What Is Dice Throne?

So before we get into what Marvel Dice Throne is, it’s probably worth knowing what Dice Throne is. Dice Throne is a competitive board game where players take characters into battle. Each character plays and fights differently than the other ones, though the basic mechanics of the game stay the same.

Turns are pretty easy to follow in the game. First off you have a chance to play cards, then you roll dice, Yahtzee style up to 3 times keeping dice along the way. The rolling of the dice is how you attack your opponent and they can roll defense, maybe. The cards are used for a number of things, manipulating the dice, but also improving your attacks and defense.

You can read more about it here. And my Top 10 favorite characters here.

Checkout GloryHoundd’s playthrough for even more information on the game.

What Is Marvel Dice Throne?

So Roxley is taking their Dice Throne system and taking it to Marvel. We are going to get Marvel characters fighting other Marvel heroes in this game. Right now we know that we’re getting Captain Marvel and Black Panther as one of the duel boxes. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about, what characters do I hope that we’ll get in Marvel Dice Throne?

What Heroes Do I Want?

Let’s start with putting out some ground rules. The first is that I think right now we’ll only be getting heroes. We might get, eventually, a Dice Throne Adventures style game with Villains. I’ll talk about that game soon, but for now let’s just say we’re going to do heroes in this first round.

Who we know thus far are Black Panther and Captain Marvel. What other characters do I think/hope will be in there?

Duel Box 1: Black Panther and Captain Marvel

We know it’s coming. I think Black Panther should have a lot of upgrades, probably more upgrades than some other characters, except for one that I expect to see and will talk about later. But his upgrades should make a bigger jump than most as well.

Captain Marvel, I think flight should play into it. She should be able to get a flight token which should boost her defense. It could be something like evasion where she has a chance to avoid some damage or all damage if the roll is right on her defense. Beyond that, I think it should be a big blast attacks with a bit more all or nothing to what she does.

Duel Box 2: Spider-Man and Hulk/Bruce Banner

Spider-Man seems like an obvious choice, and extremely popular character. What I think would work well for Spider-Man is the idea of slowing down other characters. He has the webbing so he should be able to sling that around and reduce how much a character can attack and play defense.

I paired him with an interesting character idea I saw online. The Hulk should be like the Cursed Pirate, in some ways, the Cursed Pirate starts on one side and then flips to the other which does more damage. You can do the same with Hulk. But you can flip back and forth depending on triggers. Do over 5 damage as Banner flip to the Hulk, less than 5 as the Hulk, you’re Banner again.

Duel Box 3: Iron Man and Black Widow

This is the dead box, I mean, is that too soon? But two popular characters. I’ve heard that it might lean more into what is coming up, but I think there’ll be a box of characters who we might not see again.

Iron Man is obviously very popular with the movies, and he’s going to be a character who can have a lot of upgrades. I think there might be some fun stuff you can do with him. Again it’ll be about upgrades for him, the one who might have more than Black Panther would. Or maybe even different suits of armor that allow for freer upgrading, like you start with some basic stuff, but you can upgrade anything over anything.

Black Widow is going to be one where it’s less upgrades. She’d still have moves that she can upgrade, but she’s a character in the movies and comics who can take advantage of a situation. So stronger or more interesting dice manipulation. Or maybe it is more attack modifiers. Either way, she can adapt better to a situation than most.

Duel Box 4: Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch

We’ll call this one the magic box. Obviously both going up against each other in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Doctor Strange could be about time manipulation. Forcing opponents to reroll dice more. Or even putting out tokens that he can use to make them reroll their whole offensive phase, though that’d be hard to get.

Scarlet Witch would pack a wallop and also be able to alter the reality of the game. I don’t know how to balance it, but maybe have her ultimate do less damage and have it remove an upgrade. Or give it two different paths on what you can do. Something that is just game breaking, but not because it’ll slow down how fast she can hit you. It’d be an interesting choice to have to make.

Do I Really Expect These Heroes?

