Tag: dice

Dice Throne Outcasts + Dice Throne Adventures Unchained. Part II of II.

Join us for the second part of our review as we look closer at the Dice Throne Adventures Unchained Expansion. Part I showed us the terrifyingly thematic Halloween characters of Dice Throne Outcasts, and now we look at the new solo and cooperative modes of Unchained!

If Dice Throne Outcasts provides the core characters for head-to-head play, then Dice Throne Adventures Unchained gives us more ways to play solo and cooperatively!

We have to 100% clear here; Dice Throne Adventures Unchained is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures! See above! We really liked the Dice Throne Adventures Expansion (see review here), so when we saw there would be more content, we were excited!  So, in order to use this new Unchained expansion, unfortunately, you do need the Dice Throne Adventures box.  That’s right, Unchained is an expansion for an expansion! 

And to further muddy the waters, you need at least one of several boxes of characters to play.  We’ve been playing with Outcasts and have been loving it, but there’s also Marvel Dice Throne (see review here), X-Men Dice Throne (see review here), and Seasons I and II of Dice Throne (see review here).

In other words, to play Unchained, you also need a core box as well as the Dice Throne Adventures box!

So, if that hasn’t scared you to running away screaming  (“Really? Three boxes total?”), we can look objectively to see if it is worth getting the Unchained Expansion!  I will tempt you by saying that we have two new solo modes AND a new cooperative mode!

Unboxing

The Unchained box is small, but it has quite a bit of stuff.  See Can of Coke above for scale.

The coolest thing is the new Loot cards which can be mixed in with the original Dice Throne Adventures. Loot is just upgrades as you play! See above.  The Legendary cards are even foil! Oooooohh!!

The most fun new rule of the game is that Loot is added instantly to your hand when you get it!  So, there’s a new Loot table for instantly adding stuff! 

There’s also a whole bunch of new Minions (levels 1-4, sorry I-IV).

There’s a new Boss!  The Vault Witch!  

As a boss, she has her own deck (and sleeves)! See above!

In the base Dice Throne Adventures, you can choose to fight the Vault Witch instead of a normal boss, by collecting the Witch Keys: see above.  This allows you to vary the bosses a little in the original Dice Throne Adventures game.

There’s also 3 new sheets (double-sided) for 6 new one-shot scenarios!  

Overall, this looks great and totally fits the feel of Dice Throne, especially the Outcasts set!

Rulebook

The rulebook is a tiny thing.

This rulebook probably gets a B- on the Chair Test. It does stay open and stays flat, and the font is big and readable, and it has lots of good pictures and annotations … but it’s still just a little small.

The components page works well: see above.  

Like all Dice Throne rulebooks, they do a good job labeling pictures and having a good sized font.

Generally, this rulebook was fine.  It even finishes with some useful stuff on the back cover.

Solo Mode: Minion Rush

The game comes with a new solo mode called Minion Rush!  See rules above! 

As you might guess, you just go and fight a bunch of minions (no bosses allowed!).  These new rules span 2.5 pages in the rulebook: see above.

At the end of the Minion Rush (after you die, … and you will die), you get Points for every Minion you killed!  (Harder Minions are obviously worth more). See above as I get 27 points for killing all-but-one minion!

I tried to set-up a Minion Rush using only the new Minions  (see above)… but you don’t quite have enough Minions in the Unchained expansion to do this … you gotta get some from the main box.

I was actually incredibly disappointed you couldn’t JUST play Minion Rush with the Unchained expansion: you need 13 Minions, and the Unchained expansion only comes with 12 Minions!  D’oh!  It sounds stupid, but I thought it would have been nice to need almost nothing from Dice Throne Adventures.  To be clear; for Minion Rush, you STILL NEED Dice Throne Adventures. 

In the end, I played Minion Rush with mostly Unchained Minions!  See above!

It was reasonably fast and fun to play, like 1.5 hours?  You just beat-up Minions!

You have to choose a path to follow … once you start following a path to the left or right, you have to keep going on that path!

As you go, you get upgrades!  And these upgrades persist! See above!  Yay! But so does damage and poison!  Boo!  Basically, it feels like a Dungeon delve!

Minion Rush is a fun way to play solo without too much set-up.  This is another great way to learn the characters!  If you don’t want to me play the Me vs Me solo mode (like we saw in Part I of our review), then Minion Rush is a fun solo mode without too much commitment.  

I used to the solo mode Minion Rush to learn the Raveness character!  See above!

“But Rich!” … I hear you asking. “Why do I need special rules for the Minion Rush??  It feels like I could just play the Dice Throne Adventures and use these rules? Do I really need Unchained to do this?”  

You are ALMOST right.  You need two major things from Dice Throne Adventures: the status tokens (and the back of the Dice Throne Adventures rulebook), but arguably more important thing you need is … the new Loot Chart.

New Loot Zoot Suit

Arguably, the best new rule in Unchained is that you get IMMEDIATELY get Loot into your hand when kill a Minion!  See above for the One-Shot Loot chart!  One of the complaints of the original Dice Throne Adventures was that your deck upgrades went very slowly … you might only get a few Loot as you play per session.  And you might not see it very much!

The new One-Shot Loot chart (if you roll well) immediately puts Loot into your hand.  So, as you kill a bunch of Minions in Minion Rush, your hand is getting better, and better immediately!

So, the new One-Shot Loot chart is paramount to making this Minion Rush work! 

