With some interesting back and forth, Claim It is interesting and engaging.

Pros: Lots of back and forth between players, nice balance of luck and decisions

Cons: The end of the game slows down some, there is downtime at higher player counts

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.