Game Review: Toboggans of Doom

By W. Eric Martin
June 7, 2009

Designers: Dan Tibbles, Jeremy Holcomb, Joe Huber and Stephen McLaughlin
Publisher: Bucephalus Games
Players: 2
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $20
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Six

The first week in March 2009, I got in my car, drove twenty minutes to the giant theater chain in a nearby town, walked up to the counter to purchase an Imax ticket for Watchmen – and discovered that every screening for the first three days had sold out. Who knew there were so many fans of nihilistic, sexually-repressed superheroes in upstate New Hampshire?

My plan for seeing the movie was perfect except that external forces, forces beyond my control, thwarted my ambition at the last moment. Playing Toboggans of Doom will have you facing those same uncontrollable forces, but rather than just stopping you at the ticket window, sometimes you’ll run out of gas on the highway, or you’ll walk out of your house only to find that a meteor has crushed your car, or you’ll discover the front door has frozen shut so you can’t leave, or you’ll stand up from the chair only to have both knees spontaneously shatter. Bad things will happen to you repeatedly, and you’ll curse Tibbles and Holcomb and all the rest for creating a stupid luck-driven game that puts you through the paces of an upgrade round only to yank the rug out from under you on your first step.

Or you’ll like the game and have fun. Hard to say as I’m not you.

Slippery Slope

Toboggans of Doom is a dice-rolling game along the lines of Yahtzee, Easy Come, Easy Go and To Court the King as you have targets that you want to meet or beat when you roll the dice. The main difference between ToD and the other titles is that in most cases you have only one shot at rolling what you need. Don’t hit the target, and you’re through for the round unless you can somehow pull the deus out of the machina and struggle onward.

The challenge over three rounds of play is to wield your toboggan wisely in order to reach the bottom of a mountain, a mountain that is plagued with obstacles such as sharks, killer trees and a UFO tractor beam. These obstacles are arranged in three columns of ten tiles, with a safe landing strip after tiles three and six in each column; all but the first tile in each column are initially face-down. On its face, each obstacle lists some combination of numbers or die rolls (e.g., “d10” for the roll of a ten-sided die) as well as a yellow, blue or red arrow to show whether you need to go over, around or through that particular obstacle.

Since you would die if you attempted to traverse this mountain on a plain toboggan, you must upgrade it to improve your chances of living. At the start of each round, twelve upgrade tiles are revealed, with these tiles being added to any that remain from previous rounds. Most upgrades include matching yellow, blue or red arrows (sometimes two on the same tile) that show whether they will allow you to attempt to go over, around or through a obstacle; other upgrades modify these in various ways. Each upgrade includes a price to purchase it, either a number value or a die value (e.g., d8), and possibly a small battery or dynamite icon.

Each player has a set of six dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20. At the start of the round, players roll these dice, then take turns purchasing upgrades, either:

• spending dice that sum exactly to the cost of the upgrade,
• spending one die that matches the type printed on the tile, or
• spending all of their remaining dice to purchase one upgrade of their choice.

Once you’ve pimped the toboggan, you choose a column and start down the mountain. To clear the Acid Pit, for example, you need to go over it, which means rolling higher than the value of the pit. In this case, the opponent first rolls a d10, then chooses the higher number of 5 or the result of the die roll. You would choose an upgrade that gives you an “over” attempt, such as the Lost Delivery Truck, then roll the die or choose the number listed in order to clear the acid. If you do, you reveal the next obstacle, roll dice as needed, then try to clear it. Obstacles with an “around” symbol (Laser Cannon) require you to roll less than some target, while “through” obstacles (Snowman Phalanx) require you to roll between two targets. Each time you reveal a face-down obstacle by confronting it, you score a point; reach one of the safe landing strips and you score 1-6 points and have the chance to switch to a new column. If an upgrade shows a battery, you can use it only once a round; if it shows dynamite, you must discard it after using it once.

If you make it all the way down the mountain, you instantly win the game. If you fail to clear an obstacle, you must use one of the upgrades that allows you to modify a die roll or reroll, or else your turn ends immediately. At the end of three rounds, if no one has beaten the mountain, then the player with the most points wins.

Snowblind Design

As with other releases from Bucephalus Games, such as Roman Taxi and Bill of Rights , the graphc design of Toboggans of Doom impedes the game play. While the color palette is attractively cool and icy, the blues of the artwork prevent you from spotting the blue arrows on the upgrade and obstacles tiles – a huge problem when you need to know which upgrades will be usable in which situations. The font used on the tiles and the quick reference section of the rules, which is in all caps with an outline around each letter, is unreadable at a distance.

Despite being only six pages long with huge type, the rules are sloppy and include several errors in the examples, such as a player using a Quake Rocket Jump (9 for an over attempt) combined with Glider Wings (+2 to over rolls) when facing a Shark Attack – despite the Shark Attack requiring an over value of 13 to clear it! The attempt was doomed to fail, so why use it as an example? A through obstacle, something that should have two values attached to it, is given only one and treated like an over obstacle.

Even worse, the rules don’t explain how the opponent is supposed to roll dice for the obstacles, instead simply stating that the opponent will do so. What’s to be done with the Deforester x9000, for example? Choose the 4, or else roll the d8 and stick with that value? Or roll the d8, then choose the lower of the two numbers from the die roll and the 4? The latter is correct, according to co-designer Steve McLaughlin. He also clarified that the opponent rolls for the obstacle, then the active player chooses an upgrade and rolls to see whether he clears the obstacle – a process that’s presented in the rules as if the players roll simultaneously.

The harshest blow in Toboggans of Doom comes from the game play itself as players can fail on the first tile they face, scoring nothing and feeling like they’re wasting their time by playing this game. I saw this happen multiple times over six games, including one game in which a player failed to clear his first obstacle in two out of three rounds. Guess who doesn’t ever want to play this game again? This quick failure is especially punishing as the upgrade round tends to last for several minutes as players decide how to get the most for their “money” – a process that seems pointless once you die fifteen seconds into the movement portion of a round. A few reroll and booster upgrades are available, as well as a one-shot “ignore fail” upgrade, but that’s cold comfort when you’ve just died in a glacial crevasse.

Strangely though, despite the many negatives of the game, I think that my brother and I would have played this game dozens, if not hundreds, of times when we were kids. Not much of a recommendation really – “played by non-discriminating adolescents!” – but I can see the game appealing to certain audiences. Even better would be someone reusing the “dice as money” purchasing system on a game that isn’t all build-up with no resolution.

A different scoring system, one that lets you fail multiple times before crashing out of a round, would be an easy way to make the game more enjoyable for the die-rolling trifle that it is. Such a fix should come prior to publication, however, not months afterward in a suggestion from a reviewer…

Want to try Toboggans of Doom for yourself? Head to BGN’s Games for the Animals page to see whether the game is still available!

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