I think that some are more likely than others. I think that Doctor Strange and Spider-Man are the two most likely out of all of them. But there are a ton of characters out there. I’m guessing they won’t dip into X-Men yet. And I fully expect that there will be additional “seasons” of both this and regular Dice Throne to come out over the years. So like CMON did with Marvel United, a second season could be the X-Men.

What Heroes Do You Want To See?

It’s really going to be what we speculate on until October 25th. There are a ton of options, and right now I’m just guessing that the X-Men might come later. And of course the Fantastic Four are an option as well. That’d be two boxes right there if you wanted to get them all.

Though, with the Fantastic Four, my dream would be to get all of them in a Dice Throne Adventures style box, it makes it cooperative against a villain. For me, I would love to see Fantastic Four as heroes that come with that Kickstarter, when/if that happens. And then Doctor Doom as the main bad guy creating a Battleworld type situation. And do some interesting villains as the henchmen beneath him. I’d be a good way to have the Fantastic Four come out at once.

Let me know your top pick in the comments below for a character.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Where we left the crew, they were at Moody’s Bar for some of the duels which Bokken had entered himself into. Barrai and Thrain had beat up a guy at the bar and left only to sneak back in to watch Bokken fight as they didn’t really remember that they were there looking to find where the tunnel that went under Strawgoh came out in Moody’s Bar.

Bokken is facing off against a half-orc who has an okay record in the ring, but isn’t one of top duelists. Bokken comes out of the gate swinging, rushing to cover the ground and pulling out his odachi and getting a hit on the half-orc. The orc swings back hard with his mace connecting, but Bokken continues to press the advantage until he knocks the half-orc down. They get back up again and wallop Bokken pretty well. But Bokken gets through their guard and brings them to the ground where they stay. The healers come out and heal Bokken some as well as take care of healing the half-orc.

After the fight Barrai starts searching for the trapdoor but finds nothing. Bokken, taking a more direct approach asks an older fighter, Jermaine the Wind Storm, if he knows of any tunnel or trapdoor. He says that he knows pretty often students use one that is back by the latrines, but he doesn’t know where it is himself. Bokken passes off that information to Thrain, like Barrai is still searching, but when Thrain goes to look he finds nothing.

They head back to the school and spend more time doing school work, and trying to figure out what is going on with the final. After there has been a little work done to the school, Castillia and Addrus are moved into the barracks which houses Barrai, Bokken, Thrain and Parrag since theirs had been destroyed. They spend some time chatting with them, and Bokken tips Castillia off, since he’s paying he to keep an eye on Narius, about Addrus being one of the spies. Barrai and Thrain spend some time talking with Addrus and find out that there are actually maps of the tower and that the floors, after the proving area, don’t actually change. So if you have the right connections, have enough money, or are in the right guild, you can actually know quite well what you’re going to find on the first nine floors.

Bokken learning about these maps decides to hang out with some of the fighters from the duels, and joins into a group that is hanging out with Sanphire. He asks them what they know about the third floor of the tower, and gets back some general information. One of the fighters tells him that there’s a lot of fire on that floor. Another says that while there are some monsters, there aren’t as many to fight on that floor, and Sanphire lets him know that this floor of the tower is less about fighting and more about stealth and using your head, which isn’t ideal for Bokken who is not the most stealthy of characters. At that point the other duelists start to swap stories about the tower and pester Sanphire as to when he is going to go back into the tower and try and get past floor 25.

All of the characters spend some time shopping with Barrai buying a number of items, a light crossbow and bolts, chalk, ball bearings, a flask of oil, lock and 10′ of chain, a steel mirror, and after some searching, manacles. Thrain also basically gets himself some jars with oil in them and creates Molotov cocktails. Thrain also spends some time trying to figure out the best ways to not start on fire, and Bokken grabs a jug from the kitchen at the school and fills it with water because he is partially wood.

Also during this time they spend some more time trying to figure out who the other spy might be. Thrain decides to go through Addrus’s stuff now that they are in the same barracks and finds one interesting thing, a chain with five keys on it. This seems out of the ordinary but doesn’t help them get any further into figuring out who might be the other spy. Barrai does spend some time tracing the keys, and then with money he gets from his sponsor he get copies of the keys, from those tracings made up.

