Tag: Dice Rolling

Dice Rolling is a common mechanic in games where players roll one or more die to decide an outcome.

Bristol 1350

| T3d-1978
Bristol 1350

Bristol 1350

The dreaded Black Death has descended upon the town of Bristol. You are racing down the streets in one of the three available apple carts, desperate to escape into the safety of the countryside. If your cart is the first to leave the town and it is full of only healthy villagers when you leave, you and your fellow cart-mates successfully escape and win the game!

However, some villagers on your cart may already have the plague! They are hiding their early symptoms from you so that they can enjoy their last few days in peace. If you leave town with a plagued villager on your cart, you will catch the plague. You must do whatever is necessary to make sure that doesn’t happen!

On the surface Bristol 1350 is part co-operative teamwork, part racing strategy, and part social deduction. In reality, it’s a selfish scramble to get yourself out of town as quickly as possible without the plague, by any means necessary.

The game comes in a magnetic book box and includes a rubber playmat, 9 wood pawns, 3 miniature carts, 6 rat/apple dice, a linen bag, and 64 cards. The deluxe version adds 6 coins, 6 cards, and 3 metal carts. This standalone game is Volume 4 in the “Dark Cities Series” by Facade Games following Salem 1692, Tortuga 1667, and Deadwood 1876.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hidden Roles
  • Party Game
  • Player Elimination
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 9 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.54

BANG! The Dice Game

| T3d-1978
BANG! The Dice Game

BANG! The Dice Game

In the U.S. wild west, the eternal battle between the law and the outlaws keeps heating up. Suddenly, a rain of arrows darken the sky: It’s an Indian attack! Are you bold enough to keep up with the Indians? Do you have the courage to challenge your fate? Can you expose and defeat the ruthless gunmen around you?

BANG! The Dice Game keeps the core of the Bang! card game in place. At the start of the game, players each take a role card that secretly places them on a team: the Sheriff and deputies, outlaws, and renegades. The Sheriff and deputies need to kill the outlaws, the outlaws win by killing the Sheriff, and the renegades want to be the last players alive in the game.

Each player also receives a character card which grants him a special power in the game. The Sheriff reveals his role card and takes the first turn of the game. On a turn, a player can roll the five dice up to three times, using the results of the dice to shoot neighboring players, increase the range of his shots, heal his (or anyone else’s) life points, or put him in range of the Indians, which are represented by nine tokens in the center of the table. Each time a player rolls an arrow, he takes one of these tokens; when the final token is taken, each player loses one life point for each token he holds, then the tokens are returned to the center of the table.

If a player collects a trio of Gatling symbols on the dice, he fires one shot at everyone else and rids himself of Indian tokens. Who’ll get his shot off first? Play continues until one team meets its winning condition – and death won’t necessarily keep you from winning as long as your teammates pull through!

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hidden Roles
  • Party Game
  • Player Elimination
  • Push Your Luck
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 8 Players
  • ~15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.27

Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition

| T3d-1978
Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition

Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition

Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition) is a game of galactic conquest in which three to six players take on the role of one of seventeen factions vying for galactic domination through military might, political maneuvering, and economic bargaining. Every faction offers a completely different play experience, from the wormhole-hopping Ghosts of Creuss to the Emirates of Hacan, masters of trade and economics. These seventeen races are offered many paths to victory, but only one may sit upon the throne of Mecatol Rex as the new masters of the galaxy.

No two games of Twilight Imperium are ever identical. At the start of each galactic age, the game board is uniquely and strategically constructed using 51 galaxy tiles that feature everything from lush new planets and supernovas to asteroid fields and gravity rifts. Players are dealt a hand of these tiles and take turns creating the galaxy around Mecatol Rex, the capital planet seated in the center of the board. An ion storm may block your race from progressing through the galaxy while a fortuitously placed gravity rift may protect you from your closest foes. The galaxy is yours to both craft and dominate.

A round of Twilight Imperium begins with players selecting one of eight strategy cards that both determine player order and give their owner a unique strategic action for that round. These may do anything from providing additional command tokens to allowing a player to control trade throughout the galaxy. After these roles are selected, players take turns moving their fleets from system to system, claiming new planets for their empire, and engaging in warfare and trade with other factions. At the end of a turn, players gather in a grand council to pass new laws and agendas, shaking up the game in unpredictable ways.

