Dodge Dice

06/20/201406/13/2014 - Will Bain Leave a comment

Dodge Dice is a wonderfully minimalist press-your-luck game. Ten dice and some chips are all it takes to give you a lot of tough choices in the face of random chance.

Eight of the dice are the Dodge Dice. These have three blue sides, two green sides, and one red side. One die is the Penalty Die. Similar to the Dodge Dice, the Penalty Die has three blue, two green, and one red sides; however, each side also has a number value: blue = 10, green = 20, and red = 40. The final die is the Action Die. This die either stops the round immediately or effects the final penalty score.

The starting player rolls all the dice. Whatever color the Penalty Die shows is the color that must remain face up in future rolls. The first player puts the Penalty Die and any matching Dodge Dice in the middle of the table and passes the rest of the dice to the next player. That player rolls all the dice, setting aside any that are the same color as those in the middle and passing the rest.

The goal of the game is to have the fewest points. You earn points if the round stops on your turn. There are two ways for the round to stop. First, if the STOP symbol comes up on the Action Die when you roll the round stops (duh). Second, if all the Dodge Dice are the same color, the round stops.

If the round stops on you, you earn the number of points on the Penalty Die BUT this can be changed by the Action Die. The points can be doubled or tripled. The points could actually be subtracted from your score or the points could be passed to one of the other players. Of the six possibilities that could happen to you when the round stops, four of them are bad for you but two are good.

So, because this is a press-your-luck game there must be some choice to make so that you could conceivably avoid a bad outcome. That’s where the chips come in. Every player has two Skip Chips. You can play one before you roll to pass the dice to the next player or you can play two chips to skip AFTER you have rolled. Skip Chips can replenish with a lucky roll of the Action Die, but these chips become very valuable in those long rounds toward the end of the game.

There’s a lot of nail-biting and analysis paralysis that accompanies some of these rolls. Do you take a few points now so you can save your chips for later? Do you roll and spend your chips only if you have to? Is it better for you to take a few points if it means preventing someone from ending the game?

All good questions and all Major Fun.

2 – 6 players. Ages 8+

Space Cadets: Dice Duel

02/27/2014 - Will Bain Leave a comment

Gamers Games are Major Fun for the more experienced gamer. For one reason or another, these games are a bit more difficult or require a greater time investment than the games we generally award BUT we feel that they are well worth the effort.

A while back we gave an award to a cooperative and yet utterly chaotic app called Space Team. It is a fantastic example of how our phone and tablet technologies can be used to not only connect players, but have them physically act together. At the time I thought that this kind of game might be unique to technological devices. Phones and tablets after all are designed to record and respond to a wide range of motions.

Board games? Less tolerant of vigorous activity.

Well, I’m here to tell you that Stronghold has provided the world with a game that effectively splices the strategy of a board game with the frantic and physical activity of an obstacle course. That game, is Space Cadets: Dice Duel.

Dice Duel is set in space. Two starships have found themselves locked in combat over a region of space that contains wormholes, asteroids, nebulae, and mysterious power crystals. Players divide into 2 teams with the unambiguous mission to destroy the other ship. Each ship comes with a Helm (for steering your majestic ship into glorious battle), Sensors (for locking on to the vile opponent and cloaking your presence), Weapons (for cleansing the galaxy of the alien filth), Shields (for deflecting the villainous armaments of your foe), Tractor Beams (for moving all manner of material and laying mines), and most importantly Engineering (from whence your ship distributes cleansing power to all your Stations).

This would be a lot to track for one person, but fortunately you have a crew. Each of the ship’s systems has its own Station and a set of dice that is color coded for that control panel. In order for any Station to operate, that Station first needs power from Engineering and then it needs the right combination of dice. One of the things that makes Dice Duel so intriguing is that it can engage up to 8 players at a time. It is actually better with more players.

When the game starts, Engineering begins rolling its dice. It distributes these dice to the Stations (Weapons = 1, Sensors = 2, Helm = 5, etc…) so that those crew members can get their sub-systems up and running. A Station may roll one die for each Engineering die it receives. When a Station gets the result it wants it places the die on the control panel and returns the energy die (or dice) back to Engineering.

All of this rolling and equipping and moving happens at the same time. There are no turns. The team that rolls its dice and communicates its actions fastest has a distinct advantage.

Early in the game, the teams work to get their ships up and functioning. This is a relatively quiet process as the team members roll their dice to stock up. But as soon as one of the ships moves from its start point, the tension and chaos go supernova. There are lots of things that have to happen for a ship to successfully attack another ship and it is inevitable that in the heat of battle, things will go horribly horribly wrong. Your ship might face the wrong way. You might not have enough power in the sensors. You might not be close enough. You might not have the torpedoes facing the enemy. The enemy might move. Imagine trying to teach someone to drive a manual transmission by giving them instructions on the phone.

