Marvel Dice Throne

So this happened on Christmas.

Like I've said before, Dice Throne is what I call a treadmill game: the goal of the designers is to get you to keep buying more stuff from them to keep kitting out your modular experience. If it’s done poorly you got something like Marvel Champions: just ooooone mooore expansion and then the game will be more than acceptable! And given how much money that means, it’s never acceptable!!! EVER. From my Season One review you’ll know I already found that set much more than acceptable: I used it almost every day for a year before wanting another box. I wanted to get Season Two, but I got outvoted for the Marvel box by certain smaller compatriots.

Last note: I am a weary Marvel fan. I began as a precocious child who called Marvel editors to chat (see here for more on that) to a jaded post-One More Day bitter man. I do not like most of Marvel’s modern comics, buy Rippaverse and Alterna, and at this point I await the day Marvel’s stupid decisions catch up with them and they decide they want to compete with manga, which is currently stomping the shit out of them, and good riddance. 

Really the last note: I know Marvel is a jerk to work with. They have a rep in the TTRPG community as divas. So the Dice Throne people, should they read this, need to understand who the vitriol is really aimed at. The Dice Throne folks, in my opinion, aren’t trying to get us to buy again so much as let the incredibly stuck up and arrogant pricks at Marvel know they’ll play ball. Some will rankle hard at me saying it, but Marvel’s arrogance in licensing is a poorly kept secret.

So we’re going to get the man-bitching out of the way: the character selection is… unfortunate. No Peter Parker, Steve Rogers, or Tony Stark is a “we don’t want to make money!” move, flat. With the glaring exception of Captain Marvel I do not mind the rest of the choices. But Captain Marvel being in the box hurts my already jaded soul. Obviously the gambit paid off, coz these incredibly talented people got to make the X-Men box! But man the gambit, while necessary, is painful.

The graphic design feels weird to me this time around. There is so much freaking purple everywhere, which for whatever reason bothers me. The design of the symbols can also be really busy, particularly on Scarlet Witch and Loki. Mileage (and taste) may vary, of course, but this is my blog, so the graphic design isn’t as much to my taste as the cleaner, less purple, Season One box. 

All that’s (not) well and probably a bit grating to read. What do I think of the one thing anyone who reads this blog knows I actually care about: the design? Is this treadmill treating me well? Will I buy more? Yes, yes, and definitely yes! Allow me to elucidate, oh you who put up with my bitching. 

I love the character designs for this box, for two reasons. As a singular box these characters are really fun to play, especially Captain Marvel! Anyone picking up this box is going to get a truly varied set of characters. From “punch me, I dare you” Black Panther, to Loki, who made my brother CACKLE in glee as he played him, there isn’t a dud in the box. It’s not there. If anything I am clicking with these characters faster than Season One! Now, granted, this ain’t my first rodeo with the game, but several characters (I’m looking at you, Moon Elf and Treant) from Season One I totally bounced off for the first six months. That simply didn’t happen here. Make of that what you will. I will write more the characters in follow up posts, but for now I happily can say I love all of them.

As a TTRPG designer who has made a whole ten bucks (literally), I found myself a better designer after playing this box. I didn’t comment all that much on the particular characters in Season One coz I honestly didn’t have much to say, beyond the characters worked extremely well! Playing this box, however, I found myself in an entirely different world. I actually felt disoriented after the first game, coz the style was so different. CP ramping was almost non-existent, defensive abilities weren’t as powerful, and base damage was a lot higher. The games were faster, much faster than I was used to. After a few games I found myself leaning into the new style, learning to appreciate that I couldn't lean on my defense and making the most of the main roll phase. There's an urgency, a demand to focus on the right now, that isn't in the season one box. What you prefer does actually come down to taste, not an objective standard: I've played with people who hate the Marvel box for the very reasons that make it good, and who would love Season One for the same reasons they hate the Marvel box.

That.

Is.

A. Fantatstic.

Success!!!!

I've had more conversations with people about their tastes between these two boxes than you'd expect. What's more it's not even "Oh such and such box is better, I prefer the design style of such and such box." Good game design drives you straight into the subjective, far far away from whether or not the game itself has any merit. You talk with your friends coz the objective reality has been handled for you.

As far as balance between the season one and Marvel box I got, on a casual level they hold up really well. Ninja's two outings against Thor was so inhumanly painful for him I was shooting Blake inappropriate jokes for awhile, laughing about how Ninja clearly wanted a... piece... of  Thor. Yeah, a piece. We'll just say that. It was hilariously awful for Thor. But at the same time Scarlet Witch can tear into everyone, and there's no general feeling that anyone is actually outmatched here. Are there characters who are objectively better than others? Sure. Can I leverage a viable strategy to get around it? Definitely. That's not a small thing to achieve.

So, let's sum this up. Not only did the Dice Throne folks manage to make a product with Marvel (who not only don't actually care about their characters but also are notoriously picky and unrealistic in their goals), not only did they make a fantastic box that I find to be a triumph of design, not only is it balanced with the box I already had, but they get to do it again with the upcoming X-Men box. I hope the designers patted themselves on the back, coz man they deserved it.

Dice Throne Remixed Season One

 

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.