TSR may have finally gotten one right.
Wizards of the Coast struck gold with their invention of the collectible trading card game. With Dragon Dice, TSR hopes to duplicate their feat with an entirely new genre— the collectible dice game. Sold utilizing the now-familiar starter set/kicker pack scheme, Dragon Dice aims to become another spend-lots-of-money-to-increase-your-chances-of-winning, play-in-the-hallways-at-conventions success. They stand a good chance.
Starter sets contain a rule booklet and reference sheet, a cloth/vinyl dice bag and an assortment of 18 multi-colored polyhedral dice. A starter is all you need to play the game, assuming your opponent has a starter set of his own.
The dice come in three different shapes. The six-sided dice represent units from four possible races (coral elves, lava elves, dwarves, and goblins), each indicated by their particular combination of two colors. Units come in common (small), uncommon (medium) and rare (large)— the larger (and rarer) the die, the stronger the unit. These dice are the fighting units players use to attack their opponent, wield magic, and claim territory. Two rares, four uncommons, and nine commons are included in each Starter.
The eight-sided dice represent terrains which armies try to control by turning it to its eighth face. Different terrains, represented by color, convey advantages to different races. Two terrain dice are included in each Starter. Finally, each Starter pack includes a single twelve-sided, single-colored die representing a dragon. Dragons can only be summoned into battle by magic of the corresponding color (more on this later).
The dice, of course, do not have standard numbers or pips on them. All units have one face showing an iconic representation, called an ID icon, of what that unit is— knight, archer, conjurer, lizard rider, etc. Presumably, as you become more familiar with the game, identifying these icons will become second-nature. Initially, however, you'll want to consult the reference chart. Actually, since all relevant information about a unit is contained on the other five faces of its die, you don't even need to know what that unit is during gameplay. ID faces are also wild, always counting as one of whatever the player is trying to roll. This is a very nice, and I suspect crucial, touch ensuring that every die has at least a 1 in 6 chance of helping you on every roll..
Those other five faces show action icons representing the unit's abilities and strengths. A conjurer, for example, is likely to have a few faces showing magic icons. It might also have a face with maneuvering icons and another with save icons. The more icons on a face, the stronger the unit's skill at that action. The icons are confusing at first, especially because the same action has different icons depending on the unit's race (e.g. coral elves have curved swords as their melee icon, dwarves have axes, goblins have hatchets, and lava elves rapiers). I suppose this lends some flavor to each race, but the game would be easier to pick up if the icons were uniform. Despite this, the meaning of the icons are clear and become familiar quickly.
Players begin the game by dividing their units into three armies Each player chooses a terrain die to be his home terrain and one additional terrain die becomes the frontier in the middle of the table. All terrain dice are rolled to determine their starting value. Players place their armies at terrains (one army per player per terrain) and begin. Each race gains a special advantage (extra saves or maneuvers) while in their home terrain, so it's wise to place them accordingly.
A player can act with one, then another of his armies each turn. When using an army, a player first chooses whether or not to maneuver. If another player with an army at that terrain opposes the maneuver, they both roll their armies. If the acting player rolls at least as many maneuver icons as his opponent, his maneuver succeeds and he can turn the terrain die to the next higher or lower value. This is important because each face of the terrain die shows the distance, and thus the type (magic, missile, or melee) of combat occurring there. And if an army turns a terrain to its eighth face, they gain control of that terrain and receive some hefty advantages. As soon as a player controls two terrains, they win the game.
After maneuvering, the player can then act with that army. What the army can do is determined by the symbol showing on the terrain die at the army's location. If a melee symbol is showing, an army can charge at or skirmish with another army at the same terrain in hand-to-hand combat. Ranged combat allows for missile fire at any army at the same or neighboring terrain. Magic can be used against any army in the game.
Armies roll for their action, counting each appropriate icon as a point of damage to the target. The target army gets to roll for saves, each one reducing damage by a point. The remaining damage must be allocated to units, which are discarded. Small dice take a single point of damage, medium take two, large three, and dragons take five. You must kill units if you can, so if your army with two smalls, one medium, and one large die took two points of damage, you'd have to discard the two smalls or the medium— you couldn't just allocate the damage to the large die. Damage is not cumulative— any dice which survive an attack are instantly healed.
Magic spices up the game a bit. Magic comes in five colors, matching the colors of the dice. Each magic icon rolled is worth one point of magic in either of the die's two colors. These points are then spent on spells, with effects like reviving dead units, inflicting damage on armies, improving future rolls, and summoning dragons. Each color has five spells available, costing 1-6 points. Fire (red) magic tends to be aggressive, water (green) defensive, etc. Magic can dramatically change the tide of battle.
