Dice Throne is a fast-paced, dice-flinging, luck-pushing battler. It channels Yahtzee vibes alongside a deck of semi-unique cards (half the deck is character specific, half the same for all) to build the best combination of dice faces to deal damage, trigger abilities and aim to 6 it to unleash your Ultimate attack to destroy your opponents. There’s numerous fantasy versions available as well as a range of Marvel superheroes – and now you can pick from two classic X-Men teams, which is particularly exciting with the co-op mission pack coming later this year!
Dice Throne is a fast-paced, dice-flinging, luck-pushing battler. It channels Yahtzee vibes alongside a deck of semi-unique cards (half the deck is character specific, half the same for all) to build the best combination of dice faces to deal damage, trigger abilities and aim to 6 it to unleash your Ultimate attack to destroy your opponents. There’s numerous fantasy versions available as well as a range of Marvel superheroes – and now you can pick from two classic X-Men teams, which is particularly exciting with the co-op mission pack coming later this year!
The Dice Throne box contains 4 decks of cards, 4 character standees (although no bases, as these are for the co-op version), 4 unique sets of dice, tokens and character boards. I’m going to be up front, I don’t like the fact that the new boards don’t fold: the box itself is more Kallax friendly, which I get, but I like being able to lift a single character box. It does also, however, mean that there’s no issue with creasing and not lying flat on the table in front of you.
TO ME, MY X-MEN!
This set features Cyclops, Rogue, Gambit and Jean Grey / Phoenix. Not quite the classic Blue team line up (Psylocke and Wolverine are in set 2, along with Gold classics Storm and Iceman) but you can see straight away why Jean is there, as we have 2 of the iconic X-Men power couples facing off in this set. We’re going to look at the characters in order of complexity; of the two X-Men boxsets available, this is the more complex.
CYCLOPS
Cyclops has a play style that is unashamedly aggro, comfortably laying down high damage optical blasts as you might expect. However, his big gimmick comes around his Leadership cards, which are clearly marked as such: these increase his card draw, which is a valuable resource at all times in game. Not only that, but his Battle Plan tokens (which he gains off most attacks) allow him to check and reorder cards at the top of his deck, so you can plan accordingly. This feels VERY Cyclops, leading from the front and really helps you quickly get a feel for how to play him. He’s not fantastic in defence, but still has a 4 dice defender with the ability to choose whether to return undefendable damage or prevent. He’s great in pvp, multi and Team play, and I suspect going to be a real asset in coop play. His basic Focus Fire token is a simple persistent which adds damage, but it’s his Support and token which is really potent there, giving allies extra CP, dice rerolls or cards. A very strong start!
ROGUE
Oh, Rogue. I really want to love Rogue, but I don’t. Now, to be clear, she is great. She can muster some seriously big attacks, particularly when boosted by her Ionic Energy tokens, and she has a really good defence mechanism in the form of her Skyward tokens, which allow her to fly away from and negate lots of damage.
But.
She … just doesn’t feel like Rogue.
Actually, that’s not entirely fair, because she does have a life-stealing attack. This is certainly thematic and life draining off your opponent is a rare and valuable ability in Dice Throne. But it’s tricky to pull off consistently and you’re not really draining enough to create a meaningful differential, usually. But there’s a lack of POWER stealing which annoys me. She could steal status effect tokens, or even dice, but no. As I say, she is GOOD, it just irks me that she doesn’t feel enough like my favourite Southern Belle. She’s seductive: her Influence tokens are a Negative Status that deprive your opponent of an Offensive roll attempt, which is massively scary… but is that Rogue? Would I object if they were called Drain or something? Maybe not. Guess you have to make up your own mind, Sugah.
JEAN GREY / DARK PHOENIX
Jean is a really interesting and thematic character to play, albeit quite challenging. She alternates between her two forms (though you can manipulate this with card effects) and comes with a very neat Phoenix board overlay – indeed, her Ultimate attack is form-dependent.
She is quite defensive, as you’d expect, despite only rolling 2 Defence dice: she throws up a Force Field that blocks half attack damage off a lot her Offensive rolls. She’s rated as Difficulty 6 in Dice Throne terms, but plays more like a 5 at most, especially if you’re familiar with the game and the likes of the Cursed Pirate – certainly not as intricate as the Artificer, or indeed Gambit (who absolutely is Difficulty 6), though there are a lot of tokens to keep track of. Her Acuity is a stack limit 4 that you’ll be consistently trying to generate (and comes from most of her attacks), as it gives you a reroll, cp, or inflict Phoenix Burn (persistent 2 undefendable damage) on your opponent; I also really like that she has a similar ability to Cyclops in that regard. When Dark Phoenix, she has additional offensive abilities, most particularly using her Flame Burn tokens to boost damage (though these can charge up when Jean), however, she skips her income phase – so the challenge is often a lack of CP/Cards. She isn’t easy to play, but she is a lot of fun.
GAMBIT
Hoo-we, Gambit is fun, but he is a tough one to master. Gambit has a side deck of Ace cards, which can be Accelerated and then exploded (flipped) to activate additional damage or other effects. Choosing when to trigger these is key: the hard part about Gambit is that you really have to bide your time, which is quite unusual in such a fast-paced game. Luckily, his Dissolution tokens allow him to heal or remove Negative status effects, so he has unusually high durability. He demands a lot of attention when you play him, but he’s extremely powerful with good damage output across the board and, for all that he’s only rolling 3 defence dice, remarkable durability.
Zatu Review Summary
Zatu Score
82%
