How to Play Marvel Dice Throne

Marvel Dice Throne is the same game as Dice Throne. So a head to head or king of the hill style battling game. In it you pit your hero against other heroes (or anti-hero with Loki) to see who will come out on top.

You do this primarily through a dice mechanic that is based off a Yahtzee. You roll dice and then re-roll up to two more times. Using the faces of the dice, either numbers or symbols, you then activate an ability to attack your opponent. Your opponent rolls a defense blocking some damage, dealing damage back, or getting tokens to activate other powers and abilities. First player to knock their opponent to zero health is the winner.

That might sound very simple and it is quite simple. But there is more going on than just rolling dice. You get combat points, your currency for the game, and cards. These cards can be a lot of different things. They can remove negative effects from you. They can upgrade abilities or give you new dice combinations to activate attacks off of. Or it can block attacks or manipulate dice. So if you plan it out well, you can possibly set-up a great turn.

What Doesn’t Work?

I don’t really have any issues with the game. I’m bummed that there are no plans for the Geek Bit upgrades, but also it’s a Marvel based game, so that would have to go through them. And I doubt that it’s worth it to do that or it might not even be possible. Otherwise I got no complaints.

I can see people complaining that it is lucky. Which it is to some level. You are rolling dice, but you end up with options to mitigate. You play cards to affect the dice, so that is the most direct way. But all the characters also can upgrade abilities. This means often that you add in new combinations you can roll. So there are ways around the dice.

What Works

Marvel Dice Throne is very good at bringing out the flavor of the characters. With Thor you manipulate Mjolnir for damage and abilities. For Loki you play out illusions. Scarlet Witch manipulates the opponents dice. And Doctor Strange launches spells. Each character is thematic in some way. I love that about Dice Throne in general how every character is different. Marvel Dice Throne keeps that going strong.

Who Is It For?

This is a game for people who like dice. They don’t hide the fact that dice are important when you name your game Marvel Dice Throne. But more than that, Marvel Dice Throne is going to be a game for people who like Marvel as well. It is a pretty casual game and that should make it more accessible to most gamers or even people who are just interested because of the theme.

Should You Get It?

This is a slightly different question than the last one. Mainly because I do think that Dice Throne is not a game for everyone. Let’s face it, even though I might rate a game or game system a 10, someone else might not like it so much.

If you think that Dice Throne, with the fantasy characters, is just fine. Marvel Dice Throne might not be for you. If you love Marvel though and you think Dice Throne is just fine, this one might be better for you. It still won’t make it a great game. Marvel Dice Throne is just another version of Dice Throne. But if you love Marvel that might move it up a bit for you and make it worth your while.

Marvel Dice Throne Final Thoughts

I love Dice Throne and I love Marvel. So Marvel Dice Throne was a no brainer for me to back. And I’ve played it six times already, like I said. I haven’t played all the characters yet, so I’m still ready to dive in more. Thus far I think that Scarlet Witch is my favorite. Doctor Strange is up there and I enjoy Black Widow a lot as well.

Thor, for me, feels a bit more standard in how he plays but I think throwing and retrieving Mjolnir could be a lot of fun if I figure out his character a bit more. And Miles Morales Spider-Man as well as Captain Marvel were cool as well. Captain Marvel is maybe my least favorite, but she can punch really hard at times.

My Grade: A+
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: A

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So what happens if you play a game where this is the main theme of the game? Do you end up playing in the Matrix? And would that works or how would it work in Dungeons and Dragons?

I think that there are two different things that you could look at. The first being an almost T.I.M.E. Stories or Assassin’s Creed situation where you are from a future time and are being sent back in time to this world, or across dimensions. The other being a more magic way, and for Dungeons and Dragons, I would prefer to run it in the second way, though the first would be fun as well.

In the game that I’d be running, and starting with the BBEG, it would be a Wizard of some sort, because an evil Wizard would clearly be creating pocket/illusionary dimensions where the rules for the world aren’t the same. But, that would be the thing, everyone would assume that my wizard is evil, but really, it was just a magical experiment that went horribly wrong that is trapping people into these pocket dimensions or worlds of illusion really.

I would have some fun with that, for the players, probably start them in a world of illusion that seems very different than the setting that I’ve been saying that I was going to set them in. It would probably be something much more modern, there was a D&D podcast that I was listening to where they were talking about an old game (not Total Party Thrill, I forgot the name of this one), where they went to modern times and killed Santa Clause at a mall because the characters didn’t understand what was going on. I’d probably do something less than that and I would make it fairly easy to get out of.

Now, if all the players are doing is getting out of these illusion worlds, that would get old pretty fast, and it also has a problem, if everything is an illusion can it really hurt them. So I’m going to address that first and then suggest some other things that you can do in the game besides put them in an illusion world.

The big question is, since this is a world of illusion, can the players die in this world? I would say that no they can’t. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t get close or that there aren’t consequences. I’m not sure what I’d do, but I’d have them track hit points like normal, but when they die, or get knocked out, they can always come back, but there is going to be some sort of consequence. I’m not sure what I would do, maybe create a separate track where the mental anguish of going down so many times can drive them insane or eventually kill them? And I’d probably put the track at 10 spots, so it would be hard for them to die that way, but it would be possible. And I’d probably give them a way to heal it somehow, maybe every time that they level up they can remove one.

