Designers: Ted Alspach, Toryo Hojo, N2

You are the leader of a struggling post-apocalyptic settlement, where you will scavenge goods necessary to create structures necessary for the reemergence of mankind, such as GMO farms, tech labs, and, um…. investment banks?  Sure, why not.

You start with four buildings.  Each building gives you the ability to manipulate or store dice somehow.  The most important is a construction building, which allows you to build more buildings, which have an array of mechanical benefits, including giving you free dice or giving more power to manipulate them.

Interesting Mechanic: Colony is a dice drafting game unlike most others. You will roll three dice on your turn, take one and pass the other two to your left.  That player will take a die, and the next person will take a die as well.  Each die represents a different kind of good (for example, a ‘2’ represents fabric and a ‘6’ represents Uranium’).  The dice drafting game is the interesting thing, as you need to balance your own needs with the need to not give your opponents goods that are too favorable.

Colony is a pretty good game by Bezier games, who will reappear later on this list.  The dice forging mechanic is interesting, but could be further developed.  The buildings you can build are chosen randomly at the beginning of the game (you choose random stacks of cards, similar to Dominion).  Top complaint about the game is the aesthetics are somewhat lacking – for example, the dice are boring, white dice in a day and age where custom dice are common in gaming.

Image result for colony board game

(Photo Credit: Bezier Games)