Publisher
Rio Grande Games
45-60
minutes
€100
cost
2-4
players
Game overview
In Dice Realms you compete against each other using dice to develop and improve your kingdom as much as possible.
Each player starts the game with 2 dice. You may roll these dice each round and you may always re-roll one for free should you wish. These dice are special because you can take off any face and put something new on. The dice determine what actions you can do each round. There are a huge number of dice faces in the game that actually all have a different effect. The most common effects are getting grain or money and upgrading dice. Grain can be used in different ways, namely to survive the winter (here you have to turn in 1 grain for every die you have) or you can convert it into victory points if you rolled that effect. Money let's you buy a lot of things, such as upgrades but also extra dice or reroll tokens. Finally, you can upgrade your dice. You use upgrades to improve a dice face. For example, a facethat normally gives you 2 grain can now give you 3 grain. What effect your upgraded die has depends on its color.
Each round, someone also rolls the "fate" die. These are events that can be good or bad. Winter is one of these events. The goal of the game is to eventually upgrade more dice and collect victory points. The game ends when the supply of victory points, grain or minus points is depleted. You then get points for every 2 dots (these dots show the level) on a die face in addition to your victory points. The player with the most points wins the game!
Our thoughts
Dice Realms is an impressive game. The box is incredibly large and contains hundreds of components. The game is not only impressive, but also secretly a little scary! We were fairly scared to start the game. After all, figuring out all the components already took a very long time. We were therefore afraid that learning the game would be incredibly difficult. Fortunately, this was not all that bad. Dice Realms is secretly a very simple and fast game. We didn't expect that from seeing the box!
You can best describe Dice Realms as a combination between Dice Forge and Dominion. To us, Dice Realms felt most like Dominion. Deckbuilding isn't what you do in Dice Realms, you 'dice build'. Just like you can add different cards in Dominion, you can add different die faces in Dice Realms. This ensures an incredibly high replayability and a game that completely suits the needs of your group!
As to be expected in a dice game, there is a fair amount of luck involved. In Dice Realms, however, we don't find this annoying because you can very much limit the luck by buying the right faces and by using your free reroll. So you can play the game very tactically!
The production of the game is great. Choosing the dice and adding new faces is already a game in itself. This is positive in our eyes, as it makes Dice Realms a really fun activity. Unfortunately, it also feels a bit negative. This is because the game itself is incredibly simple. The rules are streamlined, the actions are easy to oversee and the game doesn't take too long. There is a lot involved in the game, setting up, choosing which dice faces to use, switching faces. Sometimes this feels a bit like a lot of hassle for a simple game. Is Dice Realms worth it? For us it is! After all, the game contains an awful lot of depth and fun, interesting choices the more you play the game.
For us, Dice Realms was not love at first sight, but by now we can appreciate this game tremendously! Are you a fan of Dominion or Dice Forge? Then definitely consider purchasing Dice Realms!
Pros and cons
+ High production quality
+ High replayability
- First time figuring out components is unclear and tricky
- All the setup and upkeep you have to do feels a bit like a hassle sometimes
