Dice Forge

08 Jan 2019

The What

A light dice crafting game where players are trying to gain the most favor by the end of the game. During the game players will buy die faces to stick on their dice and buy cards to provide additional actions, effects, and favor. A game by Libellud.

The Summary

There are two main table pieces to the game:

• The board with the die faces that will be bought during the game.
• The board with the cards that are present in the game, the quantity of cards in the game are equal to the number of players in the game.

How to Play:

Pick a first player, each player picks a color and the respective cubes to mark resources, the player’s board, and the player movement marker.

1. Everyone rolls both their die, they immediately gain the face up resources on the die.
2. The acting player can perform the actions with their cards that have a gear icon on them.
3. The acting player chooses to either buy die faces of different types (in respective turns they can buy copies) moving to the central platform or a card by moving to it’s respective spot.
4. The acting player can choose to spend 2 sun stones to perform step 3 again, this can only be done once per turn.

Whenever the first player takes his turn he moves the round track up, once a certain amount of rounds are complete, the game ends and the players tally up points to see who wins.

When a player wishes to move into a space where a player already exists, the player they bumped gets to roll their die and gain those resources immediately.

The Puzzle

Juggling the 3 types of resources (gold, sun stones, moon stones), early on since players are strapped for the stones, but buying the cards with the gear icon are very beneficial early in the game.

Figuring out what what amount of dice faces are sufficient to buy and then proceed to buying the cards.

Tips

The cheap cards have a subtle impact in the game, getting them early or in mid-game will allow you to maximize your points.

Using the sun stones to take an extra turn are important especially late in the game.

Opening Moves

• The first purchase of die faces should be done optimally when a player has 5 or more gold.
• Players who receive a sun or moon stones early in the game should try to use them as soon a possible. The 3 moon card and the 3 sun card are pretty powerful and can help offset the penalties for being later in the turn order.
• The 4 sun and moon cards are good if you are pushed out of buying die the cheaper die faces.
• The 5 sun and moon cards will deal with the special die faces, they are pretty powerful and again are good if out competed for some beneficial faces.

Curio

There are a couple of specialty die faces that are associated with cards, their effects dramatically can change strategy or provide interested interactions.

The cards that have players interact with other players is also a neat addition to a game where individuals are pretty siloed in their own puzzle.

Criticism

This achieves what it sets out to. To create a dice game, that focused on improving two die, once you have an efficient engine players then focus on grabbing victory points which are tied to resources or the converting of them.

The first player still has an advantage primarily on the first turn and will have the most options open to him until other players start buying cards. However the first player does not have the advantage of accumulating resources from previous player turns and the inherent randomness of die can mitigate the development of optimal strategies.

The die themselves are a bit fiddly and the faces would be really easy to lose as they are suprisingly great at ejecting themselves when you remove them, although they say nestled until you need to get them out. Also removing for clean up can be a little tedious as well.

The Verdict

It’s a great simple gateway game, easy to teach, and easy to play. A great ‘palate cleanser.’ It would be a great game to teach younger players and explore the concept of die with imbalanced distribution as well as resource management.

Players are involved on everyone’s turn and have to stay engaged throughout the game, which is a boon.

Other Games

Similar

• Roll for the Galaxy: a little on the heavier side, the interactions with resources require more sophisticated juggling. Definitely something to check out if you are looking for a meatier experience.
• Star Wars Destiny: not a dice crafting game, but includes premium die and players customize a star wars team to duke it out in a similar style to fighting games.

Company

• Seasons: another dice focused game by the same company, shares a lot of the same DNA, where there are strong interactions between dice generating resources and using those resources to buy cards which unlock more options for players.
• Dixit: another lighter game by the company, this is a story-based part game.