“But Rich”, I hear you say, “Can’t you just make a copy of the One-Shot Loot Chart and play Minion Rush without Unchained?”  No, because you still need the status tokens and rulebook from Dice Throne Adventures.  Why don’t you just support Roxley and quit trying to cheap-out?  They’ve made a great game for you to play … besides, Unchained comes also with new Minions, new Boss, new Loot, and … a new co-op mode!

New Cooperative Mode!

That’s right, people!  There’s a new cooperative mode in Unchained!  Whaaaat?

The One-Shot Adventure is a new cooperative Adventure!  See rules above. 

One-Shot Adventure: Solo Mode!

Technically, the One-Shot Adventure is also a new solo mode, as you can play that One-Shot Adventure by yourself!

This new One-Shot Adventure addresses the problem many people had with the original Dice Throne Adventures … it was too long!  Dice Throne Adventures required an investment in a long, on-going adventure, and there kinda wasn’t a way to just play a one-off!  Now you can!

There are three One-Shot maps (dual-sided), (see one above) and they basically represent a “condensed” Adventure where you fight some Minions on the way to fighting a BOSS!  The map above represents you “going through a dungeon”!  Along the way, you fight Minions, find treasure, find healing, and try to get to the BOSS  at the bottom!!

I played a One-Shot Adventure (see above) solo to see how it worked!    When you play the One-Shot Adventure, you have to embrace needing Dice Throne Adventures, some characters (from Outcasts, but really any), and the Unchained expansion! 

To help myself keep things separate, I actually physically separated the Dice Throne Adventure components on the left side of the table (see above) …

.. and the Unchained and Outcasts components to the right side of the table! 

This helped me keep track of what goes where!

I really enjoyed this solo; it felt like it took all the complexity of Dice Throne Adventures and compressed it into a bite-sized adventure I could play in about 1.5 to 2 hours!

With the One-Shot, you get to fight BOTH a lot of Minions AND a Boss in a smaller time frame.

I really enjoyed this “new” solo mode.  Of course, like we said in the Minion Rush, part of the reason the One-Shot Adventure works so well is that we have the One-Shot Loot chart and immediately get Loot so we immediately feel more powerful as we play!  See above as I already have some great Ghost Equipment out and upgrade cards to fight the new big bad!

The new boss is cool; I have to say I defeated her pretty readily in my One-Shot Adventure, but she was still fun to play.

Again, The One-Shot Loot chart makes this new cooperative work so well.

One-Shot Adventure: Cooperative Mode … Prequel

One big mistake I think we made in playing Dice Throne Missions was NOT playing a quick head-to-head game to learn the characters.  (You might remember my friends were frustrated when playing Missions: see review here).   When confronted with all the new rules of the cooperative modes, I think it’s too easy to get lost.  So, before we jumped into a cooperative game of Unchained (the One-Shot Adventure), I asked my friends to play a quick Head-to-head game.

I recommend this to you and your groups as well.  Don’t just jump into Unchained.  There’s a lot of rules.  Let your players get comfortable with the basic rules and characters they want to play BEFORE you jump in.

Playing a quick head-to-head game first was absolutely the right thing to do;  I know it from both the positive side (my friends above said they were very glad we did a quick pre-game) and the negative side (when my other friends felt frustrated in Missions).

One-Shot Adventures: Cooperative Mode!

So, I shepherded my players into a One-Shot  Adventure!  They generally had fun, although we saw a few problems: 
1) Four players may be too many.  Even though the game moved fast, some times you felt like it took too long to get to your turn.
2) Because it takes some turns to get some of the characters flowing, sometimes having the next player fight the minion slows down your progression.  Both Raveness and the Headless Horsemen suffered from that a little; both of them require a “commitment” to an opponent to see a result.  If the opponent is killed by another fellow player, you feel a little frustrated as you couldn’t “get your character going”.

Both of these problem are solved, I think, by simply limiting the number of players. My friends had fun playing cooperatively, but I think Robert (Headless Horseman) and Becca (Raveness) were a little frustrated getting their characters going.

The other thing to be aware of, (and note that I am not calling this a problem), is that the game isn’t particularly cooperative. It’s pretty much multi-player solitaire as you all just take your turn and try to kill Minions/Bosses. Occasionally, you might help each other with cards that give re-rolls, (“I really need a re-roll! Can someone get me a re-roll?” ), or you might get rid of a status (“Please get rid of this poison!”) If you like cooperative games that are mostly multi-player solitaire with a sprinkling of cooperation, this is a perfect game for you. If you are looking for a more cooperative experience, Dice Throne Mission might be a better choice? (I say this because characters like Cyclops are made for cooperation).

Conclusion

It’s hard to recommend  an expansion for an expansion (remember, Unchained is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures), but I think Unchained crosses that threshold!  I actually think this is an essential expansion; Unchained fixes two major complaints about Dice Throne Adventures!   

The first complaint about Dice Throne Adventures was that the upgrade path was too slow; it took forever to see new Loot cards in your hand!  The major fix in Unchained is the new One-Shot Loot chart and rules that make you upgrade SO MUCH faster!   You feel powerful quickly, and that’s a great feeling!

The second major complaint about Dice Throne Adventures was that there was too much commitment needed to play it; it took too long  to play the long adventure! Now, with the One-Shot Adventures, you can play cooperatively in one session, fighting both Minions and a Boss!  No need for the long game!

There’s even a new solo mode with the Minion Rush, which makes it a little easier to learn characters!

There are few things to be cognizant of: you probably shouldn’t play the new cooperative mode with the full four players if you can help it.  My friends still enjoyed it, but I think it would have been more fun at a smaller player count.  Two, maybe three players is probably best.

