3841 Minotaurus
Price: $24.99
Pieces: 211
Price Per Piece: $.12
Microfigures: 12
LEGO Description:
National Parenting Seal of Approval!? How can you resist?Minotaurus from LEGO' Games: A new way to play!
Introducing LEGO Games, the world's first collection of games that you build, play and change. With the unique buildable LEGO Dice and changeable rules, LEGO Games is a great way of having fun together with family and friends. The mighty Minotaur, a mythical creature, protects a secret temple hidden deep inside a labyrinth. Be the first to lead your heroes to the temple, avoiding the Minotaur and cleverly placing walls to block your opponents. Clear and simple rules make this game great fun for the whole family (2 to 4 players). Game play approximately 20-30 minutes. 1 buildable LEGO Dice 12 LEGO microfigures 1 building instruction booklet 1 rule booklet Award Winner: National Parenting Seal of Approval
Ignore that note of sarcasm up there. This game is awesome. Prepare yourself for a mythical ride.
Behold the awe inspiring box, featuring two LEGO men that I wish were minifigures, as well as the silhouette of a minotaur that I definitely wish was a minifigure. The box is high quality so you can reuse it and store your game in there.
The back of the box just features some more actual game play pictures. There's not much to say here. It's a box.
Remember, there are twelve microfigures. And quite micro they are. I love these guys. They crack me up. They're super detailed and super tiny, about half the length of an actual minifigure. Nothing on them is able to be posed but they're still super nice. The lack of moving parts probably makes them really easy to produce.
And here are their mug shots.
The six sided dice makes a reappearance in this set, like every other LEGO board game. I hope in the future that someone makes their own genre of building centered around LEGO dice. Anyways, you may notice that there are more than 6 plates to put on the dice. That's because this game, like every other LEGO board game, comes with alternate rules. One of those alternate rules involves putting on a different colored plate instead of the 3 dice plate.
I'm going to take this time here to comment specifically on the pieces that come with this set. I'm going to flat out say it that they are not that impressive. Some people might be turned off by the high price per piece that this set has. I would like to belay that though by telling you that this set comes with a green baseplate, which is usually $4 or $5. It comes with a large amount of lime green bricks, as well as a few regular green bricks that form the border of the game. They are under a lot of flat lime green tiles. The little gray pieces you see are a bunch of 1x2 gray plates with 2 circular clear studs topped off with a 1x2 gray tiles. That pretty much sums up all of the pieces for this set.
Now to move onto the actual game itself, as well as game play.
Here's the game set up for a 2 player game. This game is 2 - 4 players like the rest of the LEGO games. You can see from the empty sides where the other 2 players would be, as well as where their microfigures would rest.
If you ever wanted to deconstruct the game for pieces, or just feel like setting up all of those lime green pieces is tedious, fear not, for LEGO preempted your concerns. This might not look like much here, but give me one moment...
Really simplifies everything, doesn't it?
I'm going to explain the rules of the game with pictures that will hopefully clear everything up.
The game begins in one of the corners where your three heroic Greeks are safe upon their platform. The goal of the game is to get to the center of the maze.
This is the center of the maze. Notice that there is a large black minotaur blocking the way. He's going to play a large part in the game.
The dice determines what moves you may make during the game. When you roll a side that has regular dice printing you may move your person the however many spaces that the dice displays. You may not move diagonally.
If you roll gray then you get to move a column. Featured in that picture next to the dice is one of those columns. If you look back up at the picture of the entire board you will see columns on the board as well as ones on the sides. You may move any of those to any space you like. Nothing can cross those columns.
The columns block you and your opponent in or out. In order to move a column you have to roll gray yourself. There are some places you cannot place the columns though.
You can never fully block the path to the center of the board from your opponent or yourself. The picture above shows an illegal move. You could block two paths out of his starting area if you wished but you may not block all of them. This is not to say, however, that you couldn't make it extremely difficult for them to reach the center.
This is entirely legal.
Remember this guy? He's the minotaur, sort of the name sake of the game. Whenever a person rolls black the minotaur comes into play. You see the minotaur isn't a happy person. He's trapped in this stupid hedge maze and has no chance of escaping, unlike our stoic heroes. He enjoys their company and would not like it if they left so he tries to keep everyone away from getting to the center and celebrating their victory.
Whenever a player rolls black the character who rolled black gets to move the minotaur 8 spaces and park the minotaur there. You wouldn't think that 8 spaces is very far but it gets you out past the second hedge from the center. If the minotaur doesn't come into any contact with a player the minotaur stays and gets to move from that space until another player rolls black and gets to move him again.
No two things can occupy the same space at the same time. Such is true of all matter and the minotaur and the microfigures. When the minotaur reaches a microfigure that microfigure is sent back to the respective player's starting block. The minotaur then does the same and is moved back to the center of the map.
The game is over when a player get's 2/3 of the microfigures to the center before anyone else does if you're playing a 2 player game. If it's three players or 4 players then its 1 of the microfigures. Once the microfigures are there they are safe from the minotaur and everything else and cannot be moved.
That's the entirety of the game.
There are also alternative rules included by LEGO though.
If you think waaaaay back to the beginning of this review you will recall seeing a green 2x2 tile and were totally excited for it but never got a chance to enjoy its utilization. Well in the alternate rules you replace the 3 tile with this and you gain extra powers when you roll green.
That specific power is that you get to jump hedges. Just hedges, not columns. Also you have to be able to jump the hedges in 3 spaces and the hedge itself counts as a space. You have to be able to clear the hedge or you wont be able to jump. You cannot stay on top of the hedge. If you can't jump the hedge you can just move three spaces. if done successfully the result will look something like this.
Not even Mario could do better.
So I'll do a quick run down now.
The game itself is very fun to play. It will take a while to finish. The box says 20-30 mins but I played one with just one other person and it lasted an hour because the minotaur kept scaring away our people. This game has the right amount of luck, chance and strategy involved to make it fun.
The pieces are okay. There aren't any 'rare' or 'unusual' pieces. The pieces that the set does come with though come in plentiful amounts. I have quite a few more lime green pieces than I did before. I also have 12 more microfigures. The base plate is a nice bonus considering LEGO likes to use regular plates nowadays for just about every base.
I would consider this game to be well worth it. It's one of the more fun ones and it has great replay value. Even though I took it apart for the green pieces I could easily see myself in the future reconstructing it to play.
Go get this set!
PS
I thought including the instructions and alternate rules might be a smart idea. They have more alternate rules for yourself, and as always, they suggest making your own rules.