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‘For a thousand years, the Mad king has sat atop his throne seeking a worthy challenger. Each year, he hosts a tournament of champions with the greatest prize a hero could ever want: The Throne.'
Well, that’s a nice summary from Roxley Games for Dice Throne, a card-drafting dice-rolling multiplayer combat game.
A game of strategy and luck combined into one, making it fun for all the family. The original Dice Throne came with 6 playable characters, making it possible to play this as a free-for-all all, 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2 and 2 vs 2 vs 2. Lots of variation.
This version was released as a starter set / introduction to the Dice Throne Franchise, compatible with all other iterations, including the latest Marvel Dice Throne.
In this version, you have the Berserker Barbarian vs the crafty Moon Elf, and to be fair their playstyle is very much what you’d think of them. The Barbarian is about brute force and destruction with surprisingly some healing ability. The Moon Elf is more about dodging the attacks and redirecting them back at the opponent.
In the box, each character comes in their own little subpackage, making it really easy to separate everything out with space for each character’s cards, tokens, Life counter, Battle point counter, player board, and of course, their dice.
The main aim of the game is to pummel your opponent’s life counter to zero. This is done over a number of phases, which are fairly straightforward and listed in detail in the rules book supplied or any number of tutorials online.
The first couple of bits are your upkeep and your income, fairly self-explanatory and straightforward. You’ll gain a card and battle point each round giving you more choices during the game. Next comes the Main Phase, this is where you get a selection of actions to decide upon from playing upgrade or main phase action card (this is done by spending the battle points, I knew you’d wonder where they came into play), or by selling cards to get more Battle points.
Now we are onto the Dice rolling part, you get to roll your dice three times, choosing to keep any number after each roll as what they have landed on. There are multiply symbols on the dice as well as the numbers to take into consideration. On your player board, it will show you the different results for the possible combinations giving you something to aim for to destroy your opponent. Theses outcomes can be upgraded by the cards mentioned earlier.
Once this is done then your opponent has a chance of countering/blocking the attack or move carried out against them. This could be done via their defensive ability or a by an action card and paying the relevant battle points.
The last bit to do is a second go at playing any cards you wish to, same as prior to rolling the dice and then the Discard phase which is pretty much what it says on the tin.
On and on this goes until one player has no more health and the other is a battered heap on the floor or as we like to say you have a winner.
In Conclusion
Well, a good all-round game with excitement, frustration, strategy, and luck. The box is sturdy and of good quality along with everything inside, I’d say well done to Roxley Games for the quality of the game. My one major thing, though, is that because it’s a starter box it's only for 2 players and contains only two characters.
My recommendation (and only a recommendation) would be to buy a 4 player box (different versions out there) or two, two-player boxes (different versions out there) this would allow for a variety in gameplay and increase the player count. Also, this will help with the replayability factor, as these are the basic characters so quite easy to learn and master.