You should also be aware that the new cooperative modes aren’t super-cooperative.  There are occasions for cooperation, but generally the game is multi-player solitaire. It’s not a bad thing, you just need to be aware of what this is.

I also STRONGLY suggest you make sure your players are familiar with the characters before they play; play a head-to-head 20 minute game before ramping up into the One-Shot Adventure, or your players might get mired in rules and frustration.

Finally, would I recommend Dice Throne Missions over Dice Throne Adventures + Unchained for the solo/cooperative game?  It depends on what you want!  Dice Throne Missions has short adventures (two sessions), and simultaneous dice-rolling which moves the game quicker.  Missions is much more super-heroey, and Unchained is more dungeon-delvey!  If you want the One-Shot Adventures so you can just jump in-and-out, then I think Dice Throne Adventures + Unchained is the better choice.  If you just want short-little adventures, the super-hero theme of Missions may call to you! Honestly, they are both good choices! 

I think Unchained is an essential expansion and makes Dice Throne Adventures that much better.  It adds new Minions, new Loot, new Boss, new solo modes, new cooperative modes, but most importantly, fixes some major problems of Dice Throne Adventures.  9/10.

Dice Throne Outcasts + Dice Throne Adventures Unchained. Part I of II.

Welcome to our two-part review of Dice Throne Outcasts and Dice Throne Adventures.  In Part I of this review, we’ll look closely at Dice Throne Outcasts and see what it has to offer.  In Part II of our review, we’ll take Dice Throne Outcasts and use it to play the solo and cooperative Dice Throne Adventures Unchained Expansion!  

The full Dice Throne Outcasts + Dice Throne Adventures Unchained set arrived at my house in mid November 2025!  See above! This was on Kickstarter back in Oct 2024 (about a year) ago.  It promised delivery in October 2025; I think they were trying VERY HARD to make Halloween, but they just missed by about two weeks.  Two weeks late in Kickstarter terms is still very good!

What Is This?

Dice Throne, by itself, is a head-to-head Yahtzee battle dice game.  Each player takes the role of some character, and goes into battle with another character/player!  The two characters battle it out with dice (using a Yahtzee-style mechanism to activate powers)!  It’s best played as a head-to-head game of character vs. character.   There’s a TON of characters in different sets!  We’ve seen the Marvel Dice Throne Set (which we discussed here), the X-Men Marvel Dice Thone Set (which we discussed here), and Dice Throne Seasons I and II (which we discussed here).

This set of Dice Throne is essentially the Halloween themed set: Dice Throne Outcasts!  It has four characters inside!  To be clear, you can JUST buy this and play the head-to-head game by itself; strictly speaking, you don’t need anything else to play Dice Throne if you just want this box!  (If you want to play solo or cooperatively, however, you will need some more stuff: that’s what Part II of our review will discuss).

This box is gorgeous with the art of Manny Trembley. See above and below.

The side lists the four characters in the box.

And the bottom talks about what this is.

I gotta be honest, this cover is a contender for best cover of the year, especially the raven side.

Unboxing

The box top is actually a magnetic wrap-around board! Inside, you get a little cartoon intro to the characters! See above!

The box itself contains four trays, each with different cards and fold outs.

There are also some cardboard tokens which are perfectly fine (see right).  You can also choose to get the acrylic tokens as an add-on; I really like how cool the Acrylic tokens are, but if you are on the fence on getting this game, the cardboard tokens in the box are JUST fine.

There is also a perfectly fine rulebook that comes with it.  The rulebook also has pointers to videos to teach the game.  I even referred to the rulebook a few times to remind myself how to play.  After years and years and years, they have the rulebook down.

There are four characters in the game; they are easy to take out with their game trayz.

And that’s really all that’s in the box.  The game is really contained in the characters, so let’s take a look at those.

The Characters

Over about a week, I was very excited to try this game, so I got a chance to play all the characters in various modes: head-to-head, solo, me vs. me, and cooperatively.

These characters are fantastically thematic.   Each one of these is unique and dripping with flavor!

The Necromancer

The Necromancer uses corpses to summon undead fight for him!

The funnest to play overall was definitely the Necromancer!  His components are just top notch, and the Undead that come out look so cool!  The best part is that he has an ability called (I am not making this up) Corpse Explosion!  When playing a big group, every time that ability was invoked, people either laughed or went “Ew!!” It was very funny.

The Raveness

The Raveness has a Raven which flies around and sucks energy from characters in slight attacks!

The Raveness feels more “subtle” than the other characters is some ways, as she has to get her Raven to the opponents! But the Raven simply “steals” life force and brings it back to her master!  This is interesting because the Raven’s life steal is not an attack that can be defended.  If played well, she can subtly funnel energy back to herself without provoking a Defense Roll!  It was also very thematic to summon the Raven with feathers … I had a picture in my mind of a Raven forming up from the feathers and summoning it …

I like the subtlety of the Raveness.

Headless Horseman

The Headless Horseman throws his big pumkin head on baddies and has tokens to terrorize!

The Headless Horseman was fun to play, as you throw your giant Pumpkin Head on your opponents!  It is a little harder to get the Headless Horseman going, but once he gets going, his pumpkin head is a sight to be seen!

His Terrorize tokens are really interesting, as they can be discarded to Terrorize your opponent with the pumpkin head!

I do think that the Headless Horseman may have my favorite art in this set.

Pale Lady

And finally the Pale Lady slips back-and-forth to lady and werewolf form!

