Spots Board Game Review: Come, Sit, Stay

Spots is a game about rolling dice, pushing your luck, and cute dogs. Take actions that allow you to either roll to try for numbers that match the spots on your Dalmatian pups or gain treats that allow you chances to reroll.

But be careful: if you roll dice that don’t fit on your puppy cards you’ll have to bury them in your yard and once you have too many dice in your yard, you bust and you’ll have to empty your poor Dalmatians of their precious spots.

What is Spots Board Game?

Spots Board Game is a casual push you luck game from CMYK, with elements of action selection and contract fulfillment. It was designed by Jon Perry, Alex Hague, and Justin Vickers.

As you go through the game you’ll be rolling and re-rolling dice looking for the numbers that correspond to the spots on your dog cards – the pips acting as the spot patterns on the cartoon dogs.

There are a variety of ways to acquire and roll these dice and to pick up valuable treats. Players will take turns selecting form the six available actions in the center of the table, but actions that have already been used that round by other players won’t be available again until the next one begins.

Check out our video review here:

Set Up Spots Board Game

Select six trick tiles from the large stack. You’ll take the two basic actions (orange) that are in every game – roll over and howl – along with one from each of the other four colors. These six tiles are the actions that will available to players during that game.

The instruction manual has different configurations listed for players to try out that have been designed with synergies and balance in mind, including a recommended set for your first game, but we always just grab the four at random and that works well for us.

Give each player a yard tile, one treat, and two dog cards. Players then all roll a single die and add it to their yard – the player with the highest roll goes first.

You are ready to play.

How to Play Spots Game

Players are trying to cover all the dice pictured on their dogs. The first player to fill up and score six dogs is the winner!

On a players turn they will pick one of the face up action tiles and follow the instructions on that tile. This might allow you to roll a certain number of dice in a certain sequence, it might offer you ways to remove dice from your yard, it might allow you to draw more dog cards, or it might earn you some dog treats. Sometimes there are two available actions, and in those cases, usually one is mandatory and one is optional.

After a player picks a tile it is flipped to its greyed out side, indicating that that action is not available to other players. When five of the six actions are flipped over, place a dog treat on the remaining tile and then flip all actions back over – they are now available to choose from again.

Because the actions are restricted in this way, players might be forced to take an action that isn’t preferred, either because the one they want isn’t available, or in order to prevent their opponent from getting the perfect action at that moment in the game. In either case you’ll need to adapt your strategy to the actions that are available.

Players roll dice hoping to roll the numbers pictured on their dog cards. If so they place dice on their cards. If they are unable to place a dice on one of their dogs they must bury the die or dice into their yard. If you bury too many dice, or rather, any time a player has move than 7 pips in their yard, they bust and have to discard all dice from their dogs and yard.

Players may redo a roll before they place any dice by spending a treat, but they must re-roll all dice involved in that role, even if some of them could be placed.

When a player has filled a dog card (or multiple dog cards) they can choose to score them on their turn. This locks in those dog cards so that, even if you bust moving forward those cards can’t be lost. When you do this you draw a new dog for each card scored, but you can only ever have a total of six cards, including scored cards. This action takes up your whole turn.

If, instead you are able to place dice on all the available spaces on your dog cards during your turn, you get to score them immediately without forfeiting a turn. This incentivizes taking a big risk, because saving a turn is a huge advantage in this game.

Review

Pros

This is casual push your luck done right. There is just enough crunch to make the decisions is is interesting, and it isn’t just straight dumb luck of the dice. There are interesting decisions to be made on every turn, whether you play it safe, or stockpile treats, waiting for the moment when you take the big risk and bust or triumph.

There’s moments where you get to feel clever and the action system provides and interesting element, since you are deciding which available action benefits you most at that time.

A game like Zombie Dice, which I admittedly love, really only offers you the decision about whether or not to keep rolling. And while there’s a compelling simplicity in that, here you have a little extra rules overhead, but that means that players have the opportunity to put together a strategy, deny their friends access to the action they need, hoard a bunch of treats, and go big when they get the chance. Your decisions matter, not just the luck of the dice.

You’ll get to laugh at your friends when they take the big risk and bust, which is an important part of this kind of game, but you’ll also all cheer them on and the table just might erupt when someone rolls all the spots they need.

It’s an excellent family game or for a casual game night with friends. It’s silly, fun, with just enough crunch that your decisions and strategies matter. The teach is fairly straightforward, but you’ll likely need to go through each of the tiles and explain that action to the players, in addition to the core rules.

This is one that will not get stale quickly. Any dice game, has a lot of variability baked in, but they’ve taken replayability to the next level, since it features dozens of action tiles in the box, providing an incredible amount of combinations to explore. This has the potential to be a game night staple, that fills an important role in your collection for years.

Cons

My only complaint is that I often wish I could squeeze in one more player, since this only plays up to four, but the game might drag on a bit if there was that much time between turns – so I can see why the designers made that choice.

I will say that it isn’t a perfectly balanced game. Cards require different quantities of dice – some one, most two or three, and one requires four. There are advantages to having more spaces to place dice, sure, but it is more difficult to fill up those cards. They’ve worked to mitigate this by putting a paw print symbol on the more challenging cards and certain actions provide benefits based on the number of paw prints. This system does a pretty good job, but players need to understand this balancing mechanism and, if they have paw prints, prioritize those actions to get the benefits.

Theme and Artwork

The theme here is perfect. Artist John Bond has managed the impossible and made a bag of simple white dice come to life with his adorable dog illustrations. It’s a game about rolling dice, pushing your luck, and placing dice onto dog cards. But the artwork and theming makes it feel like more than just a push your luck game.

My 11 year old nephews loved the silly dogs, and there were some real disappointments when they didn’t get their favorites. They leaned into the dogs names and characteristics in a way that definitely enhanced the experience.

I also like that the actions you can select from our dog tricks – like roll over, sit, and hunt – and that these tricks, to an extent, thematically match up with the action you are taking. For instance, hunt lets you roll a bunch of dice and then pick two of those to either place on your dogs or bury.

Components

The dice are nothing special, it’s a big bag of plain white dice. But, again, the theme makes them pop. Cards are decent quality, and the cardboard pieces are all extremely sturdy. The treats are little wooden dog bone, which are tactile and thematic.

The box size is a great size, with no wasted space. It’s one that’s easy to throw in your bag and take with you anywhere. You’ll find that this game works with a lot of groups in a lot of different situations, so you might find yourself doing that regularly.

Overall a quality production.

Conclusion: Rolling Dice and Training Dogs

You should really give this casual push your luck game from CMYK a try. Placing dice onto dog cards, taking actions to roll and reroll trying to finish yours first. You’ll get to laugh at your friends when they bust and cheer for them when they get all their dice on the matching spots. I suspect this will become a true family classic and is one that you should add to your collection.

We recommend this as one of our best board games for 10 year olds. Check out that list for more great games.

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