A fine little dice battler

Understanding that dice can be the most fickle of board game elements, we dived into Dice Clash recently.

So right off the start, there is a lot to like with this little game, but it remains important that you remain OK with dice often having the final say in the game’s outcome – remember that going in.

In Dice Clash – from designers Jonathan Carnehl, Galen McCown, and Ryan Sromek – players take on the role of one of six fighters – the usual tropes Viking /  ninja Spartan/knightht, etc, each with its own ‘special ability’ and a battle card where you play dice to.

Now, there is nothing particularly flavourful in the characters – nothing that screams that the Viking is a great Norse warrior, etc, but artist H.S. Law has at least given each a nice rendering.

In this one you roll a mitt-full of dice – nine – and keep the results hidden. On your turn, you roll a die on your battle board – there are nine spots, most having some effect on the die place, pluses or minuses in general. A die placed is used to defend whatever die your opponent played, and if it defends becomes your attack die.

Players must defend with a value higher than their opponent’s attack. But attacks of six or greater can be parried with a defense of one, so yes, sixes and ones are key here.

Designer McCown said simplicity of play was always at the forefront of the game’s development.

“I wanted to design a simple, light, but tactical fighting game that gave players the feel of a back-and-forth weapons duel,” he said via email. “As I began designing the game, I realized that the dice system from a game called Scuttleball would work exceptionally well in what

I was trying to build. I reached out to the designers and ended up making this a co-design effort.”

From there, it was keeping the ruleset as small as possible.

McCown said he was striving for rules that were “tight,” creating “simple gameplay with interesting decisions that had the feel of a back-and-forth battle.”

The result works.

“In one sense, the game is as simple as placing a single die on a grid each turn,” said McCown. “Which die you choose and which space you place it on is where the tension and excitement of the game are. Expect tight battles that go down to the wire, fun and powerful asymmetric characters, and a quick game experience you can play virtually anywhere.”

No, there are a few special dice that add to the game nicely.

You have one red d, ie, which, when played, activates your character’s unique ability, so when you use it can be critical.

Two white dice, when played, make you re-roll all dice still in your pool. Generally,y you do that when what you have left are lousy numbers.

The ‘battle card’ certainly creates decisions.

“The idea that each die you place has three potential values to consider that are impacted by the space you choose: its face value, its

Defense value and its Attack value. That tends to trip people up when they first learn it,” offered McCown.

You play until a player can’t defend, and they lose.

That player flips his character and battle cards to their reverse sides, which have what might be seen as more ‘frenzied’ or ‘desperate’ numbers, and you battle again. When you lose if on the reverse side, it is game over.

With the influences of the battle cards and the ability to re-roll using your white dice, you can mitigate bad dice numbers to some degree, but a bad batch of dice off the initial roll is likely to spell doom, which can be frustrating.

Normally,y I am personally not enamoured with dice-dominated games, but here there is at least some hope of mitigating the bad rolls, and you are in a fight, so sometimes you are going to fail in your effort – here it just results from not having what you need.

This one is from publisher Galen’s Games (www.galensgames.com) and is a fine little coffee-time filler, with enough variety to recommend on the proviso you can live with dice rolls ruling in the end.

It helps that the game is available through www.pnparcade.com as a print-and-play, keeping the cost lower to delve into Dice Clash.