Spots - First Play!

30th April 2023

Another Sunday is here and we're logged into Board Game Arena for an evening of gaming goodness.

Roll over! Fetch! Beg! Sit! Spots is game about collecting Dalmatians, only not 101 of them but only 6 in this push-your-luck, dice rolling game about dog tricks.

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Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Dogs cards: Each dog card will depict 1 or more Dalmatians or other dogs with spots in the artwork. These spots are positioned so that they resemble the spots found on a die and have boxes surrounding them to emphasis this. Some dog cards also display a paw - which is used to acquire treat tokens.
  Finally each dog card is double-sided with a grey side used during player and coloured side used to track scoring. The coloured side also omits the die boxes.

Wolfgang & ....Xerxes?

• Trick tiles: These tiles are styled to look a bit like rosettes that might be won at a dog show.
  Each tile is named after a trick which dogs might perform such as 'play dead'. Tricks essentially represent moves or actions that a player may perform.
  These are also double-sided with a 'active' and 'used' side.

• Dog yard tile: This tile depicts a dog sleeping away in their kennel in the yard along with stuff they buried - including what looks like house keys!
  This tile is used to track 'buried' dice.

Is that a diamond? That is one costly dog!

• Treat tokens: These tokens are shaped like stylised dog bones.
• Dice: Spots uses a whole bunch of normal six-siders.

Spots uses very stylised cartoony artwork throughout. Much of it is humorous which suits the game's lightweight nature well and is also style that I like.

Burt won't be very happy when he finds out where that die is going...!

There's minimal iconography in Spots and what there is of it, is easily understood.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Trick tiles: Players can elect to use a predetermined set of trick tiles or choose a random selection, although the 'Howl' & 'Roll Over' tiles are always mandatory.
• Players:
  Dog cards: Shuffle the dog cards into a deck and deal 2 to each player. These should be placed with the grey side up.
  Treat token: Give each player 1 treat token.
  ​Dog yard tile: Give each player a dog yard tile.
  Die: Give each player a single die, which they should then roll and 'bury' (Burying a die or dice means placing them on the dog yard tile.
• First player: Whoever buried the highest value die becomes the first player.

On to play
In Spots players are attempting to place dice on the relevant spaces on their dog cards without going bust.
Spots uses a traditional turn order with the active player performing their action before play progresses to the player on their left.
In their turn the active player may perform 1 of the following 2 actions.

• Perform trick: The active may choose to undertake a 'trick', this involves the following.
  • Trick tile: The active player picks any face-up 'active' trick tile and resolves the action(s) on that tile.
    Usually this involves rolling one or more dice in some manner, sometimes it may involve something else.
    Then: Frequently a trick will have a secondary THEN action which the player may perform after the first action.
    Additionally, some trick tiles allow the active player to gain a treat token, speaking of which....
    Treat tokens: The active player may spend a treat token to reroll all dice. This can be done as many times as the player has treat tokens.
  • Flip trick: Once a player has completed the actions on a trick tile, they must flip it to the other 'used' side.
    Reset: If once a player has flipped a trick tile to the used side and only 1 tile remains active, then all tiles should be returned to the active side. Thus a player will always have at least 2 trick tiles to choose from during their turn.
  • Place dice: Most tricks require the active player to roll a number of dice and place them on dog cards. Once the active player has finished rolling dice, they may be placed on dog cards with dice boxes that contain matching values. E.g., a '3' can go on a box displaying a '3'.
    Burying: Any dice not placed on dog cards must be placed on the dog yard tile, this is called 'burying'.
    Going bust: If at any time the total value of dice placed on the dog yard tile exceeds 7, then the active player goes bust and the following occurs.
    End turn: The active player's turn immediately ends!
    Wipe all dice: All dice on all cards and tiles are removed and returned to the central supply!
• Score dogs: Instead of performing a trick, the active player may score all their completed cards.
  The active player removes all dice on the completed cards and returns them to the supply.
  All completed dog cards are flipped to their 'completed' sides.
  Draw new cards: For each dog card that is scored, the active player draws a new dog card from the deck and places them grey-side up.
• End of turn: Once the active player has performed their action, player progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
As soon as any player has scored their 6th dog, they immediately win the game.

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The winning pack of dogs!

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Overall
Spots' light-hearted artwork and amusing theme fits its lightweight gameplay quite well.

Mechanically there's not too much to say about Spots. It's a push-your-luck game in which players choose when they want to take risk.
As with all games of this type, luck plays a significant part here and players must learn to recognise good luck and mitigate bad luck.
Often this takes the form of giving players extra opportunities to roll dice after the initial roll, usually in the form of THEN actions.
Players must decide how many extra rolls to make and if they can deal with bad results, i.e', bury dice without going bust. Going bust feels quite harsh in Spots as it not only wipes the progress of the current turn but all current progress which makes pushing luck a tricky decision.
Having said that, this is a game that plays quickly and lost progress can be recovered reasonably fast.

Another aspect of luck that will affect players are related to trick tiles. Players will frequently find that their choices of available trick tiles will be limited due to the rules for flipping them and occasionally they'll have a choice of all 6!
I guess there could be a higher level of player about players trying to plan moves ahead and when tiles become active again but generally, it's a case of 'you take what you're given'.

There is an area of concern for me though which is to do with the distribution of numbers on the dog cards potentially effecting game balance.
If a player has cards with 4s, 5s & 6s, it means they'll end up burying dice showing 1s, 2s & 3s.
But if they have cards with 1s, 2s & 3, it means they'll be burying 4s, 5s & 6s which are much harder to deal with than the lower numbers and will be more likely to make a player go bust.
Since dog cards tend to have multiple numbers, if the numbers are well distributed then perhaps this won't occur. I will add that some cards also can gift treat tokens to players when scored which may make them more useful.

However, despite what I've written above, I don't think this is much of an issue. Spots is a light, fun and luck driven game - just roll the dice, take the chance, have fun! If players are looking too deeply into the balance of number distribution on cards, then they're probably playing the wrong game.

I'm not so sure that dedicated gamers will find much to engage with Spots, there are definitely some meaningful decisions to make but also significant amount of chance at play.
With its fun theme and light gameplay, Spot is clearly aimed at a family audience and also younger players. With being fairly quick to play, it also serves as a reasonable filler game.