After every player has passed their turn, players move up the victory track by checking to see whether they have completed any objectives throughout the turn and scoring them. Objectives are determined by setting up ten public objective cards at the start of each game, then gradually revealing them with every round. Every player also chooses between two random secret objectives at the start of the game, providing victory points achievable only by the holder of that objective. These objectives can be anything from researching new technologies to taking your neighbor’s home system. At the end of every turn, a player can claim one public objective and one secret objective. As play continues, more of these objectives are revealed and more secret objectives are dealt out, giving players dynamically changing goals throughout the game. Play continues until a player reaches ten victory points.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • Civilization
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Negotiation
  • Racing
  • Trading
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 240 – 480 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.27

Trickerion

| T3d-1978
Trickerion

Trickerion

Trickerion is a competitive Euro-style strategy game set in a fictional world inspired by the late 19th century urban life and culture, spiced with a pinch of supernatural.

Players take on the roles of rival stage illusionists, each with their own strengths and characteristics. They are striving for fortune and fame in a competition hosted by a legendary magician, looking for a successor worthy of the mighty Trickerion Stone, which is fabled to grant supernatural power to its owner.

Using worker placement and simultaneous action selection mechanisms, the Illusionists and their teams of helpers — the Engineer, the Assistant, the Manager, and a handful of Apprentices – obtain blueprints and components for increasingly complex magic tricks, expand the team and set up performances by visiting the Downtown, Dark Alley, Market Row and Theater locations on the main game board depicting a late 19th century cityscape.

The tricks are stored and prepared on the Magician’s own Workshop game board, while the performances themselves take place at the Theater in the form of a tile placement mini-game with lots of player interaction. The performances yield Fame points and Coins to their owners based on the tricks they consist of. Fame points have multiple uses, but they also serve as a win condition – After turn 7, when the last Performance card is revealed, the game ends and the illusionist with the most Fame points wins.

The game offers 48 different Tricks to be learned from the Optical, Spiritual, Mechanical and Escape categories, over 90 character abilities, and 40 Special Assignment cards that influence the actions taken at the various game locations. The base game can be expanded with two optional rule modules to add further strategic depth to the game.

The “Dark Alley” expansion included in the base game adds a new location to the game. It also comes with 48 new Special Assignment cards, a new tier of Tricks, and 27 Prophecy tokens that can alter certain game rules turn by turn, giving the game additional variety.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Dice Rolling
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.24

Mage Knight Board Game

| T3d-1978
Mage Knight Board Game

Mage Knight Board Game

The Mage Knight board game puts you in control of one of four powerful Mage Knights as you explore (and conquer) a corner of the Mage Knight universe under the control of the Atlantean Empire. Build your army, fill your deck with powerful spells and actions, explore caves and dungeons, and eventually conquer powerful cities controlled by this once-great faction! In competitive scenarios, opposing players may be powerful allies, but only one will be able to claim the land as their own. In cooperative scenarios, the players win or lose as a group. Solo rules are also included.

Combining elements of RPGs, deck-building, and traditional board games the Mage Knight board game captures the rich history of the Mage Knight universe in a self-contained gaming experience.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Role Playing

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.33

John Company

| T3d-1978
John Company

John Company

In John Company, players assume the roles of ambitious families attempting to use the British East India Company for personal gain. The game begins in the early eighteenth-century, when the Company has a weak foothold on the subcontinent. Over the course of the game, the Company might grow into the most powerful and insidious corporation in the world or collapse under the weight of its own ambition.

John Company is a game about state-sponsored trade monopoly. Unlike most economic games players often do not control their own firms. Instead, they will collectively guide the Company by securing positions of power, attempting to steer the Company’s fate in ways that benefit their own interests. However, the Company is an unwieldy thing. It is difficult to do anything alone, and players will often need to negotiate with one another. In John Company, most everything is up for negotiation.

Ultimately, this game isn’t about wealth; it’s about reputation. Each turn some of your family members may retire from their Company positions, giving them the opportunity to establish estates. Critically, players do not have full control over when these retirements happen. You will often need to borrow money from other players to make the best use for a chance of retirement. Players also gain victory points by competing in the London Season for prestige and securing fashionable properties.

John Company engages very seriously with its theme. It is meant as a frank portrait of an institution that was as dysfunctional as it was influential. Accordingly, the game wrestles many of the key themes of imperialism and globalization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how those developments were felt domestically. As such, this game might not be suitable for all players. Please make sure everyone in your group consents to this exploration before playing.

The second edition is extensively revised and is not a reprint.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bribery
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Negotiation
  • Push Your Luck
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 90 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.41

Cloudspire

| T3d-1978
Cloudspire

Cloudspire

Cloudspire is 1-4 player strategy game heavily influenced by both tower defense and MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games. Solo and Cooperative play are driven by a scenario book that chronicles the story of the game from the perspective of each individual faction. Players control one of four unique factions in a battle to destroy and steal source energy from their opponents. Send and defend against armies and minions, build towers to protect your base, and explore with your heroes in search of resources and powerful Relics to turn the tide of battle.

