Dice Throne

Yahtzee meets Magic the Gathering!

The advertisements all over my Facebook feed do not lie: "Yahtzee meets Magic the Gathering"! Dice Throne is precisely what you would expect based on that catchphrase. With over 16 heroes to purchase, as well as a Marvel edition, players will gravitate toward a specific personality, pick up that battle box, and attempt to take the throne!

Players choose a hero and duel in this dice-rolling adventure, where the die results allow you to activate abilities to overcome your opponents! You can choose to battle 1v1, team up with a friend, or play a six-person gauntlet. Increase your combat points to manipulate your and your opponent's die to become the champion!

For this article, I am basing the ratings on the two characters I have played thus far: Pyromancer and Shadowthief. Pyromancer is a low-complexity, entry-level character whose plan is to be aggressive in both offense and defense. Shadowthief is a high-complexity character who focuses on card advantage and incremental damage. While Pyromancer tries to end the game early, Shadowthief attempts to draw the game out and win the long game.

Mash Up Of: Magic the Gathering, Yahtzee

ART: 6/10

Every character has an action-comic vibe with vibrant and eye-catching colors. Though not all players are into the cartoon style, the variation of color alongside the thematic font variations gives this a higher rating.

STORYTELLING: 2/10

Unlike Magic the Gathering, which has novels and lore, Dice Throne doesn't have any background on each of its characters. Sure, it gets some points for "the Mad King hosting a tournament of champions with the greatest prize a hero could ever want: the throne." But sadly, I wish I could see how these characters connect, where they came from, and why they are all here to battle it out.

COMPONENTS: 9/10

Any game that uses GameTrayz immediately earns my respect due to their care for an experience during the game as well as during set up and tear down. The tray perfectly fits every component, there are heavy-duty cardboard wheels for tracking life and combat points, and most importantly, they have custom colored AND engraved dice that are on theme with the character. The game includes a good-quality card stock character sheet with an FAQ so that you don’t have to continue to resort to google for each unique character situation. Even the box is sturdy, with a nice texture on the surface. The deck of cards is fine, as are the cardboard punch-out tokens, but to get the ten stars here, I would have loved to see plastic tokens or something a bit more tactile. Roxley took the cake on this one with their dedication to holistic user experience.

COMPLEXITY: 3/10

Since I am used to the complexity of Magic the Gathering, this score is somewhat biased. There are a lot of choices for abilities, but the dice-rolling randomness often can lead you to only one option, especially if you have no cards in hand that can manipulate your rolls. I have only played Pyromancer and Shadow Thief, and though each has its noted complexity rating, each turn was relatively linear and straightforward. It was hard to plan around an opponent changing your die rolls if you can't even get a good roll in the first place. All you do is see if you can play a card, then play Yahtzee, and hope you can use a powerful ability.

TRAVEL-FRIENDLY: 8/10

Each box is small and perfectly sized for two characters. Roxley offers a Battle Chest that can fit an entire season's worth of eight characters, which isn't a bad idea if you plan on playing with more people or want to switch up your play style over a weekend. The GameTrayz fits each character's essentials perfectly, so I wouldn't bother to change how this is stored. You could move a character into a deck box with a dice drawer if deck boxes are more your style.

UNIQUENESS: 6/10

Scoring a little higher on this one due to my lack of experience with dice-rolling games. I have played games where die rolls earn you resources to use in other aspects of a game, but I have never seen a game where the rolls have meaning with both number and iconography. Having the dice be your character's "mana," in a sense, to perform an ability is not something I have come across. That said, the card mechanics and the turn order are like most TCGs. And using the same mechanic as Yahtzee, though fun, feels like it lacks originality.

Final Comments

Overall I find this game enjoyable. Am I dying to play it? No. After playing competitive Magic, this game does not give me the same satisfaction or control that I desire. I enjoy the unique dice component and the art style, and I can see myself getting this to the table occasionally when I want a quick-setup dice-rolling game. I can't speak about the other characters, but with these two I have played so far, both seem to be somewhat fun to play, which would drive me to play the game more frequently. Perhaps other characters would give me more options and a better experience. Cool concept; I don't mind playing it, but not going to be my go-to.

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Publisher: Roxley Games

Game(s) Pictured: Dice Throne Season One: Rerolled > Pyromancer vs Shadow Thief