Tag: Dice Rolling

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

CATastrophe: A Game of 9 Lives

| OTSG Staff

Catastrophe is a game as spontaneous and unexpected as cats themselves.

Players start with 9 lives. Your goal is to survive the chaotic mayhem. The last cat standing is crowned champion! Power Cats will help guide you to victory with unique abilities. But, be careful, it’s no catwalk!

One second, you’re slapping down attack and curiosity cards, the next you’re rolling a die and playing fun catastrophic mini-games to determine your destiny. However, magical Yarn Balls may alter your fate. You are eliminated when you lose all of your lives. Beware of the villain, the Grim Reapurr, who is plotting your untimely demise and attempting to be the sole victor!

This is an all-out claws out kind of game with only one victor and many catfights! Will your strategy be to play with caution… or wild abandon… Either way, you’re in for a treat.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Player Elimination
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

CATAN: New Energies

| OTSG Staff

It’s the 21st Century, and Catan is at a crossroads. Long gone is the agrarian society of the island’s Viking ancestors. Today’s Catanians need energy to keep society moving and growing, but pollution is wreaking havoc on the island.

You must decide: Invest in clean energy resources, or opt for cheaper fossil fuels, potentially causing disastrous effects for the island?

CATAN: New Energies is a new standalone game rooted in classic CATAN mechanisms of harvesting, trading, and building. New gameplay elements including power plants, energy tokens, and environmental events that add new strategies and stories to a familiar foundation.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hexagon Grid
  • Modular Board
  • Trading
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40

Cat Sudoku

| OTSG Staff

Cat Sudoku is a roll-and-write sudoku game for 1 to 6 players. In the game, players take turns to roll four dice and all players simultaneously write the numbers on their sudoku puzzle papers. Similar to traditional Sudoku, players should avoid putting the same number into the same row or column in their puzzle, or they will get minus points! The game ends when players fill in all the spaces in the puzzle. The player with the highest points wins the game.

Cat Sudoku comes with four different sudoku puzzles (themed with four seasons of Kyoto) at three different difficulty levels, so that you can enjoy this game with a variety of gaming groups.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Solo / Solitaire Game

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Campbell’s Alphabet Dice Game

| OTSG Staff

From the can: “Warm up your evening with a satisfying, yet simple, anagram word game for the whole family to enjoy. Simply throw your dice and start to spell. When you’re stumped, everyone rolls again. This is not just another alphabet game. It’s M’m M’m GOOD!”

Kind of a cross between all the other letter/dice games and Scrabble. This clever little dice game uses terms from cooking for the gameplay. Game turns are made up of “servings” (rounds). The choice of moves when you roll your dice are: 1) Building, 2) Slurping, and 3) Passing. The last round of dice play is called “scraping the bottom”.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Spelling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.25

Anachrony 🟠

| OTSG Staff

It is the late 26th century. Earth is recovering from a catastrophic explosion that exterminated the majority of the population centuries ago and made most of the surface uninhabitable due to unearthly weather conditions. The surviving humans organized along four radically different ideologies, called Paths, to rebuild the world as they see fit: Harmony, Dominance, Progress, and Salvation. Followers of the four Paths live in a fragile peace, but in almost complete isolation next to each other. Their only meeting point is the last major city on Earth, now just known as the Capital.

By powering up the mysterious Time Rifts that opened in the wake of the cataclysm, each Path is able to reach back to specific moments in their past. Doing so can greatly speed up their progress, but too much meddling may endanger the time-space continuum. But progress is more important than ever before: if the mysterious message arriving through the Time Rift is to be believed, an even more terrible cataclysm is looming on the horizon: an asteroid bearing the mysterious substance called Neutronium is heading towards Earth. Even stranger, the scientists show that the energy signature of the asteroid matches the explosion centuries ago…

Anachrony features a unique two-tiered worker placement system. To travel to the Capital or venture out to the devastated areas for resources, players need not only various specialists (Engineers, Scientists, Administrators, and Geniuses) but also Exosuits to protect and enhance them — and both are in short supply.

