Hi everyone! For this game review I decided to discuss Dice Throne, a game I played while prototyping for our first project. Dice Throne is equally both a board game and a card game, where you are fighting other characters to be the last one standing. While the most common format is a 1v1 game, you can play with up to 6 people! Dice Throne is a fast-paced, strategic game that utilizes both cards and dice in order to build your best moves, defend effectively, and ultimately be the last player standing.
Each player will choose a character to wield, and is given a character-specific set. Each set comes with a board that contains attacks, a defensive move, and a passive ability, 6 dice, a deck of cards, a status sheet with status tokens, an HP counter, and a CP counter. Each player’s turns consists of multiple phases: the upkeep phase where you resolve status effects, the income phase where you draw a card and gain a CP, the first main phase where you can play main phase cards and upgrade cards or sell cards for 1 CP, the offensive roll phase where you will roll your dice up to 3 times and perform an offensive move, the targeting phase where you target a player (if applicable), the defensive roll phase where the targeted opponent has a chance to defend, a second main phase, and a discard phase where you must sell cards until you have 6 in your hand (if applicable). Cards will cost CP, so it’s up to you to determine the best way to conserve and use your points for the most effective strategy.
What I appreciate the most about Dice Throne is it’s balance of mechanics. Pulling together cards and dice, there are equal parts of luck and strategy. The expansive amount of characters add to the replayability of the game, as you can constantly learn new abilities, strategies, and potential mechanics that are in the game. The cards are well-balanced, with plenty of opportunity to build your CP to use stronger cards and upgrade your attacks. While there are plenty of new mechanics to learn and ways that this game could become out-of-balance quickly, the creators have thought out and balanced accordingly so that games don’t feel unfair or that you just had a dud hand often. The mechanics all build towards one objective – eliminate your opponent – which I think serves in favor of keeping the game simple despite the complex amount of mechanics built in. This game is also pretty quick to pick up, as you become comfortable after a few turns. There were a few times where I felt as though the turns felt repetitive, as depending on what cards you have on hand you may just have to go through the motions without actually strategizing much. However, I have played other games that have felt far more repetitive and have gotten more frustrated from other “dud” hands, so I applaud Dice Throne for minimizing these chances of dud hands.
I think the only question I have for this game is – where’s the throne???
Stay swag – Shayla <3