My least favorite was the Pale Lady/Werewolf; not because she’s bad or anything.  She’s weird because she HAS NO UPGRADES. (Normally, most Dice Throne characters can upgrade their board).  I think the back-and-forth between the two sides (Pale Lady/Werewolf) was supposed to emulate some of the upgrades.  She’s definitely a butt-kicker, especially with the bleed tokens she just spews out, but she seemed the least subtle.  I guess that’s very thematic, since she is a werewolf!! GROWL!

The Characters Have Character

It might be trite to say, but the characters in Dice Throne Outcasts have character!  Thematic character!

I still liked every character!  The Necromancer might be the best one to give to newer players, not because he’s simplest, but because he’s so much fun!  The Necromancer might really bring new players into the game … they just might need a little help to operate him.

Solo Mode: Me vs. Me

The base Dice Throne games have no solo mode … BUT you can play in Me vs Me mode, which is just the solo player playing both characters!  I have done this Me vs Me mode for every single Dice Throne set I have gotten!  It’s a great way to learn the characters at your own pace!

The solo player just jumps from one side of the table to the other, alternating play of each character!  I recommend physically changing sides because it helps you “become” that character since it’s just in front of you!  Yes, it’s slightly annoying to get up and go to the other side of the table every turn, but it really does help immerse you into the characters!

If you are curious who won with the Necromancer vs. The Headless Horseman … it was close, but the Headless Horseman won!

If you don’t have anyone to play against, and you don’t have any of the solo/co-op expansions, the Me vs. Me solo mode is a fine way to learn the characters.   In fact, for this set, I played all the characters at least once so I could teach them.  The characters in this set are a little complex, so it’s nice to have seen how the characters work for when your friends have questions.

Conclusion to Part I.

Many of you are aware that I generally really like mostly solo and cooperative games.  Even though Dice Throne Outcasts is a base competitive game, I really liked it!  The art was fantastic, and the characters were dripping with theme!  In fact, I am a superhero guy, I and I think  Dice Throne Outcasts is better than X-Men or Marvel Dice Throne!  The characters are just so well-thought out and thematic!

If you just want a thematic horror-based battle game, Dice Throne Outcasts is fantastic: 9/10.

But if you want to play Dice Throne with a “real” solo mode or a cooperative mode, follow us in Part II as we explore Dice Throne Adventures Unchained …

Appendix: Silly House Rule

I also picked up the Dice Throne Outcasts Hero Sculpts (see above).  These are for the cooperative game only.

They are just some neat little minis you can use on the board when you play Dice Throne Adventures.  They are completely useless in the base game.

Or are they?  We instituted a silly House Rule: the minis can be used as “worker placement” tokens to mark which ability you invoked with your dice!!  Sometimes, your dice can match multiple abilities on your mat, and thisis just a way to denote which one you chose!! See above as the Raveness mini marks us use the “small straight” option instead of a different match.

Or above as the Raveness marks that we used Murder of Crows II.

This is an absolutely silly way to use the minis. But, it helps you feel like you got more for your money if you DID get them.  Which I did.

Luddite Can Be An Experience, If You Let It. A Review

Luddite arrived at my house about a month or more ago, but I have been afraid to open it.  Why?  I mean Luddite was the #5 entry on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024!  I paid money and Kickstarted it!! Why was I worried?

Luddite “looks” big because it has a graphic novel associated with it; there’s a lot of story here.  I was afraid I’d mentally have to prepare myself to embrace it.

I don’t know why I worried!  At the end of the day, this is “just” a roll-and-write game!   You roll 3 dice, mark off spaces on your sheet above (See above) and try to score points (aka damage)! The base game is pretty straight-forward!

The object is to do enough damage to move to the next level! You need 60 at easy difficulty; see above as I miss by 1!  Heart-breaking!

In order to inflict the damage, you have to “move” the metal token (left side above; from the START to the END): if you don’t move that token, you can’t do any damage at all!  So, while trying to get “points” (aka, damage), you also have to make sure the token above moves!

The game plays solo, cooperatively, and competitively.  The solo game is all about doing enough damage,  and the competitive game is “who can do the most damage to win”.   The cooperative game is really just multiplayer solitaire: take the scores of all players and average them to get a score; if that score is high enough, players collectively win!

To be clear, there is NO cooperation in the cooperative game; each player just takes their own book and plays completely independently.  Players can’t help each other, they can’t share anything, they can’t use a dice on another players board … nothing.  This is as multiplayer solitaire as you can get.   If you want an experience where you are working with your friends, chatting, strategizing, working together, … this isn’t the game for you.  BUT if you have friends who are “suspicious” of cooperative games, or people who don’t like the cooperative games, this can still work for you! 

No one will tell you what to do, as everyone’s head is down and looking at their own board! See above!  And no one gets in anyone else’s board in any way!

I made the mistake of getting 3 more “Additional Player Packs” (see above), but what this means is that 3 more people can play!    Basically, Luddite can scale to as many people as you want because there is no interaction between players!!  I am thinking of trying a 7-Player game of Luddite at RichieCon this year! (I have 4 packs in the base game and 3 packs from additional buys = 7 player boards!)

So, you can view this complete lack of player interaction as a good thing or bad thing, depending on the group you are playing with.

Solo Experience

If this was all there was to Luddite, there’s not much making it stand out, is there?  It’s a pretty good roll-and-write game for the solo player, and it’s a pretty good cooperative roll-and-write that scales to any number of players … even if there is no player interaction.

