Top 10 Best Dice Games

Dice and games, games and dice...they just go together. Here are my nominations for the ten best dice games, in no particular order:

Qwixx

Fun to play, hard to spell. You move higher on 2 tracks, and at the same time lower on 2 tracks, hoping for the right die roll in the right color. And you can even score on your opponent's turn.

Rattlebones

In Rattlebones, you actually create your own dice, thanks to an ingenious method of replacable die faces, and then use them to collect tokens in a creepy carnival.

Sorcerer City

You choose which tracks to advance in order to score. Sounds simple, but since one track affects another, it's really a fun and challenging mechanic.

Roll For the Galaxy

Your dice give you choices of actions, from exploring new worlds to shipping planetary resources. The trick here is guessing which actions your opponents will pick so you can piggyback on their dice.

Super Skill Pinball

I've never been a pinball fan, but I like using dice to decide which bumpers to hit for maximum ball time. More fun than actual pinball.

Sagrada

Sagrada wins the prize for most beautiful game. Draft the jewel-colored dice by color and number to try to create the highest-scoring pattern on your stained glass window.

Pirates Dice

Yes, it's just Liar's Dice with a Pirates of the Caribbean overlay, but the barnacle-encrusted cups have a cool texture, and the classic gameplay is still fun. Get yourself two copies and play with eight people for an awesome experience.

Dice Town

A Wild West overlay makes this game interesting as you choose which of the six stations on the street to try for. You need to roll the most of one face to become the Sheriff, pan for gold, have a shoot-out...

Martian Dice

The Martians are the good guys here, trying to roll and capture chickens, cows, and humans without being overpowered by tanks. A push-your-luck game.

Dice City

Not to be confused with Dice Town, players buy cards to lay out in their town grid, creating mines to roll resources, public buildings to roll special powers, and armies to roll attacks on other towns.

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Game Review -- Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger

I received this cooperative tabletop game for my birthday. It would seem to be the perfect gift, since my siblings and I so enjoyed the Choose Your Own Adventure book series when it was a brand new thing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, the CYOA books told a story in the second person, so that "you" were the protagonist. Then every few pages would end with a choice: if you open the door, turn to page 27, if you go back to the library, turn to page 42. You would make a choice, turn to the appropriate page, and continue the story. This went on until you came to an ending, but then you could go back and read the story again, make different choices, and wind up with a completely different ending.

This was amazing! A book with choices you made that turned out differently every time. And the board game does a good job of replicating that vibe. Through the use of numbered cards, you make choices that take you through different scenarios to the five stages, stopping places, really, of the story, all in your quest to solve a mystery surrounding a strange house.

It's certainly not a game of complex strategy. Some choices might be logical, but many are purely random as to whether they turn out well or badly for you. But the fact that "you" are the protagonist makes it easy to immerse yourself in the story, giving it a tingle of anxiety when you send yourself into a dangerous or frightening situation. At least it does for me as I try to imagine what I would really do if I was there. The ease of play also makes it perfect for game nights that include younger players, though we played with strictly adults.

The original book series that began so wonderfully soon degenerated into a ho-hum experience, due to many of the subsequent titles that lost sight of the elements that made the whole idea so appealing. Later books contained overlong narratives with fewer choices and unnecessary gimmicks, like endless loops, teaser pages you could never reach, and lack of bad endings. As if we kids couldn't take it when our character died from making foolish mistakes! And copycat books from other publishers were even worse. It's like they didn't "get" the appeal of the original.

And that is the one real problem with the CYOA game. It includes several failsafes to ensure that you win, that you avoid the bad endings and come to a good one. When you come to an ending where you die, and the game does include some, you are instructed to immediately go back to your last card and choose again. Why? If we die, we can take it, just like we could take it back when we read the books. Just like we can take it if we fail in any cooperative game.

Not only that, but if you happen to succesfully reach the end of a stage without having found every useful item in the game, you are given a chance to go back and search some more. Really? Why then give us choices at all if you're going to micromanage us into picking the right choice in the end?

In fact, because there is only one story in the game, the failsafes completely take away the game's replayability. And who wants to buy a game you can only play once? Oh, there is a die roll involved at times, to get you out of a dangerous situation. And it is possible to fail enough times to die. But, hey, just go back to the previous card, right? Wrong! Better to lose and then vow to play again tomorrow to show that game who's boss.