But also in these illusion worlds, they wouldn’t be the only ones who are in there. Some bad people could be trying to manipulate them to cover a crime or something like that. So, while the players can’t die in the illusion world, neither can the bad guys, so if they are able to stop an illusion world so that they can escape from it, they might also then have a real threat in the real world. And how safe are their bodies really in the real world while the players are in the illusion world? You can use things like that to push the players forward. Probably no one slitting their throats in the real world while their minds are in the illusion world, but they might come back to find that some stuff is gone.

You don’t only want to create these mini dungeons for the players of the illusion worlds. If that’s all the players are doing, it’s eventually going to get boring. So you need to mix it up, and you need to get them eventually to the wizard who screwed everything up.

I would make it so that where the illusion worlds are is “visible”. With a good perception check or some sort of description/tip off for it, so at some times you’d probably have the players running from it, and if they can do well on a skill challenge that would work as another type of encounter with this.

Another challenge I’d give them is basically figuring out and locating where these illusion worlds are coming from. Is it the epicenter of them all or is somewhere else. Getting to the origination point should be a dungeon in itself. You can pull from Dragon Age Origins here where when the Mage Circle has issues you are fighting your way through their tower, but you also have to fight your way through the fade at one point. You can create traps, tricks, and more there. I’d probably also put the wizard who created t his as trapped in something that isn’t able to allow him to stop it, like maybe an illusion became real and is holding him hostage or maybe they are trapped in illusion world and are trying to escape, but their solution is to become a Lich, so can the players get them out of that illusion world before the Wizard turns themselves into a Lich?

Finally, I’d put in some challenges in the world of the game. Obviously, there are going to be people who use these illusion worlds to do bad things in them or to loot the bodies of the people who are stuck in them. So the players will probably have to track down a few important things have been stolen and probably some things that have been stolen from them. You can even set up some sort of McGuffin, like there are glasses or some sort that allows them to more easily say the illusion worlds, or that someone has invented a form of magic that allows them to hop in and out of the illusion worlds, which the players would obviously want.

I think that I’d want to run this game and play in this game. The concept is something that will have some of your standard fantasy tropes, but also does some things that would feel completely different. And with the illusion worlds, you’d be able to do a ton of different things. Maybe it’s modern Earth, or maybe it’s just like the fantasy world, but it’s been overrun with demons, you can make up an illusion world each time. I’d be tempted to create a number of them, and then just pull from a hat so that it’s a surprise and the players can’t plan. It would be something interesting to do, and you could even, in session 0, have the players help brainstorm all of these things and are basically creating settings for their characters to be trapped in, which they might not know.

What do you think of this idea? Is this a game that you’d want to play in?

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The Wizard is one of the classiest classes already without doing much to class it up (well, kind of…mainly I just want to write this sentence). There is some truth to this,though, because Wizards, as magic users, don’t get their power by an act of a god, through nature, by making a pact, or by a twist of fate. They are the scholars of the Dungeons & Dragons world. Wizards put time and effort into learning spells, honing their skills, and focusing their studies. Wizards cast based off of their intelligence, and can learn many spells by translating them into what they need it to be to cast the spell. This means that the wizard doesn’t have as hard a cap on spells known as some of the other classes.

Because it is more of a scholarly pursuit, there are a number of different courses of study that a wizard can go into. They could study evocation or divination or necromancy, and whatever they’ve chosen to study, they become better at that area than other wizards. This does in some ways limit the logical routes for backgrounds and backstories. As a wizard, you have to have at least some level of knowledge and schooling to be able to cast spells and learn spells. How you can change it up is how you learned, where you learned, and whom you learned from. You can also, especially with races that live longer like Elves and Dwarves, have been out of school for a long time. A human wizard is likely going to be more recently out of school.

So, what are some backstories that you could use?

You don’t know who your parents were. You don’t even know what town or country you are from, really, though you’ve started to search out clues. Being kidnapped as a young child is always terrifying, even more so when you are kidnapped by a mad wizard who wants to eventually put her mind into your body and become an all-powerful lich. She didn’t want the body of a child though, so she trained you and taught you so that you could help her. That was all that you needed — when you figured out what she was planning, you started planning as well. Then, as she got weaker and it grew closer to the time when she was planning becoming a lich and steal your body, you struck first. You killed her — or at least, you killed her human form. But what you hadn’t realized was that she was prepared to become a lich even if she couldn’t get your body. Now you’ve got to learn more so that you can destroy her and the power you unleashed upon the world.