Taking place in the floating realm of Ankar, Cloudspire tells the story of a war to acquire a powerful and rare energy known only as “the source.” Every race has their own unique units and heroes as well as the ability to bid and draft mercenaries for hire.

Armies are placed either individually or in stacks to conceal powerful units until the last possible moments. Heroes, in the meantime, are controlled individually and may join the tide of battle or choose to explore points of interest in search of numerous resources. Meanwhile, the event deck regularly changes the terms of the fight, making every wave exciting and unpredictable.

As armies and minions approach opposing bases, they’ll need to contend with Spires – powerful defense towers that can be built around the board. Fight for control of build sites and acquire new spire schematics to build an impenetrable defense and hold off the enemy. Upgrade your home base to unlock new strategies and abilities. Level up your heroes and lead your armies into battle with advanced and upgraded skills!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.33

Who Goes There? Deluxe Edition

| T3d-1978
Who Goes There? Deluxe Edition

Who Goes There? Deluxe Edition

Who Goes There? is a cooperative game of growing paranoia. At the beginning of the game, all players are human and there is no reason not to trust each other completely, but as the temperature drops and mistakes are made, players start doubting everything and everyone around them.

You must build, trade, and upgrade to prepare yourself for the Antarctic Terrain, rabid dog attacks, crazed madmen…and most importantly, the alien entity that is now loose in the camp. Everything you build and upgrade has one purpose…keeping you alive and human! During the entire game, you will want to trade with other players and help each other build stronger weapons and better equipment, while also passing food and med kits around. Although, make sure your trust them, since trade is a huge opportunity for The Thing.

Staying inside may keep you from freezing to Death, but it won’t help you or your fellow humans win. The only way to secure victory is by venturing out of the camp! The problem with that is, being away from camp is the number one way to come across The Thing…leaving you vulnerable and exposed to infection. Whether fixing the boiler, repairing the door, or fighting the frigid temperatures outside, you will all need one another to survive. But trust is a hard thing to come by when you must be wary of…Who Goes There?

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Role Playing

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • ~110 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.50

War of the Ring

| T3d-1978
War of the Ring

War of the Ring

In War of the Ring, one player takes control of the Free Peoples (FP), the other player controls Shadow Armies (SA). Initially, the Free People Nations are reluctant to take arms against Sauron, so they must be attacked by Sauron or persuaded by Gandalf or other Companions, before they start to fight properly: this is represented by the Political Track, which shows if a Nation is ready to fight in the War of the Ring or not.

The game can be won by a military victory, if Sauron conquers a certain number of Free People cities and strongholds or vice versa. But the true hope of the Free Peoples lies with the quest of the Ringbearer: while the armies clash across Middle Earth, the Fellowship of the Ring is trying to get secretly to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring. Sauron is not aware of the real intention of his enemies but is looking across Middle Earth for the precious Ring, so that the Fellowship is going to face numerous dangers, represented by the rules of The Hunt for the Ring. But the Companions can spur the Free Peoples to the fight against Sauron, so the Free People player must balance the need to protect the Ringbearer from harm, against the attempt to raise a proper defense against the armies of the Shadow, so that they do not overrun Middle Earth before the Ringbearer completes his quest.

Each game turn revolves around the roll of Action Dice: each die corresponds to an action that a player can do during a turn. Depending on the face rolled on each die, different actions are possible (moving armies, characters, recruiting troops, advancing a Political Track).

Action Dice can also be used to draw or play Event Cards. Event Cards are played to represent specific events from the story (or events that could possibly have happened) that cannot be portrayed through normal game-play. Each Event Card can also create an unexpected turn in the game, allowing special actions or altering the course of a battle.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Team Based
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 150 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.19

Twilight Struggle

| T3d-1978
Twilight Struggle

Twilight Struggle

“Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle…”
– John F. Kennedy

In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler’s war machine, while humanity’s most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there then stood only two. The world had scant months to sigh its collective relief before a new conflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight to make the world safe for their own ideologies and ways of life. The game begins amidst the ruins of Europe as the two new “superpowers” scramble over the wreckage of the Second World War, and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.

Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that tradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. As with GMT’s other card-driven games, decision-making is a challenge; how to best use one’s cards and units given consistently limited resources?

Twilight Struggle’s Event cards add detail and flavor to the game. They cover a vast array of historical happenings, from the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948 and 1967, to Vietnam and the U.S. peace movement, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and other such incidents that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Tug of War
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.60