Ah yes, reserves. After a player acts with two armies, he may pull units back into reserves, and/or reinforce armies with units from his reserves. In fact, this is the only way to move units from one place to another. Reserves are considered an army, and may act as one of a player's two armies in a turn. Reserves can always use magic, and can be harmed only by magic— you can't attack a reserve army directly.
That's the essence of Dragon Dice, and I'll admit I was quite surprised to really enjoy the game. I've never played miniatures games, but I'm told Dragon Dice has some of their flavor. The random element of the dice is offset by the ability to select specific dice to go specific places for specific tasks, providing for a greater level of strategy than I expected. The mechanics are also simple once you get it all down. There are quite a few things to learn at first, however, and we got a lot of things wrong in our first game.
Dragon Dice is fine with two players, but it really comes into its own with the multiplayer game. With more terrain and opponents to choose from, the possible strategies and tactics increase. Decisions become much more interesting. In the two player game, you have no choice over where your inital armies go. In multiplayer you can choose the terrain which best suits you, or the enemy army which looks weakest.
The game isn't without its problems. The biggest is with magic— it's too powerful. Its effects can dramatically shift the game state, and in many cases there's absolutely nothing anyone else can do to stop it. Especially strong are the rare mage dice for each race, which have faces with special cantrip icons. Whenever cantrips get rolled, the rolling player gets magic points to spend immediately. Even if the player was rolling for melee, or saves, or anything except maneuvers. So not only can magic cause radical changes, it can conceivably happen at any time. Yow! TSR seems to have realized that magic is too strong— their tournament rules limit the number of magic dice which can be in someone's army, and they've increased the cost of all spells by one point (so all spells cost at least two points to cast). I'll have to try this in our next game to see if it balances things.
I'm also not crazy about the fact that the rare dice are better than the uncommon and common dice, but I'm not sure yet whether "money decks" are a problem in Dragon Dice. An army composed of large dice is harder to kill— you need at least three points of damage to kill a large die, so any damage which isn't a multiple of three is wasted— but such an army has fewer dice, and thus fewer chances to roll what it needs. Then again, when a desired face comes up, it tends to have lots of icons on it. Perhaps this is a fair tradeoff— I need to do some more analysis.
If there's one strategy tip we've discovered, it's the importance of reserves. Reserve armies can always cast magic. Since magic is the only way of recovering dead units, having magic-users in your reserves ensures that you always have the means to rebuild your army. Units in reserves tend to be a little safer, since ranged attacks and terrain-based magic can't target them. Reserves allow you to move units to where they're needed quickly. When someone is sitting by themselves at a terrain and is about to advance it to its eighth face, getting there in a hurry to oppose them is critical. Do not overlook your reserves.
The dragons add a wonderfully chaotic element. Pray you don't get hit by their breath weapon. It's different for each color of dragon. A blue dragon once paralyzed my army for two entire turns, which allowed an opponent to take a terrain away from me. The galling thing was that I'd summoned that dragon myself to chase people away from my home terrain. Oops!
As a collectible game, though, I'm skeptical. I suppose TSR is banking on players spending lots of money to amass a complete set of dice, or to improve the strength of their armies. And there's no doubt that buying more dice provides a player with greater options and allows for larger games with bigger armies. I've only just started playing the game, and already I'm hankering to get some more dice and try different combinations.
But I don't think Dragon Dice will be a success of Magic's magnitude. Why? Mainly because the dice in and of themselves hold little interest— it's what you do with them that makes them interesting. I don't think you can underestimate the importance of the artwork in collectible trading card games. I doubt very many people collect the cards because of the art, but I'll bet a lot of people use it to justifytheir purchase. You're not just getting a card, you're getting a limited-edition print. The cards look good, and you can show them off to non-gamers who can at least appreciate them on artistic merit. Dice don't have that quality. To be sure, the mottled Dragon Dice are attractive as dice go. But nobody's going to be arguing whether the dwarven marksman is a better icon than the goblin trickster.
Fortunately, the game is quite playable with only a Starter set for each player. None of your friends want to buy dice? Just buy a few sets yourself and divide them amongst all the players at the outset of a game. Army construction is a much faster process than Magic deck construction.
I haven't played enough to find the flaws in the system, but at a first look Dragon Dice appears to be a winner. Fun, fast, and portable, it may wind up giving Magic a run for its money for convention hallway space.