Libellud DIF01 LIBDIFO01US Dice Forge Game Multicoloured

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They’re a bit goofy-looking, but, you know, that’s what you have to do to get some dice that are modifiable, I think.

However, Dice Forge succeeds in utilizing this enjoyable mechanism as the main dish amid a healthy buffet of strategic choices in a game that never quite feels as if it’s merely a game of chance. The second action that you can take on your turn is to move your player pawn to any one of the celestial islands, purchasing a new card by spending sun or moon shards.

The dice rolls, though, are random, but not in the Castles of Burgundy way where there’s usually different ways you can roll with the punches, so to speak. This also has the nice benefit of letting you know if you haven’t matched up the correct cards, yet. I didn’t feel like I saw the results of my forging until too late in the game – which is to say, too many times the basic faces were my income for the turn, with nothing to show for my labor.

If one hero ousts another from their location in the process, the bumped player receives a divine blessing (a free roll of both dice) as compensation for the obvious inconvenience. You can spend those resources to upgrade your dice, or perform Heroic Feats (purchase cards) that give you points and special powers. But I think there’s a disconnect between how special acquiring cool new die faces feels and how un-special it feels to roll them. Mostly they will be your main source of victory points, unless you really focus on gold and vp dice faces, but they often also come with some one shot or ongoing power.

It has inviting artwork that draws people in and the removable dice faces offers something a lot of people have not seen before. That is just enough rounds to give you a chance to modify you dice to enact a strategy and then put it into play. The rules adequately account for two to four players, making the game equally engaging at any count. That said, the siren song of late lunch / early dinner may still win out at some point, so, there’s always that as a point of contrast.