Dice Cards [Preview]

• What's Eric Playing?

Base price: $24.
1+ players.
Play time: 15 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 2 

Full disclosure: A preview copy of Dice Cards was provided by CardLords. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game. 

I think I have a couple more crowdfunding games hitting after this? I think there’s one in April that I’m keeping an eye out for, so more on that later. In the meantime, always more writing to be done, so let’s get it done! I have a bunch of reviews coming down the pipe that I’m very excited about sharing with y’all, so let’s hope that y’all enjoy reading about these games as much as I enjoyed playing them! First up is Dice Cards, coming from CardLords.

Dice Cards is a modular roll-and-write where each card is a unique mini-game! Roll two dice, use either number or the sum, and try to complete cards in order to score big points! Score tickets as well to modify your rolls and try to get more points than your opponents!

Contents

Setup

Not a ton to say, here. Shuffle the cards:

Deal each player six. The cards with the ! on them are All-or-Nothing Cards; if anyone gets two or more of those; consider letting them swap them out for some other ones. Give each player a marker and a Roll Tracker card:

You should be ready to start!

Gameplay

Dice Cards isn’t too complicated, to its benefit; you just roll the dice, choose a number, and play it! You’ve got six mini-games in front of you, each with their own rules. So let’s see how it works!

Each round, some player rolls the red and black dice. Then, each player chooses a number. It might be the sum of the dice, the black value, or the red value. Some cards have specific conditions where you might write down the values on both dice, but they’re special cases. Regardless, once the dice are rolled, choose a value and fill out one of your cards with that value, according to its rules. You may find, towards the end of the game, you have no valid places to place a value, which is a bummer, so be careful.

Either way, record the value chosen on your Roll Tracker (if recording more than one number, just do the best you can). As you complete some cards or fill in some squares on your mini-games, you may earn Tickets! Record those on your Roll Tracker, as well. You may spend Tickets on your turn to increase or decrease the value of any die (maximum of six and minimum of one, of course). You spending Tickets does not affect other players, however.

After 50 rounds, the game ends! Tally up your points from each card, and add an additional 1 point for every two unused tickets you have. The player with the most points wins! If you’re playing solo, you should try to meet or beat 90 points, as well!

Player Count Differences

There really isn’t a major difference between player counts, as the cards have no interaction mechanism between them to speak of. You just kind of while away at your cards while your opponent(s) do so with theirs. In the core game, there are two of every card, so if you’d like, you can deal each player the same six cards (if playing with two players). Then, you are playing pretty explicitly head-to-head, just without any major player interaction. Otherwise, the game’s pretty balanced on a total scoring basis; players should generally get about the same number of points total if they’re having a good game or a rough one (hence the standardized individual scoring). Beyond that, I wouldn’t say there’s much distinction between player counts at all. As a result, no preference! I could easily see a group of friends playing this online, a bunch of folks playing it at a convention, or one person playing it by themselves with essentially the same effect.

Strategy

  • I’d recommend prioritizing the all-or-nothing cards first. They’re the ones where you get absolutely no points if you don’t complete them, so you should absolutely make sure that they are completed by the end of the game. That, or just don’t bother with them, I suppose. The last time I played I just opted to not to my all-or-nothing card and I still ended up with about 90 points.
  • After that, I usually shoot for the cards that require high numbers (7+). Low numbers are easier to get than high numbers (since you can use 1 – 6 from either die, whereas for 7+ you need the sum), so might as well go after the higher numbers first.
  • Keep in mind that probability and expectation are applicable at scale, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to roll 7 more than any other number in your game. The Law of Large Numbers is a real thing. Over time, the average value of two dice rolled is going to approach 7, but one 50-round game is not sufficiently large for that to necessarily hold. So you might end up with a weird game like the one I played recently where we mostly rolled 9s, for no discernible reason. Dice are random! Don’t necessarily expect probability to work at a small scale the way that it does at a large scale. They do make dice cards for folks who want to ensure that the probability works the way it “should”, but that’s not really right for this game.
  • Try to have a “dump card”. Just one card that you can put pretty much any value on that will take a while to fill up! This way, you’re never completely out on a roll. You always want a backup plan.
  • Also keep an eye on cards that require specifically red or black numbers. These are worth prioritizing as well, since they’re harder to place on, but keep in mind if you’re “prioritizing” everything, then you really have no priorities lol. This is just a place where you might end up being limited if you’re not careful, so keep an eye on it.
  • Getting tickets is never bad, but using them can be challenging. You may want to consider the tradeoffs! Is it worth keeping them and hoping you’ll get the roll you want, or should you use them all immediately and not bother with trying to get the extra points? Both are valid in certain circumstances, so make sure you’re staying flexible. I like to have at least two unused tickets at any given time.
  • Make sure you’re keeping track of what roll number you’re on; you want to know how close you are to the game ending. I mean, you should be doing this actively anyways since otherwise the game will get away from you, but your priorities around which cards you fill out should shift as the game progresses. For instance, I certainly wouldn’t bother with an all-or-nothing card if you’ve got fewer rolls left than empty boxes on the card. It’s just not going to get you anything, at this point.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

