Our family absolutely loves roll & write games and Rolling Realms is one of our very favorites.

It’s a simple game where your goal is to use and manipulate the dice rolls to mark off stars on your realm cards and get the highest score. What makes the game special is that each of these realms you can play with are inspired by a game in the Stonemaier library.

That means you can play a game where you’re marking off a unique realm that feels a little bit like playing Viticulture, or one that incorporates the essence of Scythe. We break down our entire thoughts on the original Rolling Realms in this review.

Since it’s release, Stonemaier Games has continued to support Rolling Realms by releasing additional realms. Over 35 of them actually! These are inspired by not only Stonemaier games, but games from other publishers as well!

Now, Stonemaier Games is releasing Rolling Realms Redux.

This is a brand new standalone game — you do not need to have the original Rolling Realms to play Rolling Realms Redux. The box is packed with everything you need to play with 1-6 players, 12 brand new realms, and 2 more of the most perfect chunky dice you will ever roll.

Let’s run down some of the finer details real quick:

12 New Realms — Same Player Count

Like the original game, Rolling Realms can be played with 1-6 players. The 12 new realms have all the same card back colors as the original game so you can easily combine both Redux and the original game into one box if you have both.

Permanent Storage Option for Rolling Realms

While you can fix a lot of promos in the base box of Rolling Realms, you can’t fit everything. Rolling Realms Redux also serves as a permanent storage solution. It comes with divider cards to help keep the player realms separated. And perhaps most excitingly, it also comes with a compendium rulebook with the rules to have every realm card available as of 2024. 

Made to Travel

Included in the Redux is a Travel Box. This is a paper tuck box designed to hold enough materials needed to play a 2-4 player game on the go.

A New Solo Mode

There is a new solo mode released in Rolling Realm Redux called RRR Ball which has not previously been released. 

What Do We Think of Rolling Realms Redux?

Our family loved the original Rolling Realms game and ranked it in the top half of all the Stonemaier games in our last overall Stonemaier Games Ranking. (See our Update Ranking Below).

Rolling Realms Redux had some high expectations to meet.

The Realms

All of the new realm designs continue to walk the line of being simple enough to understand what you need to do, but very tricky in practice to max out your score.

The new realms feature the following games: Atiwa, Dog Park, Flamecraft, Legacy of Yu, Meadow, Planet Unknown, Poker, Rock-Paper-Scissors, SpaceShipped, The Guild of Merchant Explorers, Tidal Blades, and Wonderland War.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers cleverly creates a route building game for players to play. You’ll use the dice to mark spots off on the map while following the restrictions placed on you by the die’s value. It’s fun to try and beebop your way around the mini map to gather all the benefits.

The Meadow Realm incorporates the unique card drafting of Meadow where players will use dice to place on the outside rows and columns of a grid to mark off spaces that correspond to their die roll. Meadow is a favorite game of ours and we loved seeing this so perfectly distilled into a roll & write format.

Poker creates this fun tension for players. You’re building out your poker hands and always find yourself hoping for the perfect roll of the die to help you. It’s can be a boom or bust card — if the Poker fates are on your side, you can sweep up a lot of stars, but if your perfect plans are dashed you’re left with nothing.

Wonderland’s War is particularly fun. You in a since are battling the game. Players write numbers into battle ground circles. These circles will add together and combat the game’s results later on which equals the sum of the rolled dice during particular turns of the game. The cool thing here is you don’t know what those results are going to be, so you don’t know if you are overcommitting a high dice roll to a battle that ultimately has a low value, or under powering one that’s going to come in hot with an 11 point punch.

Some of the realms get a little bit messy

There are a few realms in Redux that fell a bit flat for us due to their more messy nature of scoring.

Some realms, like Flamecraft and Atiwa, were quite confusing to play even with the help of the compendium. This was something that we didn’t experience in the original game where all realms were fairly easy to pick up even if their puzzles were more challenging to solve.

While we enjoyed all the realms in Redux, we found we enjoyed the realms better when we had played the game it was based on since we were familiar with that game’s mechanism. This familiarity brings a better appreciation for what the Realm is trying to do and often likely makes the Realm easier to pick up.

New Solo Mode

The RRR Ball is the best addition to Rolling Realm Redux.

Unlike the mini-golf solo mode from the original game which created unique challenges, in RRR Ball you play in league against bots. This simulates playing against an opponent but requires little upkeep from you.

RRR Ball is set-up as a tournament against three bot players. A season is 5 weeks (5 rounds) and each week you will play with three new realms.

You compete against the bot to earn more stars on each realm and overall. Since you know at the start of the game how many stars the bot earned on each card, you can plan your strategy for which cards to focus on to win a majority of the cards.

This tournament format works so well since it can allow for a quick play of just one round, while building to completing something bigger. The provided solo mode save sheet made it easy to stop and start mid-season. I love the progression and how you can level up to new leagues to make the challenge harder.

RRR Ball has become my favorite way to play Rolling Realms. (sorry family!)

Production Quality & Storage Solution

The same great markers, cleaning cloths, and chuncky dice all return for Rolling Realm Redux.

The realms are easy to wipe off and clean after each game. We really appreciate the size of the dice making it easy to see what was rolled. They really are the perfect size. More of this please!

It was a great idea to provide a standalone game that doubles as a full storage solution for Rolling Realms players. Being able to combine all our cards into one organized box has been such an improvement, even or us who do not have every promo realm created.

The Travel Box was another great idea to include in the Redux box but…

Unfortunately, our tuck box game banged up with a small rip. While we were still able to form the box, I would not trust it to hold up to any traveling.

Instead we opted to use a photo case instead as a travel box for Rolling Realms instead. We tossed this in the glove compartment with a few markers and a cleaning cloth and now we’re set.