However, if you let it … this game can be an experience!  The Graphic Novel that comes with the game tells the story of some people who have been “made redundant” by AI and how they are fighting back!

The Graphic Novel gives you a back-story, then at certain places, tells you what chapter/pages to turn to! See above!

This was more immersive than I expected.  If you let it, this game can feel very immersive.  For my solo experience, I read the graphic novel that came with the game …

… and each new game is a progression of the story, even if the boards look very similar. See above as I win (solo) chapter 3!

Somehow, it seems for a game named Luddite (Luddite: someone who eschews technology) … that you HAVE to read the physical graphic novel, right?

Cooperative Experience

It turns out, the comic book is also online … in a video!  It has voice-acting, and shows the comic progressing!  See above!

For the cooperative game, it’s “harder” to enjoy the graphic novel in its physical form … you have to pass it around, or wait for others to read it, or read over people’s shoulders.  But, if you go to the Cotswold Group website, they have the entire graphic novel online! (And even a little tutorial)

So, even though it’s seem against the spirit of a gamed named Luddite, the cooperative experience is made so much better by watching the comics-turned-to-videos!  Arguably, that experience engulfs you and all your friends into the game!  It’s a shared story you are all experiencing!

To be fair, it helps the experience if you can show the video on a big screen or TV: see above. It feels more immersive that way.

House Rule/Hack (Get it? Hack? In a game about Hacking?)

The dice are a shared resource everyone shares in the cooperative game: they are rolled and placed in the middle for everyone to see!  But sometimes, in the heat of playing, you may forget which dice you used for which activity.  Surprisingly, there’s no place on the sheet to “notate” which dice we used !!

Since you don’t compute your damage until the very end of the game,  you can use the Damage section!  

This little house rule/hack made it easier to play the game cooperatively, as you could all independently note the dice rolled and how/when/where you used them.  

Conclusion

If you let Luddite be an experience that carries you along in its story (either as a graphic novel or comic-turned-video), I think this can be a really fun and immersive experience.

A reductionist might say “Luddite just a roll-and-write” …  but at least it’s a good one. I really enjoyed all my plays of this.   The base game is pretty straightforward and quick, and it has lots of meaningful decisions.

The cooperative game has literally no interaction between players, which can be a curse or a blessing, depending on the group you are playing with.   But, because of that lack of interaction, this game can scale to pretty much any number … as long as you have the boards!

This is a good solo roll-and-write (7/10), and a pretty good cooperative roll-and-write (6.5/10 or 7/10, depending on what you want), but it’s the story and experience that elevates this just enough that I would recommend you try this: 7.5/10.

I still think it’s hilarious that a game called Luddite has such a great online presence.  I mean, a game called Luddite should ONLY have the physical version, right?

Appendix: Binding

I normally despise this kind of binding, especially on something you need to hold open! See my review of War Story, Freedom Five, and Forests of Admiron if you don’t believe me!  For a graphic novel, it’s “okay” since you are just reading it and holding it open. See below.

Where this binding fails is when you have to read the directions in the back of the book!  See below as I try to wedge the book into the edge so it’ll stay open!  I hate this kind of binding for rulebooks!

See above as I attempt to hold it open!!!   Honestly, the rules should have been in a second standalone book that could be lain flat and open.  As a graphic novel, this kind of binding is “fine”.  But the rules portion of the graphic novel (in the same book, this really made me grumpy.  

 

Dice Throne Missions and Dice Throne X-Men! A Solo and Cooperative Review!

Follow me, dear reader, as I invest three days of my life into unboxing, sleevening, tokening, and playing the new X-Men Dice Throne and Missions! Watch as I play solo (me vs. me solo and true solo) and cooperatively (with a group of 4), but encounter some unexpected things along the way! Hopefully my journey will inform you if this is something that would be for you!

 Dice Throne: X-Men and Marvel Dice Throne: Missions (and a whole bunch of stuff) arrived at my house at 12:30 pm on Monday, February 20th, 2025.  I was very excited to get this Kickstarter, so I happened to note the time when it arrived!  This was #2 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024!  And it was “only” 7 months late! (promising arrival in August 2024)!  But what is this giant thingee?

The first big box in here is the Dice Throne: X-Men box; you each play a member of the X-Men!  This is a dice-chucking game with a Yahtzee-type re-roll mechanic: you roll dice, trying to roll a straight or full house or 5-of-a-kind (stuff like that) to activate your super powers!  These powers, when activated, nominally do damage or other crazy things to your opponents.   This is a fully competitive game where the heroes beat each other up: think of the X-Men Danger Room!   You are training in the Danger Room!  (That’s why heroes fight heroes, ya, that’s it: don’t ask too many questions about why heroes are fighting heroes….just enjoy the game)

But why are we talking about a competitive game on this solo and cooperative blog?  Because the second big thing that came with this was Marvel Dice Throne Missions! Marvel Dice Throne Missions (we’ll call it Missions from now on) is an expansion that takes the competitive Dice Throne system and makes the game both solo and cooperative!

The next three days of my life were consumed by the Dice Throne stuff above.  The Dice Throne: X-Men box and Missions box are very closely tied together, as you need a set of heroes to play the Missions! Although you can use any of the Dice Throne heroes (including the original Season 1, Season 2 (see review here) , and Marvel heroes (see review here)), we are going to look at Dice Throne: X-Men and Missions together!!! … because that’s how we played it …

Let’s go back in time and see how three days unfolded ….