Background: Folk Hero(?)/Haunted (from Curse of Strahd)
Wizard Class: Necromancy

School was not your thing. It wasn’t that you were a bad student, but it was so boring and dry. You wanted your life to be more exciting, so you goofed off in class, always making amazing illusions that you entertained your classmates with. This didn’t really endear you to the teachers, and before you were set to graduate, you were expelled for causing one too many disruptions. That was okay; you’d learned what you wanted to know. You took your show on the road and performed all over, from small towns of simple villagers to big cities in front of nobility. Life was great. Then you started to notice strange things happening in a number of the small towns and villages you went around to. You weren’t sure what was going on, but with your entertaining, you can open doors and talk to people. Now you just need someone who is better at investigating to help you figure it out.

Background: Entertainer
Wizard Class: Illusion

You remember that day so well. It stands out in your mind; you’ll never forget it. There was nothing that you could have done; you were so young. But one day, the goblins found you and your mother in the woods. She told you to run, and you did, but not too far — you watched as she tried to hold them back so they wouldn’t go after you. They killed her, but she had bought you your life with her blood. It still stands out in your dreams, and you rarely get a good night’s sleep. You went and joined up with the local militia, and they taught you how to destroy. You were able to fight and defeat many a goblin, but that didn’t bring your mother back. You vowed to let no one else die, and as you learned that you had magic abilities, you started spending your time figuring out a way to change the future. You, along with your teacher, were able to see a major tragedy that was coming to the school. Your teacher sent you away to get help, but while you were gone, your teacher died. Now you have to figure out how to stop this event on your own and find out who killed your teacher.

Background: Sage
Wizard Class: Divination

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The Wizard is one of the classiest classes already without doing much to class it up (well, kind of…mainly I just want to write this sentence). There is some truth to this,though, because Wizards, as magic users, don’t get their power by an act of a god, through nature, by making a pact, or by a twist of fate. They are the scholars of the Dungeons & Dragons world. Wizards put time and effort into learning spells, honing their skills, and focusing their studies. Wizards cast based off of their intelligence, and can learn many spells by translating them into what they need it to be to cast the spell. This means that the wizard doesn’t have as hard a cap on spells known as some of the other classes.

Because it is more of a scholarly pursuit, there are a number of different courses of study that a wizard can go into. They could study evocation or divination or necromancy, and whatever they’ve chosen to study, they become better at that area than other wizards. This does in some ways limit the logical routes for backgrounds and backstories. As a wizard, you have to have at least some level of knowledge and schooling to be able to cast spells and learn spells. How you can change it up is how you learned, where you learned, and whom you learned from. You can also, especially with races that live longer like Elves and Dwarves, have been out of school for a long time. A human wizard is likely going to be more recently out of school.

So, what are some backstories that you could use?

You don’t know who your parents were. You don’t even know what town or country you are from, really, though you’ve started to search out clues. Being kidnapped as a young child is always terrifying, even more so when you are kidnapped by a mad wizard who wants to eventually put her mind into your body and become an all-powerful lich. She didn’t want the body of a child though, so she trained you and taught you so that you could help her. That was all that you needed — when you figured out what she was planning, you started planning as well. Then, as she got weaker and it grew closer to the time when she was planning becoming a lich and steal your body, you struck first. You killed her — or at least, you killed her human form. But what you hadn’t realized was that she was prepared to become a lich even if she couldn’t get your body. Now you’ve got to learn more so that you can destroy her and the power you unleashed upon the world.

Background: Folk Hero(?)/Haunted (from Curse of Strahd)
Wizard Class: Necromancy

School was not your thing. It wasn’t that you were a bad student, but it was so boring and dry. You wanted your life to be more exciting, so you goofed off in class, always making amazing illusions that you entertained your classmates with. This didn’t really endear you to the teachers, and before you were set to graduate, you were expelled for causing one too many disruptions. That was okay; you’d learned what you wanted to know. You took your show on the road and performed all over, from small towns of simple villagers to big cities in front of nobility. Life was great. Then you started to notice strange things happening in a number of the small towns and villages you went around to. You weren’t sure what was going on, but with your entertaining, you can open doors and talk to people. Now you just need someone who is better at investigating to help you figure it out.

Background: Entertainer
Wizard Class: Illusion

You remember that day so well. It stands out in your mind; you’ll never forget it. There was nothing that you could have done; you were so young. But one day, the goblins found you and your mother in the woods. She told you to run, and you did, but not too far — you watched as she tried to hold them back so they wouldn’t go after you. They killed her, but she had bought you your life with her blood. It still stands out in your dreams, and you rarely get a good night’s sleep. You went and joined up with the local militia, and they taught you how to destroy. You were able to fight and defeat many a goblin, but that didn’t bring your mother back. You vowed to let no one else die, and as you learned that you had magic abilities, you started spending your time figuring out a way to change the future. You, along with your teacher, were able to see a major tragedy that was coming to the school. Your teacher sent you away to get help, but while you were gone, your teacher died. Now you have to figure out how to stop this event on your own and find out who killed your teacher.

Background: Sage
Wizard Class: Divination

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

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

We are trying a new thing with Amazon Links! If you’re interested in what we talk about in our articles or use for the podcast, please consider making a purchase through our links. Purchases help support our website and offset our costs. Thanks!

[amazon_link asins=’0786965606′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’nerdologists-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’edd5fd71-db9a-11e7-88a1-d70a450710e0′]

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