Forges of Ravenshire Review

Everyone knows that woodland creatures make the best blacksmiths! The Blacksmith Guild of Ravenshire is looking for a new Forgemaster. Players are competing for this role as they gather resources and complete contracts for weapons and armor. Let’s dig into this dice placement game and see what it’s all about.

Gathering

Forges of Ravenshire takes place over 4 seasons with each season having two distinct phases. During the gathering phase, players are placing their dice onto the central board and collecting resources based on the die face and placement. You’ll find leather, wood, ore, and more on the central board. This board is seeded with a die in each location so that players have options when pulling another die back in this phase.

Players pull back another die, collecting the resources based on the die face and location. This die is placed back on your player board onto the matching color which is associated with one of the 3 guilds in the game. These 3 guilds have specific focuses and serve as the engine building mechanic in the game.

Resources are all tracked on the right side of the player boards using translucent cubes. The double-layered boards make it easy to track everything as you increase and eventually spend resources throughout the game.

Placing the die into the guild on your player board will let you run all the actions under that guild. Building up your guilds and unlocking the blocked spaces is vital to building a good engine. These guild spaces will provide you with the coins and resources you’ll need to beat your opponents.

Build Those Contracts

Once everyone has gathered from the central board 3 times, the game moves into the production phase of the season. In this phase, players simultaneously place their three dice into the production half of their board. You can earn a variety of resources along with creating steel and charcoal from other resources that you collected.

This is the time to fulfill any contract cards that you have the resources for. Each contract will award you coins and other mythical resources to add to your supply. If you have enough resources, you can put one of two “finishes” on your weapon or armor creation. This gives you a little something extra that impresses the customer.

Victory points in Forges of Ravenshire are the coins you earn during the game, along with your reputation level at the end of the game. Throughout the game you’ll need to spend coins to make upgrades. This opens up more opportunities in your guild or increases production in your forge. You’re essentially spending victory points to make these upgrades.

After 4 seasons, players will count their coins and add their reputation points to get their final score.

Jumping into Action

Forges of Ravenshire does a good job of creating two distinct phases in each round that has players placing dice and managing resources. This is a mechanic I really enjoy and Forges has quickly climbed to the top of this list.

Throughout the gathering phase you’ll have opportunities to use action tokens to do a variety of things. These action tokens can extend your turn and set up a great production phase. I’ve found that spending these action tokens early and often is important to finishing your contracts before your opponents.

I love the flow of this game and how satisfying it is when you have a productive season. Forges of Ravenshire supports 2 to 4 players along with a solo mode. While there’s not a lot of player interaction, it is possible to keep a player from a specific guild color in a season. The most players can do is draft the die that another player wanted on the central board.

Final Thoughts

This game has stuck in my mind since my first demo at Origins 2023. The mechanics of Forges of Ravenshire are easy to teach but the economy and resources in the game feel like a puzzle. The accessibility and difficulty sit at this sweet spot where I can teach a newer gamer, but it’s challenging enough to play with friends who love heavy games.

B.A. Games did a great job with the production and components in the game. I love the size of the dice, the double layered player boards, the large central board and inserts in the box.

My only gripe with the game would have to be with the rulebook itself. During our first full play of the game we struggled to find answers to some of our questions in the rulebook. Thankfully, we found clarifications in the BGG forums. The puzzling part was that the clarifications dated back to before the Kickstarter campaign finalized. It feels like a big miss not to include the clarifications or change the language in the rulebook before it went to production. Thankfully, the designer Sam Stockton has been active in clarifying the questions that players have had as they get to sit down with the game.

Forges of Ravenshire is a dice placement game that I would easily rank among games like Roll Player, Sagrada and Coimbra. Once players know the game, Forges is a snappy game where players are racing to fulfill contracts and earn additional title bonuses that are up for grabs. Each time we play, our scores slowly climb as we look for more ways to be efficient and build better engines with our guilds.

This is a release that is absolutely worth checking out (you can check out the game digitally through the Sovranti app). My excitement earlier this year for this release feels justified now that I’ve got half a dozen plays under my belt. Don’t sleep on Forges of Ravenshire as it makes its way to backers and stores at the end of the Summer.

You can purchase Forges of Ravenshire from the B.A. Games web store or look for it at your local game store in coming weeks.

This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.

Highs

• Satisfying dice placement and resource system
• All 3 guilds are unique as you build your engine
• Excellent component quality and board layouts
• Add-on assistants and solo mode gives you more ways to play

Lows

• Rulebook could use some clarity
• A 4-player game takes up a good amount of table space

Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability