Tag: Dice Rolling

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

Jamaica The Crew

Jamaica The Crew

Jamaica The Crew

Jamaica: The Crew is a set of twenty characters, each with a special power, that add flavor to the game without any big changes in the rules. The characters may be hired when you’re able to pay for the fee of a harbor, and they are “loaded” like any other resource, following the same rules.

You might find it enticing to add several characters to your boat — especially since most of them earn you additional gold at the end of the game — but with fewer holds dedicated to the regular resources, navigation becomes more dicey. All in all, more challenge, more silly fun, more Jamaica.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.89

Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul

There’s hustle and bustle at Istanbul’s grand bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow alleys in their attempt to be more successful than their competitors. Everything must be well organized: wheelbarrows must be filled with goods at the warehouses, then swiftly transported by the assistants to various destinations. Your goal? Be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies.

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything…

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

  • Paying to increase your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.
  • Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.
  • Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.
  • Buying rubies or trading goods for rubies.
  • Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who’s reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Racing
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.59

Island Siege

Island Siege

Island Siege

Island Siege is a fast-playing game of fort-building and colonization in the Caribbean Sea. Players build shoreside forts to defend their colonists from attack and to score points. Forts allow you to put colonists in play, which in turn can safely build ships and buildings which provide abilities and points. Attacking allows you to chip away at your opponent’s fort while gaining cubes which are used to build forts of your own. Your goal is to score 20 coins or get all of your colonists in play!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 12 – 48 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33

Horrified: American Monsters

Horrified: American Monsters

Horrified: American Monsters

Horrified: American Monsters is a standalone game that features gameplay similar to 2019’s Horrified, which challenges players to overcome the “Universal Monsters” from classic films.

In this co-operative game, you face off against classic American nightmarish beasts: Bigfoot, Mothman, the Jersey Devil, the Chupacabra, the Banshee of the Badlands, and the Ozark Howler. The more creatures in the game, the harder the challenge, with players needing to use their unique powers to figure out how to defeat each monster.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Pick-Up and Deliver

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.19

Horrified

Horrified

Horrified

The stakes have been raised. Imagine living in a place so wretched that it’s not plagued by one, two, or even three monsters — but seven of the most horrifying fiends!

In this game, you’ll come face to face with them all as you work together to rid the town of the maniacal or misunderstood creatures…before it’s too late.

Horrified includes high-quality sculpted miniatures (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon). Its innovative, easy-to-learn, cooperative gameplay has players working together against the monsters with varying levels of difficulty. Just as each monster is unique, they require different strategies and tactics to be defeated.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Pick-Up and Deliver

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.04

Glow

Glow

Glow

In Glow, you are an adventurer who builds their company by recruiting a new traveling companion each turn, trying to combine their powers as best as possible. You’ll roll the dice to activate the advantages that your companions bring you…or their disadvantages. Gather many slivers of light to dispel the darkness, restore the colors, travel the land to reach landmarks, and (yes) score points.

In short, Glow is a card-drafting, dice-rolling, and combinations game. The box contains lots of colorful dice, two game boards for two different gaming experiences. You have also to count on luck sometimes, but be attentive to your card combinations, too.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.03

Geek Out! Disney

Geek Out! Disney

Geek Out! Disney

Geek Out! is a party game that can determine once and for all which player is the most knowledgeable about your favorite pop culture subjects!

In the game, you draw cards asking you to list a certain number of things which fall under a certain category: comic books, fantasy, games, science fiction, and miscellaneous. Before you begin, however, the other players may try to steal your points (and bragging rights!) by bidding to list even more than the card requires. The bidding continues until one player is ready to “out-geek” their friends. Collect a predetermined number of cards, and you win!

Geek Out! Disney features 350 questions about ninety years of Disney productions.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Dice Rolling
  • Party Game
  • Trivia

Game Specifications:

  • 2 -99 Players (You could honestly have more)
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Galaxy Trucker

Galaxy Trucker

Galaxy Trucker

In a galaxy far, far away… they need sewer systems, too. Corporation Incorporated builds them. Everyone knows their drivers — the brave men and women who fear no danger and would, if the pay was good enough, even fly through Hell.

Now you can join them. You will gain access to prefabricated spaceship components cleverly made from sewer pipes. Can you build a space ship durable enough to weather storms of meteors? Armed enough to defend against pirates? Big enough to carry a large crew and valuable cargo? Fast enough to get there first?

Of course you can. Become a Galaxy Trucker. It’s loads of fun.

Galaxy Trucker is a tile laying game that plays out over two phases: building and flying. The goal is to have the most credits at the end of the game. You can earn credits by delivering goods, defeating pirates, building an efficient ship, and being the furthest along the track at the end of the flying phase.

Building happens in real time and has players build their personal space ships by grabbing tiles from the middle of the table before the timer runs out. Tiles start out facedown so they won’t know what they have until they take it, but they may choose to return it faceup if they don’t want it. They must place the tiles they keep in a legal manner in their space ship. Usually this just means lining up the connectors appropriately (single to single, double to double, universal to anything) but also includes proper positioning of guns and engines. Tiles represent a variety of things including guns, engines, storage containers, crew cabins, shields, and batteries. They may also peek at the cards they will encounter in phase 2, but they must sacrifice building time to do this. At any time players may call their ships finished and take an order marker from the center.

Once building is completed, and ships have been checked for errors, the flight begins. The flight cards are shuffled and player markers are placed on the flight board according to the order markers taken. Cards are revealed one at a time and players interact with them in order. They may include things such as pirates, abandoned vessels, disease outbreaks, meteor showers, worlds with goods to pick up, player-on-player combat zones, and other various things.

Most of the cards will cause players to move back on the flight track and they must decide if the delay is worth their efforts. When all the cards are encountered players sell any goods they have collected, collect their rewards for finishing in first, second, or third place or having the most intact ship, and then lose some credits for damaged components. Space can be a very dangerous place and it is not uncommon to see your ship break into smaller and smaller pieces or lose some very valuable cargo off the side. If your ship gets damaged too much you can get knocked out of the race, so be careful!

3 rounds of this are done, and in each round players get a bigger board to build a ship that can hold more components. After the 3rd round the player with the most credits wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Team Based
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Formula D

Formula D

Formula D

Formula D is a high stakes Formula One type racing game where the players race simulated cars with the hope of crossing the finish line first. This is a re-release of Formula Dé with several changes from the original format. Whilst old tracks can be used with the updated Formula D rules, the new game features boards that have an F1 track and a Street Track on the other side. These street tracks each have a novel inclusion or two to add greater theme –

The game mechanisms are a simple race, get to the finish line first! However, players have to use a significant amount of planning, and rely on quite a bit of luck. Each player manages when to shift gears, with each gear providing a different speed. (For example, 4th gear is a die that rolls random numbers from 7 to 12 for spaces moved.) Each turn, players may move up one gear, stay in that gear, or move down gears. This forces players to match possible rolls with the optimum distance for that turn, and hopefully plan ahead. However, speed is not the only issue! Corners have a “stop” rule that requires players to stop once, twice, or three times on that corner in consecutive turns or face a penalty. This creates an effective speed limit to the corners.

Of course, things do not always go as planned! Players take penalties if they miss their roll, bump into another car, are blocked by other cars, have to brake heavily, or have to downshift several gears. These are taken off of a car’s attributes (Tire health, Brake wear, Transmission Gears, Body, engine, and Suspension). Losing the maximum in any of these categories will result in elimination, or a severe setback for that car. This requires that players manage their car’s health, plan for their best path, and have good luck on their rolls. This high amount of luck gives the game its family appeal, and lets weaker players have a chance at winning once in a while.

However, the fun does not end with a single race! The rules include the ability to customize your cars, use a pre-generated character, add Slipstreaming (Drafting) rules and road debris, and change tire types to modify your distance rolls. There are also variations for a single lap race, or multiple laps with pit stops to repair some of your damage points. In addition, numerous expansion tracks can be purchased to vary the demands on each driver and car. Each track may also have weather effects (rain) that change car handling and die rolls due to skidding on wet track. This opens up the game for rally rules giving championship points over a number of races.

Formula D adds a few items that are not in the original Formula De: There is the added excitement of illegal racing in the streets of big cities – anything goes! This adds custom cars, nitro acceleration, drifting in the curves, dirty tricks, gun battles, and trash on the road to add more variation. A basic change is the use of a “Dashboard” with movable pegs to manage your car’s attributes instead of the paper forms from Formula De. There are also two sets of pre-painted cars; a Formula 1 set and the Street Race set of stock cars. The street cars come with “Character” profiles to give a bit of role-playing to the game. Finally, the old category of “Fuel” for the car has been renamed Transmission Wear to give a better thematic fit to the effect of multiple downshifting.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Player Elimination
  • Push Your Luck
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 10 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.97

Forgotten Waters

Forgotten Waters

Forgotten Waters

Forgotten Waters is a Crossroads Game set in a world of fantastical pirate adventure. In it, players take on the role of pirates sailing together on a ship, attempting to further their own personal stories as well as a common goal.

The world of Forgotten Waters is silly and magical, with stories designed to encourage players to explore and laugh in delight as they interact with the world around them. It’s a game in which every choice can leave a lasting impact on the story, and players will want turn over every rock just to see what they find.

Forgotten Waters features five scenarios and a massive location book that provides players with tons of choices wherever they go.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Storytelling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 7 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10