But fear not, reader. There is a simple workaround to fix this. When you die, ignore that return-to-the-last-card stuff. Dead is dead, no do-overs. And if you neglected to find the sword or the flashlight, that's your tough luck. Save it for your next trip to the House of Danger.

You'll still eventually go through every possible scenario in the game, but at least you'll have multiple plays before you do and get your money's worth of a simple, fun game to pass an hour with.

All contents are strictly my humble opinion.

My Top 10 Party Games

Ever since publishing My Top 10 Favorite Board Games, I have been dissatisfied with the result. There are just too many fabulous games that had to be left out of the list. To solve that problem, I've divided the world's greatest games into categories, the first of which is presented here as the Top 10 party games.

Time's Up is a long party game, but the progressively harder rounds make it well worth it. Start out by describing a famous, or not-so-famous person, progress to giving only a one-word clue, and end up with sounds and body language only. There is also a version where you have to guess titles instead of names, and I enjoy it, but the original is still my favourite. Take a look at the elusive Fourth Round of this game.

Tags is probably the best 'see-how-many-you-can-name' party game I've tried. The changing letter tiles ensure the game is different every time, while the ability to pick up unguessed words after your friend has failed makes for lots of bragging rights. And unlike some games, this one is not dumbed down enough to exclude the tough letters. Can't think of a villain who starts with Q? Too bad, I can!

When you first try Puns of Anarchy, you may think it's impossible. But don't give up; you'll soon get the hang of it. Alter your cards by writing over parts of the song title, movie, celebrity, or whatever is written there to create phrases that fit the categories. This is easily the best of the "choose-the-funniest-answer" genre, probably because actual creativity is required.

Dixit is a very popular game, and deserves to be. The bizarre but beautiful cards are open to limitless descriptive phrases, but you have to come up with one that only some of your friends will guess. Make it too hard, and you score zero. Make it too easy and you score, you guessed it, zero. Bluff other players with a great card on your opponent's turn and you steal his points. And when the game is over, you can spend a long time just looking through the cards. One caveat: this game has a load of expansions, but some of them have better cards than others. You might want to search the internet for a preview before choosing your expansion.

Wise and Otherwise repeats the game mechanic of Balderdash, but is a lot more fun. Instead of a word, you get a phrase to complete in order to bluff the other players, always beginning with, "There's an old Croatian saying..." Or Swedish, or Jamaican, or whatever. Maybe something gets lost in the translation, but the results are head-scratchingly hilarious.

This is an older game, but I've always liked it. The highest-scoring clues are the ones that use the fewest letter. You really have to stretch your mind to shrink your clues and still leave them guessable. Besides which, the other team can steal. And the write-on, wipe-off board with doors that open and close is cool.

Yes, it's pictionary. But having to incorporate cutout cats in your drawing sets The Cat Game above the rest. Cats are always funny.

Another impossible game, until you get the hang of it. You must give a three-word clue to the word on your card. But you must use the random word you get from another card. To get players to say 'bone,' you might have to start with "kid," as in, "kids eat this." Then the other players each throw out a one-word guess, one of which, say, "candy," you use in your next three-word clue. Thus, "candy causes these," can lead to "cavities hurt me," can lead to "pain when breaks," can finally get you to "bone." Whew!

That great old stand-by Taboo would've made the list if not for Banned Words. It's the same describe-the-word-without-saying-that-other-word mechanic, only the other team chooses the words you can't say. And you don't know what they are until you say them! Really!

In Funglish, you give clues by picking them out of a pile of tiles and showing them to the guessers. It's a mad scramble to find "dangerous," "European," and "dead," and hope they get "Dracula" from it.

No list would be complete without Honorable Mentions, in this case, Chronology, Sketchy, Codenames Duel, and Artbox. I haven't tried Pictures or Draw Your Own Conclusions, but I have high hopes for each of those.

My Top 10 Tabletop Games

Every serious gamer has a list of favourites, those games he can play over and over again and never grow tired of them. Well, almost never.

