God Dice

God Dice is a dice game, but there's not much about gods. Each player controls a team of fighters, and they fight until there is only one team standing. Maybe there is some backstory about gods, but it isn't apparent from playing the game.

The Game

The game starts with players taking turns picking fighters from an common pool. There are 2 fighters in each type, and each type of fighter has different characteristics. Some have more life points. Some have powerful attacks but it can be hard to make such attacks successfully. Some can easily make a successful strike, but deal little damage. The characteristics of the fighters are all on their cards. It is easy if you want to create your own custom character.

Once everyone has chosen their team, the fighting starts. Players take turns to attack the team on their left. Sometimes the direction can change to counter-clockwise. An attack consists of the attacker choosing an attacking fighter and the defender choosing a defending fighter. The attacking fighter will either make a successful attack, or not. In the former case, the defending fighter takes injury, and dies if his/her life points drop to 0.

The attacker first rolls two alphabet dice. These dice may have some special effect on the fight, e.g. defender may ask the attacker to reroll all dice once, or on the game, e.g. switching the direction of play. Then the actual fight starts, with the 9 attack dice. There are 5 different values, red, blue, yellow, 0 and 5 (two sides have this value). The attacker tries to roll his dice such that he can achieve one of the combinations on his fighter's sheet, after which he can deal damage according to the description on the sheet and the number of 5's he has rolled. There are 5 round tokens, and each allow you to reroll all dice of that value. You can decide to stop rolling at any time.

The dice in the game. The round tokens on the right are for reminding yourself which dice you have already rerolled (and thus are not allowed to reroll anymore).

The Assassin

For example, using the Assassin to attack, I roll 3x blue, 3x red, 1x yellow, 2x 5. Since the Assassin's Backstab attack is very powerful and requires 4x blue + 1x yellow, I'll try to gain another blue. I reroll 3x red, and get 1x red, 1x 5, 1x yellow. Not ideal. I have not achieved Backstab yet, and now that red die is locked, because I can't reroll red anymore. Now I have 3x blue, 1x red, 2x yellow, 3x 5 on the table. I don't want to risk rerolling yellow because I would have to reroll both of them, and I may lose the one yellow that I need for Backstab. I decide to reroll the three 5's. I get 1x 5, 1x blue, 1x 0. Now I have 4x blue, 1x red, 2x yellow, 1x 5, 1x 0. I have achieved Backstab. But the base damage I have is only 5, because the total number on the table is 5. I have rerolled red and 5, so I can't touch those dice anymore. I will of course try to reroll the 0, and hope to get a 5. I do so, and fail, getting a yellow. Now I can still reroll blue or yellow. I have 4x blue, 3x yellow, 1x 5 (locked), 1x red (locked), 0x 0 (locked). I have three choices. I can stop rolling the dice, and go for Backstab (4x blue + 1x yellow), dealing 20 damage (5 base damage x4) to any character (normally damage is dealt to the defending fighter only). I can reroll the yellow dice, and hope to still retain one yellow die, while converting one or both the other yellow dice to 5's. That would increase the damage significantly. I can of course also reroll the blue, but that would be silly, because even if I achieve the Knife Twist (5x yellow), it only gives base damage + 10. Not worth the risk.

That's basically the game. You keep rolling dice, setting some aside, and rerolling.

The Play

Allen, Han and I played a 3 player game. Each of us had 4 fighters. I took both the Assassins. They are pretty cool, because they can cause a big damage. Unfortunately they are not very robust. Sometimes one strike is enough to kill them. I was first to get my team eliminated. Allen and Han fought on, and Allen emerged the final winner.

The sage has quite powerful attacks, but not many life points.

The monk fighting the hero.

The Thoughts

There aren't many real decisions to be made in the game. Quite often after you roll the dice, the best choice is quite obvious. So I felt the game became repetitive quite quickly, and I felt it dragged. The roll-dice-freeze-some-then-reroll mechanism is nothing new nor interesting. I feel Pickomino has tougher decisions, and more cheers and groans.