Designed by: Thomas Lehmann
Dice Realms is a game where, thematically-speaking, each player is developing their realm through a series of rounds, and the best realm wins. But really, it’s a game that celebrates two things: what hobbyists call engine-building (ie continuously improving the basic tools you begin the game with) – and rolling dice.
The dice in this case are customizable. Everyone starts with the basic pair (one black, one white) and simultaneously rolls them. You can reroll one die for free, if you want.
Then you harvest what the dice give you. There are tokens for points and wheat, so simply take them from the general supply. Money can’t be saved between turns however: any money symbols shown on your die have to be spent during the round. You can buy re-roll tokens for extra re-rolls in a subsequent turn, set tokens that allow you to choose which die face you want – very handy! – extra dice – even more handy! – or upgrades. Some die faces give you upgrades too.
Upgrades are where Dice Realms evolves from a simple dice-chucker into something rather more special. Upgrades allow you to shed the starting faces on your dice for newer, better ones. Instead of that paltry victory point, you can get 2 or even 4. Instead a single upgrade, you get many. And as well as the basic upgrades for your starting die faces, each game also deals five randomized bespoke sets: so you could go for these instead. Essentially, every turn you make improvements in some way, and although there’s certainly luck in the game, generally the players who see how various die faces can work together will have more success.
There’s one fly in the ointment, however, and that’s the Fate die. Players take turns rolling it, but it affects everyone. Some if its faces are helpful (Good harvest means, potentially, extra wheat; Innovation gives you two free upgrades) but others are not. If the winter side is ever rolled all players must pay grain to the supply for each die they own. If you don’t have the grain to do so: minus points!
So there’s an element of risk and management to proceedings, and also some strategy: what upgrades will you go for? Will you try and score as many points as possible as soon as possible? Or create a set of super-powerful dice first, and gather bigger hauls later?
At the end of each round there’s a check for game-end: if anybody needed 10 points, 10 grain or -10 for not being able to pay for winter, the game ends. The upgraded faces of all your dice are popped back out and scored along with the points won during the game. Most points: winner!
Certain upgrades have 'attack' powers that target other players. If your group isn't keen though there are plenty of other options.
After the initial opacity of wondering what to do, the game speeds along: all turns are mostly taken simultaneously (there may be exceptions for the Fate die).
There's a number of resources: upgrades improve your dice, coins buy things, wheat pay for your dice in winter, and points are... points. But there's some extra symbology to think about too: shields can prevent attacks, some dice allow you to re-roll them after gifting you resources. Important to remember is that despite the vast amount of potential upgrades, you'll never use all of them in a single game. So - assuming the iconography hasn't defeated you - the goal here is try and combine die faces in ways that give you mega-turns of high achievement.
Masses of variety in the box, with a number of variable set-ups.
2-4
Players
10+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Dice Realms is undoubtedly fun while you play it, and undoubtedly generous with the huge amount of variation in the (big) box. My beef with the game is management. Opening it up for the first time unleashes a hour-long job sorting out all the dice faces into their trays. That kind of undertaking isn't unheard of, but this administrative aspect bleeds into the playing too: removing and replacing die faces during each game, then resetting all the dice to their starting faces at the end, not forgetting all the upgrades need to be returned to their correct trays. Now, that's 60-odd words spent harrumphing about Dice Realms, so it's only fair to dwell on the positives too: I like it, and if your curiosity is piqued you may well find it ticks a lot of boxes. The replayability is enormous: there a number of different tiles that combine in a multitude of ways to give subtle, or significant, changes from play to play. The dice-rolling is fun, but what's satisfying is that sense of forward momentum as you buy more dice and generate more stuff, going from an underwhelming get a point/get some wheat type opening turn to get four wheat/eight points/six money and four upgrades just 20 minutes or so later. That sense of escalation gives both drama and satisfaction, especially when your dice roll exactly as you'd like them to. So, in all: not a game to undertake lightly, and not one where I'd say the theme shines through - but there is a lot of fun in the box if you don't mind the attendant tasks it also provides. (If the game sounds too complex, then Dice Forge is a simpler alternative)