Here's my list of the best of the best, not in any particular order; it's tough enough to narrow it down to just 10 without worrying about who comes in first. If you're looking to get into gaming, or just need something new to add to your already-robust collection, these are my suggestions.

Note: I use the term "tabletop" because I'm including board games, card games, and party games, but not video games.

Dragonmaster is out of print and highly sought after. The trick-taking and not-taking mechanism resembles Hearts but is infinitely more satisfying, due to the strategical necessity of choosing the right time to play Staff of Power. And when you're through playing, you can just gaze at the artwork on the cards. Or try some of these Game Variants.

Time's Up is a long party game, but the progressively harder rounds make it well worth it. Start out by describing a famous, or not-so-famous person, progress to giving only a one-word clue, and end up with sounds and body language only. There is also a version where you have to guess titles instead of names, and I enjoy it, but the original is still my favourite. Take a look at the elusive Fourth Round of this game.

No one can beat my brother-in-law at Quacks of Quedlinburg. It's a testimony to the fun of drawing ingredient tokens out of a bag without (you hope) making your cauldron explode that I keep on playing, even when I know I'll lose.

The movement system in Fearsome Floors is great fun, especially when it's the monster that's moving. Try to position your terrified investigators so the creature goes for the other guy and not you.

The goal and gameplay in Villainous is different for each player, so some characters are more fun to use than others. But I can't resist the Disney vibe. Every expansion comes with new villains to try out. Help the Wicked Queen create her potion, or Hades free the Titans, or Ratigan become King of England -- it all depends on which villain you choose. Plus the snippets of dialogue and phrases from my favourite movies printed on the cards give me a Disney thrill.

Tags is probably the best 'see-how-many-you-can-name' party game I've tried. The changing letter tiles ensure the game is different every time, while the ability to pick up unguessed words after your friend has failed makes for lots of bragging rights. And unlike some games, this one is not dumbed down enough to exclude the tough letters. Can't think of a villain who starts with Q? Too bad, I can!

Now here's a game I can win, and often do. Stone Age requires worker placement to get the raw materials to buy cards, tools, farms, and huts that all score victory points. Don't run out of food, or you'll be forced to spend those precious resources to feed your people. There are plenty of different strategies to try. I won't reveal mine, but only say that I'm always up for this game.

I couldn't leave out the Totally Insane Card Game. Think Uno on steroids. Alongside the familiar Reverse and Skip cards you'll find the Totally Useless Card, the This Hand Is Dead card, and everybody's favourite, the This Is Not My Card card. Fun, frenzied, and frustrating, play can take hours or, and this really happened, about a minute and a half. And it's only sold on their official website.

When you first try Puns of Anarchy, you may find it impossible. But don't give up; you'll soon get the hang of it. Alter your cards by writing over parts of the song title, movie, celebrity, or whatever is written there to create phrases that fit the categories. This is easily the best of the "choose-the-funniest-answer" genre, probably because actual creativity is required.

Dixit is a very popular game, and deserves to be. The bizarre but beautiful cards are open to limitless descriptive phrases, but you have to pick the one that only some of your friends will guess. Make it too hard, and you score zero. Make it too easy and you score, you guessed it, zero. Bluff other players with a great card on your opponent's turn and you steal his points. And when the game is over, you can spend a long time just looking through the cards. One caveat: this game has a load of expansions, but some of them have better cards than others. You might want to search the internet for a preview before choosing your expansion.

Making a list of only 10 is exceptionally difficult. I regret having to leave off Fit To Print, Inklings, Last Will, Carcasonne, Wise and Other Wise, Istanbul, Museum Pictura, Galaxy Trucker, and so many others. But too many great games to name just 10 is a plus. So get out there and try these games. You'lll soon have your own list of faves to play again and again.

Darkwing Duck Joins the Wingspan Board Game

Maybe you've played the board game called Wingspan, in which players compete for bird cards of various species to fill up their boards and gain victory points. But I'll bet you haven't seen this card, created by a Disney Afternoon fan:

New Game Added to the Sherlock Holmes Board Game List

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As both a gamer and a staunch fan of the Great Detective, I try to keep track of all the Sherlock Holmes games out there. Here's a new one that, although I haven't played it personally, garnered some fine reviews. More...