Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Olivier Fagnère, Melanie Friedli, Franz Vohwinkel, Vincent Dutrait, Michaela Kienle, Anke Pohl, Thilo Rick

Publisher: Filosofia, Game Factory, KOSMOS

Game dimensions and boards designed to fit a recycled EXIT game box

Excape or Exxtra has been on my wishlist for the longest time but being unable to find a copy over the years, I finally decided to just make the game as a retheme of Lost Cities- which only made sense since both games are Knizia creations. Besides, the idea of escaping the horrors of Lost Cities seem like a natural fit.

Rolling a pair of dice an unlimited number of times

Knizia and dice games, there are dozens and dozens out there. If you have seen some of his dice rollers, you have a solid idea of what to expect. Usually, for many of his games, you get to roll and reroll your dice three times, keeping what you want and then resolving the outputs in a number of different ways to score points or to advance your position on the track. Each game will see some aspect tweaked differently. For example, you may see different type of dice, different number of dice, how to roll the dice, which dice you are allowed to keep, how dice are sequenced, how dice are collected, which dice are scored, etc. The variations are endless, but each game tends to be unique and brings something different to the table. Yet, all of them are distinctly Knizian. In Excape, I was somewhat amused to find that you are allowed an unlimited number of dice rolls, not something I have encountered from his dice games off late.

Excape or Exxtra is an old publication (1998) which was recently reprinted by Game Factory as Rapido. Your goal is to be the first to reach 20 points. It is not hard to do so and the game takes about 15-20 min at 3 player count. On your turn, you roll a pair of dice which have modified die faces. On one die, you have 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and X. On the other die you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, X. The X counts as a 0 on the first roll and in subsequent rolls, if you roll an X, you will get penalized 1 point and your turn ends. Rolling two Xs’ moves you back on the track twice. On the other hand, if you roll doubles (1s, 2s and 3s), you get to move the number of places forward on the track. Now, any other die face combinations will allow you to form a number. For example a “7” and a “2” will form 72. Naturally, you want to form the highest combination possible. Once you do that, you can place that die combination on a shared board space that contain 6 slots with ranks that run from 0-5. You are allowed to place your dice on any empty slot and in doing so, will eject any dice of equal or lower value that is placed in ranks higher than yours. For example, if you roll a “76”, which is the highest possible score and place the pair of dice on a rank of 3, then you will eject any dice placed in ranks 4 and 5 at the time of placement since all other values are equal or lower than 76. If you want to be mean, you can play the 76 in rank 0 and eject all other dice from the board. huzzah! However, this comes at a cost since when your turn comes around and your dice are still on the board, you get to advance your pawn a number of spots corresponding to the rank of your placement. This means if you place your dice on “0” rank, you don’t move. Similarly, if you got ejected earlier and your dice are not on the board, you also do not advance.

Pushing your luck depends on the stage of the game and player count

Clearly, the gist of the game is the push your luck element. Most of the time, you have to decide if you can stomach the risk of placing your dice in a high enough rung to accelerate pawn movement. It’s a risk of course, because people can easily bump you off if you have a low value dice roll. And the more players you have, the higher likelihood of your dice getting ejected. On the other hand, you might get lucky. Your opponents might crash out from rolling Xs or doubles, hence preventing them from placing dice. So a mediocre number can still get lucky with a higher rank placement. When to push your luck matters. In early stages of the game, you may want to take some leaps of faith to move fast and gain ground. As you approach the finish line, a movement of 1 or 2 steps may be acceptable. Moreover, how to push your luck also depends on player count. With more players, you probably run a higher risk of getting bumped from the board. Playing a slow and steady race may be more fruitful than landing those moon shots. With a 3 player game, you will see fewer chances of getting ejected and even with a lower value number, you may want to place it on a “5” or a “6” to move fast. Pushing your luck only works if you can evaluate the context and competition during game play.

Conclusions

We have had about half a dozen plays in my remake copy of the game and about half the games were blow outs while the other half was competitive. I think this is more a symptom of low player count as the game is more likely to favor the hot hand. All you need are a couple of hot rolls and you are down the final stretch of the score track. Sure you can team up with someone to eject the front runner’s dice placement, but lady luck usually has the last word. You may not really get a chance to pull off the coup. That said, I could easily imagine with more players, the leader of the pack will become the natural target for other players. I don’t know if that will be fun, but it will most definitely keep the game tense. For a short game, the laughs are likely more common than the gripes, at least for us. This game is also rife with kingmaking opportunities. So if you have a parent who play for his kid to win – which is sadly not uncommon – just don’t pull out this game and allow the parent to ruin their child…. Which makes me wonder if a coop team play of 3 teams of 2 players will work out so that a parent-child can play as a team instead. You would need to consider your partner’s dice during placement, likely making it more strategic. Curious indeed.

Excape is a solid Knizia dice game, but as I have noted, there are plenty of Knizia dice games out there. If this doesn’t work out, you will probably have 3 dozen options to choose from. But I think just like another recent Knizia dice game I played, Gang of Dice, Excape will benefit from more players which is fine due to minimal downtime between turns. For other rollers like Pickomino, a higher player count would most definitely drag out the turns and losing the momentum and lightness of what makes a dice game fun to begin with. I recommend hunting down Rapido if you haven’t yet own a copy. Unfortunately, it is not widely available internationally at the point of writing this review.

Initial impression: Good

Kids Corner:

8 years 3 months: The game is simple and intuitive and works well with kids of any age, really. Just hold their hand and guide them if they are younger. Otherwise, my kid is always gunning for outlandish rolls each time she plays. It’s a boom or bust for her. Sometimes, she barely moves on the track. Other times, she is miles ahead. This is of course, with a 3 player count. There are rules for 2 players as well. Perhaps we should try 6 pawns per player, with each player controlling two pawns.