Day 1: Unboxings and First Plays

Day 1 was a long day: I got the box at 12:30pm and pretty much unboxed, sleevended, tokened (yes, that’s a word … now), and played non-stop until 8 at night!  There was so more unboxing  and sleevening and tokening than I expected …

What arrived at my house was a giant box! See Coke Can above for perspective.

The crazy thing was that this was a box in a box in a box in a box situation! See above!

On top of the Dice Throne: X-Men box (above) were all the acrylic tokens and some of the figures (right).

Day 1: The Figurines Unboxing

You don’t need the figurines for plain Dice Throne.

The figures are only for the cooperative expansions Dice Throne Adventures or Missions, as figures for the board … you don’t need these figures at all to play competitive plain Dice Throne!  See all eight figures above in the package … and below on a Missions board.

Because the original Marvel Dice Throne did NOT have an option for figures, they included that option here in this Kickstarter! See above for the Marvel Dice Throne figures and below for their standee equivalents!

To be clear; the X-Men Dice Throne (and Marvel Dice Throne) come with cardboard standees so you don’t need to buy the figures (see below for X-Men Dice Throne punchouts, including the standees).

If you are on the fence for buying the figures, remember: they aren’t strictly needed!  You can just use the standees and “probably” buy the figures at a later date if you are so inclined.

Day 1: Acrylics and Sleevening

Another upgrade I got were the Acrylic tokens; again these aren’t necessary.

The acrylic token upgrades packs are for Marvel Dice Throne, X-Men Marvel Dice Throne, and Missions—These just replace the cardboard tokens.

Again, the games include all the tokens you need, so these acrylic tokens aren’t necessary.  I really thought they made the game pop a little more, so I liked them.

I also picked up the premium sleeves: see below.

Again, strictly not necessary. But very nice!

After ooggling the figures, basically, I spent the next 2 or so hours putting the acrylic tokens and sleeves into the X-Men Dice Throne character boxes! 

Whew! Look at all those tokens above!! See below for all 6 characters sleeved and … tokened? (yes, it is a word now: I’ve used it twice).

Yes, this was a long and tedious 2 hours.  But the characters looks great!

Oh yes, and Deadpool wants you to know he is an expansion!  He is a character you can play (he also came with this Kickstarter, but he is a separate expansion you have to pay extra for). I went ahead and unboxed, sleeved, and tokened him too.  See above.

Day 1: First Play

As a reminder, you “probably” don’t want to jump into Missions (cooperative) if you haven’t played the base Dice Throne (competitive)!  See the warning above from the Missions rulebook.

I love Dice Throne, but it has been a while since I played. So I decided to do a Me vs. Me solo game, and play against myself!  This was mostly to remind myself of the rules and see the new characters! Those of you out there are thinking that I will “pander” and play Wolverine vs. Deadpool.  Nope!

I ended up playing Wolverine vs Cyclops. Me vs Me!

Basically, I’d literally switch seats when I had to play the other character: I always like this swapping because it really feels like you are playing both sides well!  

It was an interesting match: Wolverine won, but just barely.  Cyclops looks like he will do best in a cooperative game, as his abilities have some emphasis on helping other players!  He has leadership cards and support tokens/abilities that help others!  Wolverine just heals and does damage … as you’d expect.

This game was reasonably quick, maybe a hour? It went by pretty quickly and I got to learn about Wolverine and Cyclops.

Day 1: Missions Unboxing

Yes, we are still in Day 1.  I told you this was a long day!  But a good day! I finally got to unpack Missions!

The most AMAZING thing is all the little mission books that come with the game!! Holy cow!!  See how many there are?  I put a Coke can next to them for perspective!

My only real complaint with the missions is that they are hard to keep open! We’ll see that more later.

There’s some Momentum dials (this is a new mechanism in the game: each character gets a dial), Allies (another new mechanism: these must be bought with Momentum), and some other tokens.

The Momentum is a major new mechanism in the game; you can actually level-up your Momentum card (as you play more games)!

I mean, this looks great!  See above!

At the top is a tray for tokens: see above.

There are a lot cardboard tokens in Missions … but I ended up replacing them with the acrylic tokens.  This took about the next hour of my life.

At first, putting tokens in the token tray looks VERY DAUNTING.  And it is. Until you notice the side of the box!!! See above!!  The side of the box shows you how to put the token into the tray!

Sounds like an easy job?  Oof.  This was the most tedious thing I did on Day 1.


I basically had to separate out the tokens into piles and start putting them into the box, all while trying to match the picture on the side of the box!!

I mean, it does look cool when you are done … see above.

Finally, I sleeved the Alllies:  these sleeves were extra (I had to pay for them).

But they look pretty cool.

Day 1: The rulebook

There are a few things I have to say about the rulebook.

It completely fails the Chair Test: it droops over the edge of the chair and almost falls off!  

I ended up using the workaround I discovered in my review of  Batman: Gotham City Chronicles!  You need two chairs to hold the rulebook, with the spine in the middle!

The rulebook was generally good otherwise: it had a good components page (see above).

It had a good two-page spread for set-up: I got going right away.

The rulebook had a big, readable font, useful pictures, and even little parenthetical text to emphasize issues.  

The best part was that the back cover had a list of all the statuses on the back.  This was generally a good list of statuses and their effects, but we did have some questions as we played… some of the status descriptions needed more clarification.

This was generally a good rulebook, but I hated the form factor.  It seems like the worst form factor I have seen in a while.  I actually had to change chairs in my cooperative game so I could sit somewhere where I could set-up the the two chairs to see the rulebook! The rulebook is huge and there is no almost no way it’ll fit on the table.

