The game itself is about developing our clan in the best possible way, at least better than our fellow players, as this is the only way to win the game. This development takes place at various places on the large game board and our own personal boards. Firstly, there is a map of the Mediterranean, the area around Crete, in the centre of the game board. This is divided into 10 areas, some of which are hidden depending on the number of players. During the game, we can build cities, towers, farms and warriors in these areas from our own player boards, spreading out from our starting position as we expand. So there is some kind of area control in the game, but we don't fight each other directly, we just compete for majorities. However we can fight against the sea people, who are neutral and are placed on the areas at the start of the game.

Whenever we take something from our game board like a farm or a city, we unlock a bonus that either takes effect immediately or gives us extra victory points at the end of the game. We are already familiar with this mechanism from many other BOARD & DICE games like Nucleum, it is almost a speciality of the publisher.

However, there is also always some kind of speciality in all BOARD & DICE games, and in Minos this is definitely the kind to choose your actions. At the start of each round, we choose clockwise from a selection of dice that have been rolled in advance. We then place the chosen die in one of our dice containers and place these together with the die on one of the free spaces of the five different main actions spaces. The dice are placed on each action in ascending dice numbers; higher dice numbers are moved to the right if necessary. This can be annoying, because the further to the left the dice is in the end, the more powerful the respective action.

However, higher dice numbers also have their advantages: on the one hand, they are carried out first, and on the other hand, you should always try to combine two dice of the same colour that add up to at least a sum of 9. If you succeed in this, you move up one step on the colour-matching progress tracks, which of course also gives you advantages in the further course of the game. Incidentally, the grey dice colour serves as a joker here and can therefore be combined with any other colour.

There are five different main actions in the game. Two of them allow us to expand on the map, firstly by placing our buildings and secondly by sending our warriors to open up new areas with which we can interact in coming rounds.

Two other main actions deal with hand cards – called degree cards -, which are another important element of Minos. One of this action gives us new cards in our hand, the other action let us play cards, provided we have enough money and resources to do so. Resources are particularly important because they can become a permanent supply and can then reduce the price in various places on the game board. If you have stone, for example, you pay less for certain buildings when bringing them onto the map.

Cards are initially played on the table in front of us for a direct effect, but can later be moved to our palace for a permanent effect.

So there's really a lot going on in Minos and you probably will need some time to get into the game. In itself, however, the gameplay is quite simple. Nevertheless, this is an evening-long game, especially when played with a full crew of four players. 2.5 hours or more should be planned for with this number of players, as Minos turns out to be a puzzler. In principle, there is a risk of downtime, but I never felt that way in my testing rounds. Instead, I and all other players were involved the whole time, thinking about suitable countermeasures to your opponent's activities and planning our next moves.