Dice Games – Adventures in a Messy Life

I have a true love-hate with dice games. I love rolling lots of dice, but at the same time I have the absolute worst luck with dice games. I could have all the dice I need and have lots of rerolls and I will still not get the roll I need for this dice game. My son, Superman, could barely have the dice he needs and he will get the roll on the first try. It’s just not fair. However, that does not stop me from enjoying playing these games, so I keep buying them and we keep playing them as part of our gameschooling. So, let’s talk dice games.

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What are dice games?

Very simply dice games are games that are played with dice. They frequently don’t have a game board, or if they do, it is more of a staging place for characters or ideas.

Many dice games will fall into other types of games like worker placement or resource management, so I will frequently have them in other categories as well when I sort them out.

Generic Dice Games

These are the dice games that don’t particularly fall into any of the categories. These are usually the ones that can be played in like five minutes, and you can fit the entire game in your pocket.

• Draconic Dice- Okay, the entire reason why I started going away from writing about specific games is I’d have this super awesome game, and then I would go to write about this super cool game that we play all the time, and I’d find out that it’s out of print. That’s the case with this dice game. So, if you can find it somewhere used, pick it up. It’s a fun dice game that you roll and are trying to run out of dice as you try to get away from the dragon. If you roll broken helms, those dice are out of the game. Fireballs go to the center, but if you don’t roll a fireball, all the dice in the center are added to your die total. It’s a fun 5-minute game.
• Left Right Center– we’ve got a copy of this, but haven’t played it much. My sister-in-law enjoys this, but it plays similarly to Draconic Dice, but no dragon theme.
• Qwixx– I can’t decide how to describe this game. It looks super fun and a fun way to play with your family.

Push Your Luck Dice Games

Just how far can you go to win? If you roll just one more time, will you get that final roll you need, or will you lose it all? If it’s me, I will lose it all.

Okay, there are several of this sort, including some that I’ve almost bought for my kids, but haven’t because we don’t end up playing these all that often, and they were popular with my family for a while, and then the popularity of this trend passed on.

• Zombie Dice– Yeah, I wouldn’t play this, but Superman would, but it’s also very much a quick version of a press your luck game. But, I also think he’d just play the Draconic Dice, which we already own.
• King of Tokyo– for a long time, this was my boys’ favorite game. Then suddenly it wasn’t. But we have several expansions and they played it all the time, and figured out how to play it with more than the so-called 4 players it calls four. It’s basically Yahtzee with kaiju. King of Tokyo is a press-your-luck game because you are seeing how long you can stay in Tokyo, trying to kill the other players before you have to leave.

Resource Management Games

Okay, most other dice games are some variation on resource management games or area control games.

What’s really funny is how many of these resource management games can be summed up as “it’s basically Yahtzee and you are deciding when to choose which part of Yahtzee to fill in.”

• Favor of the Pharaoh– another game that is sadly out of print. I was so sad when I had to delete that post because I realized the game is no longer sold. But hey, you can link to someone sometimes selling used copies… I love this game, and I ALWAYS lose because I cannot roll for anything.
• Dragonwood– we briefly had this game because I heard people raving about it, and it’s much like Favor of the Pharaoh, you roll dice to try and collect cards to earn more dice to get the ultimate card. We like Favor of the Pharaoh more, and since we already had that and enjoyed it, we kept that one.
• Booty Dice– an amusing-looking dice game that looks rather like it is a variation of Yahtzee.

Beyond categorization

Okay this is beyond categorization and just takes a bunch of D6

• Tenzi– the original, and it has several sets of D6 (six-sided dice) and instructions on how to play a few games with it. This was wildly popular, so they went, let’s capitalize on it. And they came up with:
• 77 Ways to play with Tenzi– It’s basically just a list of games you can play with dice, and they’ve divided it up into different categories, much like I’ve done here, except theirs are more like timed, dexterity, matching, and categories.
• And then they went from there and created more games that aren’t dice but are fun to play and are all easily portable.

So, I wrote this thinking I had all of these dice games, and as I’m writing it I can’t remember any of them. But I’m also sitting here with the worst migraine pounding at my head, so that is not helping right now. I may have to give in and actually take my prescription medicine.