Look, folks, this not a game box that passed any of my prejudices. Not only is it expensive and bulky, but it's what I call a treadmill game: the game wants you to buy more of it, over and over, as you get more and more tricks and gimmicks to add onto your ever-growing collection. Bad treadmills are explicitly about getting the next thing and experiencing the next dopamine hit. Good treadmills are actually good games, with the dopamine hit. I don't have the space, so I put a pause on my buying of Heroes of the Grid. I'm sure as hell not going to go buy another treadmill game. Welp, a friend of mine gave it to me as a gift. A year ago. You don't turn down gifts. I've played it almost every day, sometimes up to five times a day. I've played it with a variety of ages, from young kids to grannies. And I can say this, pretty definitively: I'm still learning these eight characters in the box. There's a depth going on in this 99 dollar box that I did not expect.
Let's get down to brass tacks: Dice Throne's center is "just" Yahtzee. Pick up the five pretty dice, roll 'em three times, keeping whatever you like, all to get a result from on the board, which has special abilities and attacks.
This means that, in order to successfully pull anything off, you aren't rolling against another player, per se, but instead against your own luck. And this has a real effect for the table environment: it doesn't feel as personal. In fact, sometimes you feel bad when they don't pull off an attack, or at least I do! If they do pull off an attack, that's fine, you usually get a defensive roll, which is unique to your character. And these defensive rolls aren't just "cancel the hit", but can sometimes get the defender real advantages that shift the game in their favor. There isn't a moment when everything is shifting around. If you pick up the dice it matters. I've never, not even once, seen a dead turn, where not a thing happens.
Of note are the myriad conditions that are part of every character. Some of them are extremely simple, and some are incredibly complex, requiring a good and solid reading. The designers were extremely good at ensuring that conditions of similar complexity are grouped appropriately with characters. None of the conditions are useless, and none of them are too powerful. All of them require some skill to use, even if the character is simple enough. It's all in the Goldilocks zone, folks: just right.
The last bits are the cards.The cards cost Combat Points (CP), usually up to 4 at a time. The effects are appropriately grouped to the complexity of the character, with very few of them being actually expensive. There's four types of cards: main phase, upgrades, roll phase cards, and instants. Main phase cards have all kinds of different effects, grouped around the theme of the character. Upgrades let you shift up the abilities on your board, and can even add new abilities for you to roll. Roll phase cards let you muck about with your dice rolls, and this is honestly where some of the biggest "Oohs!" and "Ahs!" of the game really come about; there's nothing like mucking about the with the dice and they still freaking get their roll. Instants can be played at any time, and can turn the game on its head. All of this is clearly explained by the rules and expertly laid out: I handed this to my “I can’t play games like that” mom, and she had it within moments, nevermind enjoying herself as she began cooking up strategies on her own!
None of this would make a difference if the character design wasn't any good. I'd have chucked the box, gift or not, if the character theming wasn't good. This kind of game needs strong vision for all the characters, as well as allowing the characters to be played in a myriad of ways. It is not an easy thing to design for. The character is where all the previous parts are assembled together, and either are more than the sum of said parts or far less. And the game really delivers here! Everyone, and I do mean everyone, plays differently and well. I’ve got my favorite (paladin, to the shock of no one), but I enjoy all the others and can win with them, should someone take my vengefully armored baby. They all come in a range of complication levels, from the “I hit you and you can’t hit me back” barbarian to the treant, who commands a small army of spirits, all of whom require a great deal of finesse to use correctly. None of them feel unbalanced against each other: if two players of equal skill did a barbarian (the simplest) vs treant (the most complex) battle it would be a damn close game.
The only real issue with this box is its price, but only in the abstract. 99 bucks plus shipping sounds expensive, but I’ve put the hours in on this game, folks. I can tell you that I got way more than a 99 buck value for this game. If this sounds like fun to you, I can promise that actually investing in this particular box is more than worth the effort and cash. But if you're wanting to get something a bit more casual, something that you wouldn't actually use all that often, I wouldn't recommend something of this scope. Maybe I'm wrong, but I certainly wouldn't buy this box if I wasn't going to use it as often as I do. If someone really got through my prejudices hard enough to get me to consider trying it, but I wasn't sold, I would get me the "little" two character packs and give it a shot first. And then, if I liked it, I'd save up.
It's hard to say "Yeah, sure, get this!" when a box like this is so much, up front. That's a thing I don't think is ethical to say. I will, however, say that I have gotten alot more joy, drama, and outright surprises out of this one box than anything with this level of difficulty has any right to provide. I am getting another box, I am putting more money into this. It's worth my time. It might be worth your time as well.
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