What is the Game?

So Dice Throne is a battle game where you generally play 1 vs 1 in a dice chucking fantasy setting. It has some feel of a video game like Mortal Kombat. Your turns are spent upgrading your attacks, playing cards to heal, or manipulate your dice during attacks, and then your opponent rolling dice for their defense. It has a kind of Magic the Gathering flow with how the turns work, but this is a pure dice chucker. You can also play on teams, or with an odd number of players play King of the Hill where you attack one person and you can choose, but there is a benefit to attacking the person with the most healthy. The last character standing is the winner.

The Top 10

10 – Moon Elf

We start with a pretty easy character to play, the Moon Elf. They are one of the first ones that they recommend that you play, and they are just fun. I like that they give you a wide variety of tokens that you can use some of them help with the defensive side of things, like evasive, and others like blind and entangle are negative. I really think that the more defensive nature of the character is interesting. You really are looking to reduce damage a lot of the time when attacked versus others that are wanting to push out damage.

9 – Artificer

While the Moon Elf is a simpler character, the next two are going to be much more complex. The Artificer is all about building up three different robots and using them. or placing nanites on your enemy and then exploding them. There are a lot of moving pieces that you need to keep track of. But I like trying to figure out that puzzle, what to spend my synth on, which is what you use to build, activate and possibly use other abilities as well. The more you need to manage the more interesting it can be for me.

8 – Treant

Like I said, I like to manage a lot of things, but the Treant simplifies it a little bit from the Artificer, where it has seedlings that just grow every turn. And it also can heal a lot. But do you grow a seedling up to the largest level or do you keep them smaller and have more. There is certainly a puzzle to it as you have to decide at times between three things for how to use your seedlings. The Treant also has more ability to heal than a lot of other characters as well. They can put together a good defensive battle quite often.

7 – Ninja

Packaged with the Treant is the Ninja in the duel packs, and I have both in my Top 10. Now that’ll happen some more, but I’ve only gotten to play the Ninja with a physical copy recently. I like the abilities that the ninja has, the delayed poison adds a twist because it’s one of the few abilities that triggers at the end of a round. They aren’t the most defensive character, but a well times smoke bomb can be a big win for them. But I really like them because they can push the offense with the delayed poison and the ninjitsu.

6 – Shadow Thief

The Shadow Thief is a weird one and in a really good way. The Shadow Thief gets so much of it’s power from combat points. The combat points are normally just used to get cards into play, but the Shadow Thief generates damage based off how much CP it has and it can gain even more CP based off of attacks. It used to be able to steal a lot of CP from other players, but they have limited it now, it’s still a great time because it gives you so many options. I feel like the Shadow Thief is one of the most flexible characters.

5 – Vampire Lord

Now, some of the characters that heal, I don’t like that well. But the Vampire Lord makes it fun because they heal by draining others, as you’d expect. They have a lot of blood powers, and mesmerize which is a fun power. They also deal maybe smaller amounts of damage but there is a lot that’s undefendable which means that they can at times get more damage through consistently. Overall just a fun one to play, and I really like the ones that have powers or tokens that stack up and can do more the more that you have.

4 – Cursed Pirate

This is another one that is out there. All the characters have ways to upgrade your attack spots and defense, except for the Cursed Pirate side. The Cursed Pirate has a side and then a Ghost Pirate side that you can flip to. It has an interesting push your luck element to it as you want to become the Ghost Pirate but if you do, you start taking damage on your turn, and there is no going back. So it creates a timer, but the abilities on that side are better, so do you rush it and shoot for big hits or do you keep yourself just cursed and try and survive longer that way.

3 – Monk

The monk is probably the most defensive character on the list. They get Evasive that allows them to potentially take no damage. They have chi which will block damage, and they can cleanse negative affects off themselves. Again, that Chi gives them a resource that is interesting to use and gives them so much survivability in this game. The Monk can draw things out until you can upgrade a lot and get some big hits in of your own. Normally I don’t always love a ton of defense, but the monk is definitely interesting in how it does it.

2 – Pyromancer

So I go from a defensive character to a completely offensive character. On defensive rolls the Pyromancer can’t stop incoming damage, they can just deal damage back. And I think that it feels like a rush as you try and push out as much damage as possible and race to the end. They also give you fire mastery to mess around with. This again goes that resource management where you need to know how to spend them or when you should horde up more of them to get a bigger hit later. And while a lot of these resources that stack up add over time, the fire mastery reduces every turn so timing up the big hits is key.

