Dice Forge

This is a game that is going to be a part of our family games for a loooooong time. I thought about getting this for almost a year. I just wasn’t sure. Reviews were that it was good, but replayability was questionable. Well..... for playing with a six year old, this game is awesome. I put this up there with Quacks of Quedlinburg, which is another current favorite we play. I’m not going to go over gameplay, but I do want to point out a couple things. First, even with the basic setup, I find this amazing. There are multiple paths to victory, which lends itself to replayability (I count at least 4 different ways to focus your efforts in the introductory setup with multiple ways to achieve them). There really are different ways to create your deck building engine. It almost seems like a simpler Space Base in that regard (another favorite of mine - it is too difficult for my six year old right now though). The added cards are great - yes, more cards is always better, but you can easily play the introductory setup a dozen times and it will/can play out differently. Secondly, almost every card is different. That is amazing too. This just adds to the replayability. Gameplay is just astounding, and the fact that you can play in 30-45 minutes and feel like you really created an engine to produce is incredible. While I think the gameplay is 5 stars plus, I am going to nitpick a few things here. First, the player board could certainly be thicker cardboard. I am worried about durability when playing with my kids. Second, a few cardboard tokens could have been wooden to help with visibility, etc. Third, the sleeve for the additional die faces has cutout parts to grab the sleeve, and they are not cut on top of one another, but offset by quite a bit which I don’t understand. Lastly, the card stock isn’t great. We sleeves a lot of games, and I didn’t think I’d sleeves these but they are pretty cheap. Now you don’t handle them much, and it doesn’t matter if they get messed up as there is no hidden information, but this surprised me. While I have some minor complaints, I think that for a production price of under 30 dollars you won’t find much better. Most issues I have just require you to be a little careful, or just aware of. This game has great visual appeal - the art on everything is amazing and really stands out. The organizer is exceptional and seems pretty sturdy. The dice seem well made (I am using a lego tool to make changing die faces easy). This is one of the best games I have gotten for our family to play as it is intuitive, language independent, and icons are pretty easy to remember. The fun factor is of the charts, the design is on point, and you won’t be disappointed.

Dice building? Yep. You roll a pair of dice and accumulate 3 currencies. One is spent to improve the dice - you actually pop the faces off and you add new ones. The other two currencies are used to buy cards that give you one time or persistent bonuses. If you remember the game Quarriors, you may have some concerns about randomness. But this is addressed with the sheer frequency of die rolls. You roll the dice on everyone's turn, accumulating resources. and spend the resources on your turn. So, no waiting for your turn and then be kicked in the face with a poor roll. Rarely is a board game cheaper than I would expect it to be. But give then quality of the components, I am surprised at the price point for this game ~ $40. The dice are solidly made and the die faces are of a hard plastic(?). I have no fear of damaging either the dice or the faces when taking them on and off. Also, you won't need to stick stickers on dice, they come ready for action. The game plays in about 45-1 hour and is a fairly easy game to teach. There is a fair bit of replay-ability to the game with 2-3 different strategies. There is a degree of variety to each game in the cards: the cheap ones are fixed, but you have a choice of 2 for the more expensive ones. But the one weakness of the game is that for 1/2 the cards these differences do not add much to the game. There could be more variety here, and definitely scope for an expansion, or perhaps make your own cards! If you like deck builders or dice rolling, this will be a good addition to your collection.

I'm inspired to leave this review for the ingenuity of the box design alone, and throughly enjoyed playing the game in the meantime! I'll start by saying the setup was overwhelming. I ended up watching a tutorial by Nights Around a Table on YouTube. Simplified this tremendously! The game play was simple, quick, fun, and left lots of strategies and random luck with the dice plays and building your own dice as many other reviews described in wonderful detail! The instructions included how to store the game and it made a big difference! The box is so well designed and everything has its own place! Highly recommend!

Amazing game with a really unique mechanic where you actually build and customize your own dice as you play. It's fun, strategic, and feels different from most other board games I've played. Highly recommend!

If you like dice games (I do) and light engine buillders (I do), this game is great. Doesn't leave anything completely to chance as it lets you manipulate the faces of the dies you roll for resources. Literally fixing the dice. It isn't really theme heavy, but I like the theme attached to this game. It assumes you are already a heroic warrior before you take turn one! How's that for an ego boost? The art is FANTASTIC. The designer/artists did a great job of putting subtle clues to understanding the cards/chits using symbology that is intuitive. For example, the cards get set into a frame and if they are placed correctly, they will complete an artistic landscape perfectly. If they are not set up correctly, something is wrong. I was going to knock this game down one start for the shear number of pieces and the set up time, BUT, the insert and instructions on how to store the pieces are so good, that it more than makes up for it. The idea of removing tiles from a die face and replacing them constantly may make you feel like you are going to wear and tear the tiles, but rest assured, the hard plastic pieces are very sturdy and I'm impressed with the quality of the entire game and thought given to asthetics, storage, and game play. I was able to get it on sale for 20 bucks and i felt like a thief when I opened up the box. Is it my favorite game? Nah. Is it good? It's great. I wouldn't recommend it as an initial gateway game for someone who has never played Ticket to Ride or Catan just because it can look daunting. But as a second game? Absolutely.

