I find the usual complaint about roll & writes from gamers is that they are too simple. Roll dice, write down a number, repeat. There is a reason most games in this genre claim to work for “1-100 players” at a time since player interaction is minimal.
But there are some new roll & writes and flip & writes out there now that are stretching what the genre can do. ‘Three Sisters’ published by 25th Century Games is a crunchy game, full of choices that can lead to cascading combinations of actions each turn.
‘Three Sisters’ is for 1-4 players. Each player gets two sheets of paper, one that has your gardening space and another with your shed, apiary and fruit trees. There is a rondel with different areas of the sheet posted there - it is designed to look like your farmer’s bulletin board in their shop, helping them track their to-do list around the yard. It also has the 8 end-of-round bonus action tracker and Farmer’s Market bonuses.
One player rolls the dice and then they are assigned to the rondel based on the location of farmer meeple (who is called Farmer Edith in the solo game..she is your nemesis when you play solo but just a helpful marker when you have completing farmers). The number on the dice is the garden plot you can either plant or water this turn, helping your crops grow. The spot on the rondel it is assigned to is an additional action you can take. Each player picks one dice and then everyone shares the last one on the board. After everyone has tended to their gardens, everyone takes the round end action.
The first couple rounds are pretty quick - you plant some seeds, maybe tidy up around the shed a bit as you pick out which things to work towards. But eventually you have enough goods in neighboring gardens and you unlock a perennial action, which gives you a bonus shed action which means you’ve unlocked the rain barrel so you can water one extra garden plot at the end of the round because it is going to rain… and suddenly everyone is staring at their page for five minutes, making sure they’ve kept track of every extra thing they can do now.
By round 8, you have an avalanche of move upon move, especially since the final bonus action of the game is “rain” which means EVERY plant in your garden grows up one, which can lead to so many other bonus points.
And, as I mentioned above, there is a solo mode. If you’re going on a trip and can only take one game, you could easily laminate the sheets, throw the dice in a bag along with the rondel and be ready to go. Heck, you could take a picture of the rondel on your phone and use that instead! The game will keep you busy for hours.
In solo mode, Farmer Edith appears and steals dice from the board, and I guess she also goes through and kicks up your garden like a jerk because you can’t grow plants there again. This adds another level of strategy as you try to make sure the last dice on the board, the one she will claim, isn’t in a garden plot that will mess up your strategy.
‘Three Sisters’ really changed my view on roll & writes and I want to pick up ‘Fleet: The Dice Game’ and ‘Motor City’ which are by the same designers - Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle. I highly recommend it!