Bokken decides that following Addrus around might be useful as well in figuring out who he is working with. He is able to follow him around, he seems him meet with an older man and three students from other schools in the area at an open market, he seems him go into a bank and then into a backroom at the bank and then get a few drinks and watch a few duels. Bokken reports back to Barrai and Thrain and they are a bit surprised that Addrus is going to the bank because it’s a nice bank and unless you have a lot of money they wouldn’t probably accept your business and it would be fairly odd for a student to have that much money. They decide that it’s worth staking out the two locations, the market and the bank to see what activity that they can see from other students.

Barrai watches the bank and sees a few other students go in there, most notably Narius, Edzial (female dwarf barbarian whom hasn’t done much to this point), and Parrag. At the market, Bokken wanders around for a few days and he sees Castillia and Cordon shopping. Narius shopping and then losing his temper when he can’t get stuff for the price he wants. And Dorin actually visits a fairly shady looking stall with occult items. They decide that Narius makes sense to bank at the fancy bank since he comes from a noble family, but Edzial and Parrag that’s a bit odd.

Thrain first follows Edzial and sees her do some shopping picking up trinkets of glass that are of birds, clouds, the sun, and other stuff that you don’t see in an dwarven town. Then she takes them to a courier and gets them loaded into a package. He convinces the courier after Edzial leaves that she had put the wrong address on it and that he was sent to take it to her to get it updated. He takes the package back to the barracks and snoops through it, it’s addressed to Dasthian Corath in the Marthack District, Edfifle, Coldwater Mountains. Thrain knows that Edfifle is a Dwarven town in the Coldwater Mountains, and he finds a love letter form Edzial to Dasthian who is her fiancé. Thrain feels a bit sheepish about that, and returns the package to be sent. He follows Parrag next, Parrag just goes to a bar and has a chat with the bar tender, goes to the bank, and then goes and watches the duels placing a small bet which he loses.

Thrain thinks that’s suspicious and so with Bokken blocking the door, they sit down Parrag and Addrus one evening and accuse Parrag of being the other spy. He tells them that he’s not, but when pushed on it, some of his story about why he banks at such a fancy bank doesn’t make a ton of sense. They don’t get too far with it until Bokken decides to go through Parrag’s stuff and finds a key chain with four keys on it and comparing the keys to the copies that they had made from Addrus’s keys, there are similarities, like they might be for the same sort of location or the same location if that’s why Parrag and Addrus were going to the bank, for a spying reason. Parrag tells another unconvincing reason for going to the bank and it’s when Barrai offers a deal, where they will help keep his cover for him if he admits it that he eventually does. They do some things, like put a lock on their barrack door so that they all have to carry around a key chain, and still keep on acting like they are trying to figure out if Narius or Dorin are spies.

They, and Castillia, go and talk to Assendial and tell her how they figured out who Parrag was and how the small bet after going to the fancy bank first aroused their suspicions. Thrain also asks about the dragon attack and the items that they were shown. Assendial lets it slip, since she thinks they deserve to know a little bit and because they’ve promised Parrag a level of discretion that they can probably be discrete about this, that the scarab item was found underneath the barracks that were destroyed. It seems like whatever the enchantment was caused the dragon to be enraged and want to destroy it, so it attacked the barracks over and over again with acid until the acid ate down to where the scarab was and getting hit, it broke the enchantment on it. They ask for more information, but she sends them off to prepare for their final.

Behind the DM’s screen:

As always, I did limited planning, I basically had planned out the fight, and that was about it. I was curious to see what they would spend time on, and it was actually a really fun session.

With the bank, I knew once I gave Addrus keys that there was going to be something at the bank that the spies needed, most likely a drop or pick-up location for assignments and missions. I also made it so that it made sense for Narius, kid of a noble, to bank there, but it didn’t make sense for the other three, or so it seemed because they didn’t know much about Edzial, hence why I picked her. I tried not to make it too obvious that it was Parrag, and had been planned for it to be him from the beginning, but they did a good job of narrowing things down with their actions.

I also wanted to see what they’d do to prepare for tower test, and they did some fun things with that.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.