I bought this game as I wanted something with a different mechanic than the other games we normally pull in on game night. In this one, you are forging dice. I would say dice building, like deck building, but the mechanic is closer to Mystic Vale, which is a card crafting game (building up three layers of a card for more power). I guess we could call this dice crafting? The game starts with each player having an equal set of dice, each with gold (yellow), moon shard (blue), sun shards (red) and victory points (green). Most of the players also start with gold to spend at the start, with the start player starting with the most (the final player does not, but they will get the most rolls before their turn, which should offset this). Each player rolls the dice to gather shards, gold and victory points. On a players turn, all players roll dice and resolve them (gold, shards, victory points), tracking each on their game board. The player can then buy additional sides to forge onto their dice with gold or complete quests with shards. The main mechanic of the game is forging dice with better and better faces. The strategy is to put the correct faces on the die to maximize your victory points at the end. As with many games like this, you will want to maximize one resource at the beginning and then focus on others as the game goes on. The other aspect is questing. When you quest, you spend shards and gain different powers, player board upgrades, die faces and victory points. You will want to use the quests along side your victory strategy to maximize your chance of getting the most victory points by the end of the game. Unlike many games, the winner is not always the one that focuses most heavily on "end game". What works? The dice crafting mechanic is great. With multiple faces to choose from, you can play with a variety of strategies. You will have to match quests with your die faces to maximize your victory points, but if you don't quest you will eventually get some die rolls that are useless, so this is a bit of a well duh. The artwork is also very nice and the game box is used very well, both as back art and to hold the die faces you will forge. But one of my favorite things is having the game well organized without having to buy a broken token organizer. This is one of the best out of the shrink wrap board game experiences I have had (Wasteland Express Delivery Service also fits that bill (perhaps even better)). The die faces go into their own holder, which has a sleeve to wrap it between play. This helps a lot if you ever have the box turned on its side (which is a no no for most games). And each piece has a specific place in the game box organizer. It also looks like they have left room for expansions. One more plus: After basic play there are some expansion cards already included in the game. What doesn't? For me, nothing, but if you are a player that wants to work on maximized strategy with less luck, this game will not rank as high on your list. I have also found that switching out die faces can be problematic for some and you end up chasing them across the room if you pull too hard (you use one die face to lift others). Age Range? The game states the age range as 10 or greater, but I think it is simple enough you could go down to 8, perhaps a bit younger, and still play (provided they don't get too frustrated with better strategic players). The basic mechanics of the game, player board additions, and questing are fairly easy to get down once you go through one round. Play? This one will take about 35-45 minutes of play, with a bit more when you learn (as expected). Fortunately, the dice are already prepped when you pack the game, so not a huge amount of set up time there. The longest part of set up is the quests, which is easily alleviated by storing the cards correctly. The first time you might stare at the set up picture, until you spin into well duh mode. Definitely remove the expansion cards from the deck and store separately to make set up easier. Setup probably about 5 minutes, at most. Overall feelings? If you don't mind a bit of luck in your gaming experience, and like to explore a wide variety of strategy, this is a game that has a lot of replayability. The dice and variety of strategies allow you to play through in different ways, so boredom does not set in quickly. I like that the game works well with our teens and our gaming buddies (except those who like more complex games) and it is one we would consider for a game night with older elementary kids and pre-teens.

Can take a bit of learning at first but it is super fun with 3 or 4 people. We have a 11 year old grandson who suggested we get the game. We played multiple times. Had a blast!

Make your own dice its so cool. I do worry about the parts becoming lose but as of now its nice ant tight.

PERFEITO

I bought this game as a birthday present for my husband. We have now played it numerous time, and it is still fun for us as there are many possibilities. Pros : 1) Easy to Set up 2) Amazing Art 3) Materials are of good quality 4) Game with many possibilities and the fact that you could change the dice face is unique and makes it feel like lego Cons 1) Fiddly to put the dice face on at the beginning as its new, however, this isn't a problem once you have played with them a few times. Overall I would recommend this game as it is fun , takes 30 -40 minutes per game, has endless outcomes and you wont be bored! Hope this has helped your decision in making a purchase!

This game is now our family favourite game! Very entertaining. Fairly easy to learn but does require lots of reading during your first couple of rounds while referring to the instructions to learn what each card does. After a few rounds you'll remember them. It even has extra cards so you can switch things up to keep it interesting. It is a great adult game but even our kids beg to play. 9 and 5 years old. Sometimes we wish it was more than a 4 player game. Another bonus is that every single piece of the game has a place in the box. It's very neat and tidy.

El arte de éste juego me encanta. Solo no trae cuñas para poder cambiar las caras de los dados, el juego dice que puedes utilizar las mismas caras para hacer el cambio, pero creo que se maltratarían mucho, así que mejor envié a hacer unas cuñas para los dados. De pronto siento que el juego acaba muy rápido cuando apenas estás logrando formar tus reservas $$ o puntos de victoria. Pero si lo juegas a dos podrías darle una ronda más (10 en vez de 9) si tú pareja también lo desea. En fin, es un juego muy bello y ágil de jugar una vez que te aprendiste los efectos de las cartas.

Siete stanchi di tirare i soliti dadi ed avere lo stesso numero? in questo gioco potete craftare il vostro dado come volete. è un gioco semplice che vi darà molte soddisfazioni. Sia a livello di divertimenti che di ingegno. Il manuale del gioco è in inglese ma si trova facilmente in italiano, sulle carte ci sono simboli, si capiscono in tutte le lingue. consigliatissimo.