1 – Gunslinger

Finally, number one, we have the Gunslinger. It is really close between the Gunslinger and the Pyromancer. The Gunslinger just feels like a jack of all trades. You can get bounty on people will will do more damage and I love the defense on the Gunslinger which is just a duel or a roll off that can greatly reduce damage. It feels so thematic, which all of the characters do, which is impressive for a dice chucking game.

Some of the characters I don’t have on the list are generally ones that I need to play more. The Huntress I think is very interesting, I just need to spend more time figuring out that character and her tiger pet which is really interesting. The Seraph and Paladin can both be more defensive as well. And the Tactician and Samurai I just haven’t played with enough. The Barbarian is fine as well, just more of a basic character, good for new players.

What is your favorite Dice Throne character?

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When I am creating this list, I’m not just looking at games where it is mainly rolling dice, I’m looking at games where rolling those dice is a very important part of the game. So it’s not just going to be a bunch of roll and write games or older games, but a variety of games that rely on dice. I would guess that some people won’t consider the games to use the dice enough, but for me, it’s one of the major mechanics in the game, which is enough to get it onto the list.

10 – Sword and Sorcery
A good ameritrash game to take the #10 spot on the list, Sword and Sorcery has some story to it, but it’s all about crawling through the “dungeon” to advance the story, running across different monsters, fighting them and then going back and doing it all again. When you fight monsters, it’s about chucking dice. If you can gang up on them, you get get some automatic hits, or if you have the right items, you get more automatic hits, or if you aim, and maybe with all of that and a good roll you’ll be able to take a monster down in one hit. This game is about making you feel like a hero fighting through the dungeon and it might be a little bit easy. That said, the dice rolling is fun, especially with the extra symbols on the dice, not just hits or misses, because if you get the right combo, maybe you can boost your damage some more or ignore their armor. Of course, after your turn, you have to roll for the enemies and they might just hit you back hard and take you down as well. It’s a good straight forward dice chucking dungeon crawling game.

9 – Dead of Winter
I like the idea of games where the number of the dice matter, and not just in a simple comparison of does my number beat your number, if so, I win, like Risk. Dead of Winter gives you a lot to do with those dice. You can kill zombies, if you rolled high enough, you can search locations, if you rolled high enough, or you can barricade or do other things spending dice to keep the small group of survivors alive another day. There is no dice mitigation in this game, so that means that what you roll you get. Now, there are always things you can use the dice for, but it might not be what you really want. And while the dice roll is a random thing, it is one of the things that makes everyone look a little bit like a traitor, nothing that they can do about it, but it feels like a bad roll is somehow more likely to make a traitor. And that’s what Dead of Winter is about, it’s about fighting zombies, but it’s more about can you trust your fellow survivors, so are they out to get you?

8 – Village Attacks
Sometimes you just want to be a monster, and Village Attacks, you’re able to do that. You and your team of monsters are just resting in your castle most likely at the top of a cliff that somehow manages to keep the village below it in constant shadow when those pesky villagers decide to ruin your evening by attacking your castle with their pitchforks and torches. Can you fend them off? That’s what you use the dice for, they give you the ability to move, attack ranged, attack close and do other things, such as defend against the damage that might be coming your way. There’s less dice mitigation in this one, so you better hope that you roll well. But if you do roll three of the same symbol you are always able to reroll that until you don’t have it anymore. The theme is just fun, and while the game is a bit dark, I’ve found that it plays sillier because of the theme and the idea of these monsters just wanting some peace and quiet but the villagers keep bugging them.

7 – Homebrewers
I love beer, so Homebrewers might be higher on my list than some, but it’s a fun small engine building game where the engine that you’re building is the beers that you are creating. You do that by getting ingredient cards and adding them to your different brews. But the dice play a major part in that, the dice you get have to clean up the mess you’ve made while brewing, get you ingredients, add in ingredients, get you grain for brewing, and brew your beer, so your one roll is very important. However, there’s good dice mitigation just in case you rolled almost all of a single symbol. You can trade dice with other players. Maybe I have two brew and no grain and you have no brew and two grain, we could swap a grain and a brew so that both of us are able to brew. But maybe I think you’re in the lead and you brewing will help you more than just doing a simple trade would help me, so instead, you can spend a dollar and change the face of a die. The game plays fast and feels almost like a filler type engine building game, but it’s a ton of fun and who wouldn’t want to drink a bacon nutmeg ale?