The game is played in 4-7 turns, depending on the time when the looming cataclysm occurs — unless, of course, it is averted! The elapsed turns are measured on a dynamic timeline. By powering up the Time Rifts, players can reach back to earlier turns to supply their past “self” with resources. Each Path has a vastly different objective that rewards it with a massive amount of victory points when achieved. The Paths’ settlements will survive the impact, but the Capital will not. Whichever Path manages to collect most points will be the new seat for the Capital, thus the most important force left on the planet…

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.01

Battletech: Beginner Box

| OTSG Staff

In this introduction to the BattleTech game and universe, players each take control of one giant walking war machine (a BattleMech, aka ‘Mech) and battle until one is destroyed or until the scenario objectives being played are completed.

BattleTech is the world’s greatest armored combat game, filled with a myriad of epic stories and gaming experiences to satiate any player: miniatures to RPG play, hobby painting to fiction, and beyond. The BattleTech Beginner Box is the first step on that fantastic journey and includes everything you need to get started: two high-quality miniatures, quick-start rules, a mapsheet, cards to represent your MechWarrior’s unique skills, dice, and more.

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • ~120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.43

Baseball Highlights: The Dice Game

| OTSG Staff

Baseball Highlights: The Dice Game takes all the excitement of Baseball Highlights: 2045 and turns it into a thrilling dice game! Score the most runs by drafting the best dice and stringing together powerful combos! Slowly set up the base runners with singles, and then hit a grand slam, or steal bases to sneak your runners home! The rolls of the dice make each round a whole new ball game. Everyone gets to play even when it’s not their turn, so the strategic thinking never ends! Dust off home plate, get out your leather glove, and PLAY BALL!

Baseball Highlights: The Dice Game is played with a set of 9 Play dice, 6 Power dice, 1 Pitcher’s die, a game board, and a game sheet for each player.

Each round the active player will roll the Play dice and any Power dice they have unlocked to place them each of the matching 6 board areas. Then, the active player will select one of these 6 areas and will use the dice from that area to cross off boxes in the matching track on their player game sheet. Once they are done, the inactive players select 1 die from 2 different areas to cross off 2 boxes in the matching tracks on their game sheets.

Marking off boxes in the 6 tracks (and the bonus Clutch Hits track) will place new runners on base and advance your existing runners for singles, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, and stolen bases. Each time you advance a base runner to home, you will score 1 run. The player who scores the most runs by the end of the game wins. But be careful, the result on the Pitcher’s die may remove some of your base runners before they can score!

Baseball Highlights: The Dice Game is for 1 to 4 players ages 8 and up. Average game length is 20 minutes with mostly simultaneous play.

Contents: 1 Game Board, 25 Sheet Baseball Scorepad, 16 Custom Dice, 1 Rulebook, 16 Wooden Markers

-description from publisher

Baseball Highlights: The Dice Game is Game #26 in the Gryphon Bookshelf Series of Games.

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition

| OTSG Staff

Put yourself into the shoes of the great strategic thinkers and generals of WWII with this special anniversary edition of Axis & Allies! Now you can play with Italy as a third Axis nation, the new cruiser unit, and over 600 pieces.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 360 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.11

Artifacts, Inc.

| OTSG Staff

New York, 1929: A frenzy of interest in antiquity is sweeping the nation! With museums hungry for mysterious and exotic artifacts — and you hungry for adventure — you start up your own archeology company. Untold wonders await within dangerous jungles, harsh deserts, and wind-swept mountains. Will you gain a reputation as the most intrepid and famous adventurer of all time?

In Artifacts, Inc., 2-4 players compete to grow the most famous archaeology company. Players roll dice, which represent their troop of adventurers, and place them on cards in order to find artifacts, sell them to museums, and purchase new cards representing their company assets. Players can choose to focus on making lots of money by selling artifacts, having museum majorities, creating the best combination of expeditions and buildings, or searching below the waves for lost cities and hidden treasures. The first player to reach 20 reputation triggers the end of the game, and the player with the most total reputation wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16