However the travel box still does serve an important role as box filler to help keep our cards from sliding around in the box so if yours isn’t in perfect condition like ours, don’t throw it out just yet!

Summary

For most, we think the decision of whether or not to get Rolling Realms Redux is going to come down to two main questions.

1: If I have Rolling Realms, should I get Rolling Realm Redux?

This one is simple, if you like the base game and want to add more realms to play with, this is going to be your best value. A typical new promo realm from Stonemaier is $5.00. With Rolling Realms Redux you get 12 Realms plus all of the other contents making it the best way to add more content to the game from a price standpoint. 

If you found the base game to only be okay, Redux is not a remix and there are no massive overhauls to the games so we don’t really see any reason to get another version of a game you aren’t overly excited about. That is unless you were looking for an improved solo mode, then I would recommend Redux, since the solo mode has reignited my fever for Rolling Realms.

2: If I don’t have the original Rolling Realms, which version should I get?

In general, I would always recommend starting with the Rolling Realms that has the most realms based on the games you’ve played. For most folks, that will likely be the original Rolling Realms. Having a connection with the source material for the realm really does make a difference in the overall enjoyment of the game. Additionally, I like the smaller box size compared to the larger Rolling Realms Redux box. 

Overall we think Rolling Realm Redux is a Top of its Class roll and write game.

It manages to be both straight forward and strategic, offers great variability, and maximizes its replay ability with an excellent solo mode and ample publisher support. It doesn’t try to be more than a roll and write should be by adding overly complex mechanisms that drag out the game. Yet the Realms provide a satisfactory challenge for players new and experienced alike.

Rolling Realms is the perfect game for anyone looking for the next step up roll-and-write after Qwixx and Encore.

You can find information on how to purchase Rolling Realms Redux here.

  Find this and all our favorite games on our Amazon Storefront.

 Game Info
  Title: Rolling Realms Redux
  Players: 1-8 Players
  Designer: Jamey Stegmaier & Karel Titeca
  Artist: Marius Petrescu
  Publisher: Stonemaier Games

A special thank you to our friends at Stonemaier Games for sending this copy of Rolling Realm Redux for review. As always, our thoughts and opinions are our own.

Our Current Ranking of All Stonemaier Games

Thus far, Stonemaier has released 16 games and has continually proven itself to be one of the best publishers at publishing games with high-quality components and engaging gameplay. We rank every game* and share where their latest release lands amongst their classics.

1. Viticulture Essential Edition (previously 1) – While we love many Stonemaier games (the top 5 have all been in Adam’s Top Games List in recent years), Viticulture remains the clear number one. The game provides the perfect amount of worker placement tension. Viticulture only gets better with the Tuscany and Viticulture World expansions, both we highly recommend.
   
2. Tapestry –  We can’t get enough of advancing on the various skill tracks while managing our resources. Each game feels vastly different depending on your combination of asymmetrical civilizations and capital city mats. The game gets even better when you add in the expansions.
   
3. Rolling Realms / Rolling Realm Redux – The games are two similar to warrant their own entry on our ranking, but the added variety of new realms and RRR ball solo mode has made this game jump up our rankings. It also benefits from being one of the quickest Stonemaier games to set-up and play. With some many realms available there is a lot to still explore in this game.
   
4. Wingspan -This game deserves all its praise—a great blend of theme and gameplay. I am still very much looking forward to the next expansion. This is the first Stonemaier game I recommend to anyone.
   
5. Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig – This game takes a good game (Between Two Cities) and makes it better by adding an excellent theme and removing the square grid restrictions. It is only this low because it doesn’t play as great at two as our top picks. It is however our number one favorite Stonemaier game for 4+ players.
   
6. Scythe – This game has it all: unique player powers, mech miniatures, combat, resource control, map movement, etc., and yet it still plays smoothly and isn’t overwhelming to teach and learn. It is a bigger board game that still feels approachable, which is so special.
   
7. Euphoria – Don’t sleep on this Stonemaier classic featuring dice worker placement. We love the Dystopian theme and clever use of dice as workers which keeps it rated highly.
   
8. Apiary – Apiary lands right in the middle for now, but I can see it rising higher if we get it to the table more or dropping if the space bee theme keeps us away. It is at once both fun to play yet difficult to connect with while doing so.
   
9. Charterstone – This legacy worker-placement game is worth the journey. The fun is in exploring how to unlock new crates just as much as it is in winning. Would gladly play the campaign again if asked.
   
10. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest – One of the best six-player games for anyone who loves predictable chaos. Love all the play and component upgrades to this classic, but I still miss the original pirate art and theme.
    
11. My Little Scythe – A highly enjoyable family game that does an excellent job of taking the essence of Scythe, making it approachable for a family audience. Highly recommend.
    
12. Between Two Cities Essential Edition – The Essential Edition makes a few quality of play improvements with new art, box size and inclusion of the expansion content. However, this game has been outshined by its more thematic sequel.
    
13. Red Rising – Heavily inspired by the card game Fantasy Realms, Red Rising looks to add even more to the gameplay. This overall made the game feel clunky and had me yearning for the snappier pace of the game it was pulling from despite being a fan of the Red Rising book series myself. 
    
14. Smitten – This simple two-player cooperative micro game is fun for what it is, but nothing you need to go out of your way to track down.
    
15. Pendulum -This real-time worker placement game was an interesting idea but ultimately ended up being too fiddly and complex that it felt like work to make it fun. It was also one of the rare times Stonemaier had some poor components in their game. 

NR – Expeditions – https://amzn.to/49xvyEJ  & Wrymspan –  https://amzn.to/3zwcxpe
* These games are currently not rated as we’ve yet to get them played. Once played, there will be a review with our updated Stonemaier game rankings.