6 – Criss Cross
Smallest game on the list and only roll and write on the list. This game is very simple and very dice driven, you are putting down pairs of dice like they’re dominoes onto your sheet, as is everyone else. And you’re trying to get symbols next to each other so that you can score points in both rows and columns. It might seem like there’s an optimal solution that everyone would gravitate towards form the dice rolls, but you are free to put the pair of dice down on on your grid where ever you want, and you get to pick what symbol you want to put in a starting corner, since there are an odd number of squares. So the strategy for the game and plan for it diverges based off of whether or not you can match symbols next to each other at the start. Overall, the game is simple, it plays fast, but it’s a good little filler dice game that I like a lot.

5 – Sagrada
Most of the games on the list, you’re rolling the dice and using them to resolve something. in Sagrada, you’re rolling the dice, then drafting dice, an using them to create a stained glass window. That by itself sounds like a lot of fun, but you have rules as to where you can an can’t place dice. You can’t have the same number or same color orthogonally adjacent to each other (left – right and up – down). Plus at the start of the game, you get to pick a stained glass window that you’re going to make. That is going to mean that you need certain colors in certain spots or certain numbers. So that locks in what you can pick even more so. Can you grab the right dice or get them to come out of the bag so that you can complete your stained glass window?

4 – Dice Throne Season 1/2
While this isn’t a pure dice game, it is one of the games that most heavily uses the dice. You’re rolling them every round, Yahtzee style, in order to hit your opponent and take down their health faster than they can take down yours. What’s interesting about it is that straights or four of a kind, that can mean a different sort of attack for each character. The Pyromancer might set someone on fire so that they are going to take more damage over time. The Shadow Thief might steal the CP (combat points) from another player and deal more damage because of that. And if you’re really lucky or can manipulate a roll so that you end up with all sixes, you can pull of a great ultimate attack. Then, assuming the damage can be defended against, the defending player rolls a single defense roll which might block damage, hit back for a little bit, or do something else, depending on the character. The game shines because of the cards, in some ways, though, because you can improve your attack or defense by playing down upgrade cards. So if you get a great combat upgrade, you might be able to swing for more or open up more options for what you can do on combat. It’s a really fun game and plays fast.

3 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Mansions of Madness is one of those games where you use the dice to check everything. If you need to see if you know the lore of something and won’t be going more insane, look at your lore skill, grab that many dice and roll them. If you need to fight off a monster from the depths of the oceans, it’ll tell you look at your strength and roll that many dice. The only thing that you don’t use dice for is puzzles, as those are handled by the app or something so simple that anyone could do it. But Mansions of Madness uses the dice well and like a lot of the games in the Arkham line from Fantasy Flight, there are ways to mitigate the dice with rerolls, or you can spend clue tokens to turn clue rolls into successes. I think this is a good example of having just enough mitigation in the dice that it doesn’t feel so lucky, but you’re always hoping for that perfect roll and as you get later in the game and need better rolls with less resources, often, it adds to the pressure.

2 – T.I.M.E. Stories
For what is basically a complicate Choose Your Own Adventure with a bit of escape room thrown in, you get an interesting game with a lot of dice rolling. Some might argue it’s too much dice rolling as you test your skills to see if you can get enough agility to slip a key off the cooks belt or to fight off a crazed monster down in the tunnels. You never know what you’re going to run across that you’ll need to make a roll for. Now, the rolling, like I said, is not some people’s favorite piece to the game, it can be random and it can be quite swingy. So you might make it through a couple of tough encounters with ease and then an easy encounter might just wipe you out and cause you to restart a run. But for me, that’s some of the fun of the game, in the game you aren’t be swapped into the best vessels from that era or location, so you aren’t going to always be the perfect team. Plus there’s the time die which gives some variability to how much time you’re counting down and that can also cause you to have to go on another run. A controversial pick, but one that I enjoy.

