We are going to present to you today the game Dice Throne which recently delivered the first remastered season of this license. The French localization of this new season was carried out by the publisher Lucky Duck Games.
Presentation of the game
Dice Throne was created by Nate Chatellier and Manny Trembley for everything related to the game mechanics and by Nick Malara for the illustrations. It is intended to be played by 2 to 6 players for games of approximately 30 minutes. In the presentation of the game that we are going to do, we are going to dwell more on the two-player games which are somewhat the heart of the game, even if the games with several players (2v2, 3v3) or in Free-For-All (each for oneself) are just as interesting.
On the story side, it is quite simplistic featuring a tournament, organized by the Mad King each year, during which the latter systematically puts his throne back into play. This king having never lost, it will be your duty to succeed in defeating him to take his place as... king. In fact, it is a game of confrontation between several players where the goal of each will be to bring down the opposing life points to zero.
In terms of the quality of the equipment, the players will also be served by equipment of very good quality, whether it is for playing or even storage equipment. The creators have kept the same starting idea: each playable character will have its own game board and its associated storage box. These two associations will aim primarily not to mix the characters, but also to effectively improve the setting up and storage of the game compared to other games of the same type.
Game flow
Each player will have a life counter of 50 points and the goal will be for your opponent to bring it down to 0. As in many games of the same genre, you will have several attack/defense skills at your disposal to help you in this task. There are, however, two peculiarities in Dice Throne.
- The first is that each character is asymmetrical (does not play the same way) making the games quite different especially with the number of characters available if we take the game as a whole.
- The second particularity is that we play both with cards (improvement of skills, instantaneous effect, etc.) but also with dice for the attack/defense phases.
On a player's board, you will find all the information of the skills and their trigger effects according to their dice. You will also have access to two game aids for the bonus/malus effects that he can create as well as help on the progress of a turn. For the latter, here are the different phases that can be carried out:
- Upkeep phase: you will have to resolve the abilities in progress and the alterations of your character (bonus or malus) that will inflict damage or healing on you.
- Income phase: the active player will gain a combat point (CP) and draw a card from his deck.
- Main Phase 1: You will be able to spend CPs to play cards from your hand that have the “P” icon on their left edge (“M” in the English version).
- Attack phase: the active player will roll his 5 dice with the possibility of re-rolling as many dice as he wishes 2 more times (it is possible to lock certain dice at each roll). At the end of these throws or whenever he wishes, he can activate a skill on his board to attack an opponent.
- Defensive phase: the attacked player can defend himself by rolling the dice once while activating his defensive skill. Depending on his roll and his character, the result may be different.
- Main phase 2: the active player will be able to play cards from their hand again under the same conditions as in main phase 1.
- Discard phase: it will be possible for the active player to discard cards to gain battle points for the next turn or to defend themselves during the opponent's turn. In any case, the active player cannot have more than 6 cards in his hand at the end of his turn.
As I quickly explained earlier, main phase cards can only be played during this phase and will be blue in color (Dark Blue and Blue/White). However, there are two types of cards: action cards and upgrades. If the first ones have direct effects on the players like gains of alteration or CPs, the improvements will have, as their name indicates it, the consequence of significantly improving the skills of the player's board for his attack skills and defense.
Cards with an orange border will only be playable during the attack/defense phase and can directly influence your dice rolls or add additional effects at the end of the fight. These are quite interesting cards that can significantly counter the random part of your dice rolls and avoid crying bad luck each time your rolls are bad.
There is one last color of card, red, which can be played at any time during the turn and which has quite extensive effects, whether on alteration gains / CPs or to influence your dice rolls . These cards are interesting to keep in hand because, having the possibility of being played at any time, they can thwart certain actions of your opponent, or even reduce his turn to nothing in certain circumstances.
Conclusion
The game has already been tested by many players and, mechanically, we know very well that it is very functional and has a more than interesting replayability if you have several starter decks (or even the complete box of 8 characters). Quite easily and even with several players, we are able to carry out mini-tournaments in 1vs1 to elect the new champion of your circle of players.
Regarding this new remastered version, it brings a lot of comfort and illustrations compared to the previous version. First of all in terms of content, it will be possible to have 8 balanced characters in this season (against 6 previously which could for some be a little unbalanced between the old heroes and the new ones), but it is especially at the level of illustrations and storage that the editor has done an impressive job. If only because now all cards feature artwork instead of just text. As for the storage system, it was made to improve the installation/storage time for each part.
If you take the leap into this adventure, know that the game is available in most stores in a duo box / two characters at a price of around 25/30 Euros.
