Lure

Lure is a game of, thematically, fishing. But mechanically you’re fishing too – pushing your luck to see what you can get!

Each player has a set of dice – five six-sided, one ten-sided and one twenty-sided. Each round a number of fish cards are flipped over, and everyone secretly chooses how many dice they’re willing to roll to try and catch it: each fish has a minimal number that needs to be rolled, and often one or more values that must be included in all your rolled dice. For example, the bowfin fish needs a total roll of only 8, which sounds easy enough, but included in the roll must be a 1 and a 2. Not so easy after all!

Rolling more dice, then, is obviously helpful in terms of your chances, but the dice are rolled from fewest to most, meaning if you pledge fewer dice you might have less chance of success, but you do at least get to fish sooner – potentially catching fish before the players with more dice can even roll! If you get no fish at all, you do at least get to pick up a Lure token. They come in three distinct types.

One – the boast – is simply extra points at the end of the game if you play it when you catch a fish. Another allows you to manipulate dice values, and the last lure represents extra dice of a specific number (and doesn’t count towards your dice total).

Your special dice – the ten and twenty-sided ones – can be pledged like any other, with the minor catch that they then sit out the next round before returning to available again. Any uncaught fish stay available into subsequent rounds, and any pledged lures are discarded, successful or not. Once the last fish has been caught, players add up points for their fish and any boasts they completed. Most points wins!