Day 1: Set-up for Solo play

I know, it’s hard to believe we are still in Day 1.  I had just finished dinner, and I am still setting up my first Mission!  

Missions have two sides; the front side is generally fighting some henchmen … (see above)  …

… and the back side is Boss Fight (Scarlet Witch in this case.. see above)!

To win the mission, you need to complete both sides!  See above as I start setting up side one of the mission … and get grumpy that it won’t stay flat …

I chose Wolverine to go on the solo mission: see above!  Note that the rulebook suggests the mission above to start on … so that’s the one I am playing!!  This is true solo play; I will be playing one character as I take on the Henchmen … on side 1 of the mission.

Day 1: Side One of the Mission

I was approaching the end of my Dice Throne Day (yes, I am still in Day 1!!!), as I got a chance to try out solo play with Missions on side 1 of my first mission.

Momentum is a huge new mechanism in the game: you are rewarded with Momentum when you take out a henchman or something in the game!  It’s kind of like experience points, but it’s a little more dynamic in that you can spend it anytime!  You can spend Momentum to give you range (typically, you can only attack things next to you) or to buy Allies.

The Allies give you extra abilities/powers that make the game more interesting. They typically can be used for a “minor” ability without discarding, or for a “major” ability if you discard it (see Nick Fury above). 

What I liked was that when you “cleared” a bad guy, you put down a clear token (see above) to note that he was dispatched!  And the token reminds you of the 2 Momentum you get for killing … I mean clearing him!

Another major mechanism is the Crisis Clock: at the end of each round, the hands of the clock move 1 per player and may invoke some harsh penalties (depending on the mission).

There’s other things going on, but that’s generally most of it!  See above as I cleared the board and made my way towards fighting Doc Ock!  …. but that would have to wait for tomorrow … it’s been a long day!

Day 2: More Missions

I had to work most of Tuesday, but after I got home, I was consumed with playing more Missions!
Note!  When you flip the mission to the other side, you keep you character’s Hit Points, Momentum, and everything the way it was!  While you reset BETWEEN missions, you DO NOT reset when you FLIP the mission!

The Boss Fight side of the Mission 1 basically just has you straight up fight the big boss! And the Crisis Clock is much more damaging!

You are in harms way as you actively are right next to the Boss! See above!  No moving away!

One interesting note; there are tokens that, if you end your turn there, you get a bonus.  So, you can get the +2 token if you go to space 3 above. But if the space has the red tokens underneath, you always get those … but only AFTER The bad guys attacks you!  And there is a cost for moving to a space with red tokens … the boss typically does more damage (crit) to you!

In the end, I defeated Doc Ock pretty handily; I think my Ally made this much easier.  

I went into the Boss Fight with 15 Momentum and basically kept the crisis track completely under control using Nick Fury.

After you defeat a Mission, the player gets “Perk Points”!  These are another thing that are kind of like experience points!  You use them to make your character better.  You may spend some Perk Points to start the next mission with a little more momentum, or have a focus fire, or other things!

There are 6 levels of difficulty in the game; they are marked on top of the mission sheet you choose. See below.

You reallllly don’t want to try harder missions until you have some Perk Points from previous missions!   So, while this isn’t a campaign “per se”, the game encourages you to keep playing and get Perk Points so you can handle more difficult missions!

You could always cheat and just give yourself a bunch of Perk Points to level up yourself ….

I moved on to a harder mission: level 2!

You can really see the Mission board problem above …

Sauron’s Hunger was my second mission … and I had a blast!

Wolverine went after the tree so he could get the Perfect Reward (see above) and more Perk Points at the end of the game!

The second side of the Mission was another Boss Fight: see above!

This one was a little harder, but I expected it to be for a level 2!

In the end, I was able to win and finish another Mission!  It was definitely a little harder. I had two missions under my belt, and I looked forward to another!

Day 3: Cooperative Play

With two days of solo play and set-up experience, I felt ready to teach my friends! We ended with a 2-hour Mission fighting Doc Ock again!

This was a 4-Player cooperative game.

I took Cyclops because I wanted to test his Leadership abilities.  Sara and Teresa took their favorite characters: Ororo and Rogue (respectively).  Sam doesn’t know the X-Men as well, but he knows Wolverine.

Although we beat the first side of the mission, we lost to Doc Ock as he killed two of my players.

Solo Play

The solo play was a hoot to me!  I kept wanting to do more Missions and get more Perk Points!! What are some of the other missions that lay ahead??  Wolverine is probably a better character to play solo; he is good at damage and he can heal himself.  I worry that Cyclops or other heroes might struggle with hit points a little.

I had fun, I was engaged, and I felt like all my rolls mattered!  

I was able to push my luck (and I usually hate dice games), but usually there is a good roll or card that can help you get “something good” on your turn.  With Wolverine especially, even if you didn’t have a good roll, the lesser abilities typically healed him, so something good always happened.

Over the course of two days, I had fun.  I was engaged, and I saw how important Allies are (especially their Exhaust ability) and how Momentum worked.   These are both new things to the Missions mode and they really made me feel like I always had more options.

I would give the Missions solo mode an 8.5/10.  It was great.  It may be that you have to choose a hero that works well with solo; I am not sure Cyclops would have done as well.

Even the me vs me solo mode was fun! Not quite an 8.5/10, maybe 7.5/10, but that was a fun way to play solo too!