1 – Betrayal At House on the Hill
So remember, when I do these Top 10’s, it’s going to include a lot of my favorite games, but dice rolling in Betrayal at House on the Hill tends to be somewhat important. I don’t think that it uses it best out of all the games on the list, but it’s my favorite. In it you’re using dice for combat, but more importantly for the haunt. The haunt is when the game shifts from being cooperative and turns into a fight for survival as one character becomes the betrayer and has their own winning objectives compared to the other players. This roll is known as the haunt roll and you’re trying to roll more than a certain number to keep it from happening. So a poor roll early in the game could cause the haunt to come on faster. While this can be an issue for some, I like that fact that ti’s not as standard a feel as a horror movie because you never know when the haunt is going to happen or if you’ll be prepared to win.

There are a whole lot more games where dice can play a big roll. I actually left Star Wars: Rebellion off the list, because I think that the expansion changes up combat some so that it’s not as luck and dice driven, but it does have a lot of dice in there as well. And you can see that even though some of my favorite games use dice, not all of them is it the highlight of the game. T.I.M.E. Stories is on the list because I don’t mind the dice, but I’m there for the story, whereas other games use the dice really well, like Dice Throne or Mansions of Madness where it’s so key to what you’re doing.

Let me know in the comments below what some of your favorite dice driven games (or at least games where the dice are very important) are. Are there any that you think I need to checkout? Looking at my shelf, I need to get Formula D to the table which has a lot of dice to roll as you race.

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Dice Throne is a 2 to 6 player game where you take on the rolls of different characters or classes, in a tournament style battle ranging from one vs one to three vs three. Each class has their own life tracker, combat point tracker, deck of cards, and player boards that let you know what your special powers are. Each player starts with a hand of four cards and two combat points (CP). The first player can play cards and then rolls dice for combat. You are trying to match certain number of symbol combinations to unleash an attack. Then the other player declares their defense and tries to stop the damage. You can augment your roll by spending CP and playing cards or you can improve your attacks by spending CP and upgrading what a small straight or some other attack might do for you.

Overall, it’s an an extremely complex game, and the characters aren’t all that hard to play. What makes this game really work is the characters, because each of them plays differently. I haven’t played two of them yet, the Paladin and the Barbarian, but in a match-up between the Shadow Thief and Monk was close, and the match-up between the Pyromancer and Moon Elf was close. So the characters feel really well balanced against each other, and it comes down to rolling dice a lot of the time. What works well is that the cards you can play while rolling the dice are generally pretty cheap CP wise so you can mitigate a really bad roll fairly often.

The characters also do really feel different. The Monk uses Chi to empower attacks or to prevent damage. The Shadow Thief can go into hiding to avoid damage, steals a lot of CP, and then can leap out of the shadows with a sneak attack. The Pyromancer is going to burn you, and the Moon Elf tries to entangle you and makes your attacks weaker. Their attacks make sense for what they do, and the tokens and conditions they can place on themselves or other characters makes sense as well. In their decks of cards there are some specific to them, but I haven’t gone through to see if the balance of utility cards is the same throughout the characters or if those general cards are the same for everyone.

It’s nice also because the game plays very fast with two players, and it keeps there from being too much down time for players. Even when the other person is attacking, you are figuring out with your defense what you are going to try and roll. So you are still engaged in the other players turns. And with fifty health, you feel as a player that your health is draining away a whole lot faster than you’d want it to. When you hit you’re generally doing five damage or more, and sometimes, if you hit your ultimate ability, you can be doing a whole lot more than that.

That’s another cool thing in the game, the ultimate ability is basically an attack that can’t be stopped, so really going into the Mortal Kombat style of game. However, you need to roll all sixes, so you end up being tempted to go for it, but generally not able to pull it off. If you can pull it off, it might just give you a come from behind victory. And each characters ultimate ability really uses the tokens and conditions that the character can inflict so even if you don’t finish off your opponent, it can set you up for future turns, or stop them for a turn.

This is a very fun and simple game. I highly recommend it for both gamers and non-gamers alike, because it’s a quick one to set-up and play. The fact it plays fast means that it’s also a good filler game. If every character felt the same, that would be an issue, but they really do feel different, and there’s been a season two which has even more characters – eight instead of six – which gives you a ton more combinations to play.

Overall Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: B-
Casual Grade: A+

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