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 packs coming later this year.
The box contains 4 decks of cards, 4 character standees (although no bases, as these are for the coop 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.
X-MEN…GOLDYBLUE?
In this set we have Storm and Iceman, along with Psylocke and Wolverine. So classic characters, albeit not in their classic teams – but hey, given the twisty nature of comics continuity, anything is possible, and it’s not that unlikely a combination. We’re going to look at the characters in order of complexity; of the two X-Men boxsets available, this is the less complex.
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 packs coming later this year.
The box contains 4 decks of cards, 4 character standees (although no bases, as these are for the coop 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.
X-MEN…GOLDYBLUE?
In this set we have Storm and Iceman, along with Psylocke and Wolverine. So classic characters, albeit not in their classic teams – but hey, given the twisty nature of comics continuity, anything is possible, and it’s not that unlikely a combination. We’re going to look at the characters in order of complexity; of the two X-Men boxsets available, this is the less complex.
WOLVERINE
On many levels, Wolverine is one of the most straightforward characters not just in Marvel Dice Throne, but in Dice Throne as a whole. That’s not to say he’s basic, or underpowered – he just does what he does. He is designed to be played very aggressively, with lots of healing built into his successful attacks – which feels very appropriate for Logan. His Alpha token is unique status effect
that he can inflict, making the target skip their income phase, which is really potent. However, most of the time you’ll be stacking up his Rage, which can be discarded (along with a card from hand) for damage or to draw cards. What’s unusual about Wolverine is he also gets additional main-deck cards that have no CP cost but, when discarded as part of using his Rage generate additional effects, such as FRENZY recovering Rage or healing with ASTONISHING RECOVERY. He’s tough, fast and lethal – not flashy, just does exactly what you’d expect from Weapon X.
PSYLOCKE
I am a huge fan of Psylocke as a character, and I had high hopes for her in this; no only does she not disappoint, she might just be my out-and-out favourite Dice Throne character. The reason for this is, unlike every other character, she has 6 dice, not 5. This Manifest die can be used to modify damage by ½ its value OR replace one of your dice in a roll phase; that is incredibly good, by any measure. She also has a range of status effects, including the excellent Paralyse, which prevents opponents from gaining their own positive status effects (shutting down so many strategies), Agility, which halves damage taken on a 1-3, and Infiltration, which gives additional defensive rerolls. Plus, she just has a really good range of damage output. For those of us that don’t like playing the odds too much, she is pretty much perfect.
STORM
If you like flinging lightning around and massive dice pools – and who doesn’t – Storm is the X-Man for you. I really like that the fact that Lightning is a Companion rather than a token, the same was Mjolnir is for Thor – very appropriate. Lightning can use to add 2 undefendable damage or be charged up by multiple abilities to do increased damage or attack multiple foes. This means she is INCREDIBLY good in multi-player, team and co-op modes; I really love the thought that’s gone into the design of her as a Team Leader (much like Scott, to be fair, although very different). Her Tornado dice are very powerful, allowing you to use an opponent’s dice per token spent. Now, I like this ability, I get the mechanics of the fluff – but I can’t help but think it would’ve been better as a way of doing Rogue’s power stealing (yes, I’m still steamed about that). She is also really good in defence, rocking a 5 dice pool from the outset and being able to use her Wind Shear tokens to defend herself or a teammate. She’s pretty straightforward to play and very powerful: a true goddess of the storm.
ICEMAN
So, Iceman is good. Really, really good. Possibly even too good. He is a bit of a slow builder, so you need to play very aggressively against him: once he gets moving, he’s pretty much unstoppable. The reason for this is his a combination of his unique Freezer and the Glide token. The Freezer allows him to store Ice Shard tokens in a way that means that they cannot be modified or removed by any
means; once he has 5, he can Glide, which allows him to pull off a second attack after the opponent’s defensive roll phase. As a result, he is often chucking out twice as much damage as any other character. This, combined with his Dice Cubes, which force your opponent to use their lowest rolled dice from their first Roll attempt, means he is an absolute powerhouse in game. He is probably the trickiest to master out of the set – he’s rated as difficulty 4, same as Storm, though I would say he feels more like a 5. Nevertheless, he’s excellent, thematic and a lot of fun… just be aware that your opponent might not agree.
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