Cooperative Mode

This was a surprise for me: my friends didn’t enjoy cooperative Missions very much.  And they (mostly) love the X-Men!!!

Although there is simultaneous play keeping everyone involved (you only serialize your turns when you do damage; all other times, every one is rolling and re-rolling and playing cards simulaneously), no one felt like there was a lot of cooperation.  As Sara said, “it feels like Dice Throne is not a cooperative mode and this feels a little forced.”

I even played Cyclops to try to elicit more cooperation: I’d always say “Hey! I’ve got some support tokens!  Use me! I can help you reroll or get CP if you need it!”  … and I think my players used me once.  And I tried really hard to get them to use me!!

You might think that “Well, your players don’t like co-ops, or they just don’t like to co-operate” and that is patently untrue!  I play co-ops all the time with this group!!  And they cooperate very well together!  For some reason, this just didn’t work.  And Sara even said, “Eh, you can cooperate, but there are many other co-ops I’d rather play.”

I actually have a theory about this!  When we played King of Monster Island a while ago (see review here), we liked the King of Monster Island game, but it also seemed to not promote cooperation as much!! Why? It also has the familiar Yahtzee re-roll mechanism (roll 3 times, keep the ones you want) just like Dice Throne Missions!! And while that mechanism is very engaging, people seem to become TOO engaged in that to the point they don’t cooperate!  It’s a weird thing to say, but too much engagement on your own stuff lessens the cooperation!  And I think that’s what happened here: we all got so caught up in our own characters, we forgot to cooperate!

Maybe this problem would go away after repeated plays, but you have to want to continue playing! And I am sad to say my group mostly doesn’t really want to play this again.

Having said that, maybe if you have a group that really likes cooperative multiplayer solitaire games (no Alpha Player), maybe this is something your group might enjoy!  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of cooperation, just a bunch of heroes beating up stuff and rolling dice!  Maybe that would appeal to your group!

Reactions

Rich: I liked the game solo a lot! 8.5/10: I was engaged and I liked my decisions. Cooperative was probably a 7/10? I still liked it but there wasn’t much cooperation.

Teresa: I got to play Rogue! And I had fun! 7/10

Sara: I don’t know, I just didn’t think it was great.  There wasn’t much cooperation, and even though I love Storm, it wasn’t that interesting to play her.  There are a lot of other cooperative games I’d rather play.  The cooperative mode just feels tacked on. It was okay.  6/10

Sam:  It was okay. 6/10.
Sam actually had a very full write-up on his cooperative experience, which he emailed to me!  I will reproduce that at the end of this review, after the Conclusion.  Read that for another perspective!

Conclusion

I expected X-Men Dice Throne and Missions to go over like gang-busters!  And while it did for me (for the solo mode especially), my group wasn’t that impressed with it.  

The game has gorgeous components, even if you choose not to upgrade everything.  My only real complaint was the Mission mats frequently has trouble staying flat.  This looks like a comic book world on the table, with its colorful villains, colorful heroes, and gorgeous dice and cards.

I think the cooperative mode didn’t go as well because people tended to be too focused on their own mat and their own rerolls … and this self-focus seemed to actually discourage cooperation!  I thought that my group, who love the X-Men, would adore this!  And they did not.

As a solo game, I am very comfortable giving this an 8.5/10.  I will play again, and I look forward to getting more Perk Points to try harder and harder missions!

As a cooperative game, it feels like the game lands at a 6.5/10.  Although Teresa and I would play it again as a co-op, I don’t think Sam and really Sara would.  For more details, see Sam’s Perspective below.

So, that’s my journey: Three Days of Dice Throne!  I loved it! My friends … not so much.  Your group may still love the cooperative Missions especially if they love co-ops that are more multiplayer solitaire.

Sam’s Perspective

Overall score: 6 – would play again if everybody else wanted to but X-Men as Wolverine combined with the Missions mode isn’t something I’d necessarily request or suggest (I could see it being 7-7.5 with avengers)

 
TLDR version:
I feel like this is turning into a scathing review and that’s not my intended tone. This particular combination of theming (X-Men aren’t really my thing) and components (flat printed enemies against hero minis didn’t really feel like we were fighting bad guys) just didn’t land for me.
 
The essay:
Because I’m an uncultured swine :), I’m not familiar with X-Men or their lore or anything other than the Deadpool movies (1 and 2) and being able to pick wolverine out of a lineup. Therefore, the characters didn’t really speak to me and I was unable to appreciate the references/accents/etc. Because of the movies, Doc Oc is also linked as a spiderman villain in my mind. 
 
I feel like I could have used a “sparring match” or two of the competitive version to get used to my character before taking him against the villains cooperatively. 
 
The components felt a bit jarring – minis for us vs enemies printed on the map just felt like I was standing around and taking swings at air. I feel like I would have felt more immersed if the bad guys were also minis (even though they didn’t move) or if we were flat tokens in the same plane as our opponents. 
 
I can’t quite put my finger on it but the movement and momentum mechanics also felt a little bit off to me.
 
I remember enjoying the original dice throne (though I missed out on the adventures and the original marvel set) probably because it was a set of generic archetypes I could get into – the rogue, paladin, gunslinger, monk, pirate, etc. 
 
I think I would also have enjoyed this more with the “original”marvel characters (avengers) even without having as much time to get into how my character works. Wolverine might also have been too simple – basically 9 variations on “get angry, hit hard, heal” depending on what you rolled. It didn’t really feel like I had much to set up and pull off, just wander around and try to roll good combinations so I could swing really hard at the air where an enemy was.