Your enjoyment of this game will hinge almost entirely on your ability to recover from disappointment. Well, and maybe your team’s ability to not turn on each other like a pack of rabid dogs.

The constant dice rolling provides a menacing sound-track to the proceedings and it is utterly gratifying to land a torpedo on your opponent. Gratifying and Major Fun.

The real-time mechanics are very clever and give the game its own frenetic glee. There is a fairly steep learning curve, but it’s not learning the rules that is hard but rather learning how to communicate with your team and time your attacks. The game comes with a lot of pieces, but once you have the control panels set up, the dice mechanics are really very simple. This game is a great example of rather simple rules complicated by human behavior and constantly evolving conditions. That the game is best played with a lot of people (4 on each team) makes it stand out in a field crowded by 3 – 4 player limits.

4 – 8 Players. Ages 12+

Der Schwarze Pirat (The Black Pirate)

02/08/201402/08/2014 - Will Bain Leave a comment

One of the things that I most appreciate about table-top games is the way that the game transforms this very flat, very common surface into something exotic. It’s that feeling I got when my sister and I would scatter plastic toy soldiers and cowboys around a room and then spend an hour or so sniping them with rubber bands. These little plastic figures transformed the room into a jungle or a desert or a mountain pass in which we crawled and hid and attacked.

Haba’s table-top pirate adventure game, Der Schwarze Pirat, turns your table into an island-bestrewn sea where colorful pirates hunt and fight for treasure. The game takes place on a large, modular board that is wonderfully painted and detailed. Each player controls a pirate ship which they blow around the board in pursuit of treasure.

Blow, you ask?

Yup. As in “Thar she ________.”

The game comes with a rubber bulb like you would see on the end of a turkey baster. When you squeeze the bulb, a puff (or blast) of air comes out of the hole. You roll a die to see how many puffs you get. The die also tells you if you move your ship or the black pirate ship. Either choice gives you the chance to collect gold.

Several other mechanics make the game interesting:

There is the treasure die. At the beginning of your turn you place treasure on some of the islands (thus enticing pirates to visit those places). The treasure die tells you where to place gold, BUT gold may not be placed at an island that is being visited by a pirate. This means that pirates cannot simply sit on an island and wait for treasure to come to them.

Secondly there is the plunder rule. If you crash the Black Pirate into another player’s boat, that player takes out three of their gold coins. Your opponent secretly puts some coins in one hand and the rest in the other. You tap the hand you want and receive the treasure. In this fashion you can earn 0 – 3 points and your opponent has a chance to lose nothing (after all, pirates are a sneaky lot).

With the cold weather we’ve been experiencing here in the Midwest, a game that can take us away to someplace warm and sunny and full of treasure is a welcome respite. Or a recipe for madness. Either way, it’s Major Fun.

Flash!

12/02/201312/03/2013 - Will Bain Leave a comment

Blue Orange Games has thoughtfully provided the world with a dice game that does away with all that tedious waiting around that occurs in games like Yahtzee. In Flash! There is no stately procession of the rolling cup. There are no leisurely conversations while Aunt Maddie hems and haws over which dice she should keep.

Instead we get

Roll! Roll! Roll! C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon! FLASH!

It’s high energy, noisy, and Major Fun.

The game comes with six sets of dice and six scoring chips (numbered 1 – 6) as well as the rules, a pad of score sheets, and a pencil. Each player gets their own set of dice and the score chips are placed face up in the middle of the table. Similar to Yahtzee, the score sheet has a list of dice combinations that the players try to complete: six-of-a-kind, all odds, all evens, etc. Unlike Yahtzee, with its mannered turns, Flash! has everybody roll at the same time.

For each round, the score keeper chooses one of the combinations and all the players start rolling their dice. When a player completes the combination he or she yells FLASH! and grabs the highest available score chip. the other players keep rolling until all chips have been snagged.

The score keeper records each player’s score and the winner of the round chooses one of the remaining combinations.

To keep things moving, the game has also replaced all of the ones on the dice with flash symbols. These symbols are wild. Once you have a few wilds, most combinations fall into place very quickly. The trick is recognizing the combinations when they happen. Concentration is difficult what with the noise of the dice and the constant yelling that accompanies them. Tension builds very quickly, especially when someone yells Flash!

It’s a simple game, but efficiently executed.

2 – 6 players. Ages: 7+