  • The modularity of this game is super cool. There are literally fifty different little mini-games on the cards, and I love that. You can mix and match and mix again and you’ll always have six, so there are … 15890700? different combinations? I’m not a math guy, so some math person can check me on that. Please feel free to let me know if I’m wrong. It’s 50 choose 6, right?
  • I also appreciate how varied the little mini-games are! They have a ton of different themes, which I appreciate. I think I’d love the set more if it were a bit more cohesive, but I really like this as a proof of the game’s potentail.
  • You could imagine extensions to this or even thematic sets, like Spooky or History or things like that. I’d love themed sets! It could be a fun way to teach kids history or a cool thing you could buy at a park or attraction, or just something you can add to your Spooky Game Night (I need to set another one of those up).
  • Very easy to set up and play. You just shuffle the deck, deal six cards to each player, and you’re good to go, basically.
  • I really like that every card has a scoring example on the back of it. It makes some games funny (like the “quiz” game where you need to get all the numbers right), but it’s helpful to see how the cards work and have a built-in example.
  • The fact that you can have many people playing with six different cards and still compete against each other speaks well to the game’s balance. It feels great that the cards’ points are scaled such that you can play against six people and still feel like everyone has an equal shot at winning. It seems hard to scale since the cards are so varied, but, yeah, it all worked pretty well!
  • I also like that the full version will have two decks so you can play truly head-to-head. You can deal each player the same six cards and then have a completely equal standoff, which is super cool.
  • Obviously very portable, as well. Really just a stack of cards and a few markers. You can provide your own dice or just use an online die roller, and both of those work really well, also! Easy game to take on the go.

Mehs

  • You are absolutely going to lose track of how many rolls you’ve made. I did almost immediately, and I lost track again several times throughout the game. I’m 90% sure we rolled 50 rounds, but there’s really no way to know for sure. It’s just a consequence of having so many rounds in a game; it’s easy to lose track of any one.
  • Beyond tickets, there’s little cohesion between the cards you get, so you won’t see a ton of interaction or interplay, if you’re looking for that. I would love a more interactive variant, but it kind of is what it is. You roll the dice, you add a number to your board. Having two players use the same set of cards is probably the best you can get in terms of interaction, but you’re still not affecting each other, really.
  • Similarly, this is an extremely approachable game, but I personally would enjoy a bit of additional complexity; maybe some Expert Mode cards or something. That’s just me. You can get a few cards that are pretty tough, like the Golf Card (which demands 9 consecutive rolls, for instance), but I’d be interested to see where the challenge can extend for a game like this.

Cons

  • The all-or-nothing cards are a bit of a bummer, especially if you end up with multiple. I think it’s just frustrating to have some cards that you may not be able to complete at all if you don’t get off to a good start. There’s nothing for it, really, but given that the game specifically encourages you to swap out if you get more than one, you might consider taking the game up on it. All things being equal, I prefer the incremental scoring cards either way.

Overall: 8.5 / 10

Overall, I think Dice Cards is a lot of fun! I was pretty impressed, all things considered. There’s a lot to do, most of the cards provide unique experiences (with some general repeats), and the core gameplay loop is very approachable and easy to pick up for new players. I mean, it’s a bit Yahtzee-eseque, in a way, but instead of having multiple dice and rerolls, your luck mitigation is that you have a lot of different options that you can pursue. This is nice and all, but can lead to some bad outcomes if you have too many of the all-or-nothing scoring cards. Thankfully, the game gives you the ability to draw new cards, but if you don’t recognize it or warn new players, they might have a bit of a bad time. I am amused a bit because I’ve always had a theory that there’s numbers that are too large for regular people during a board game, and counting to them is always going to be a mess. In Code Triage, years ago, I hypothesized that the number was definitely less than forty; here, counting to fifty is a bit of a challenge, as well. You just need to make sure that players are on top of keeping track of rolls, otherwise you might end up doing too many or too few. Playing Dice Cards is a lot of fun, though, specifically because of how many interesting mini-games there are inside. From Hopscotch to Paper Dolls to Golf to “Galaxy Intruder” to football to word games, there’s a ton in there! It does make me want to see themed sets, either adding in more interactive elements or something like spooky-themed or winter-themed or something. Card Dice has a ton of potential, and it’s fun and approachable enough that I think it can get there. I’ll be interested to see how the full set turns out. If you’re a fan of simple roll-and-writes, you enjoy modular games, or you just want something you can play with your friends remotely, I’d definitely recommend checking out Dice Cards! I’ve quite enjoyed it.

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