Diceland

Diceland

Game type: strategy, dexterity (surprisingly low), unique
Designer: Toivo Rovainen, James Ernest
Publisher: Cheapass Games
Date: 2002

Diceland is a terribly clever game from Chepass Games and it breaks open a whole new genre of games, hence the difficulty describing the game type. Don't confuse this with the game by the same name released the same year by Spartaco Albertarelli. They are completely different games.

Anyhow, Diceland involves characters (be they fantasy in the Deep White Sea original set or space ships in the Space expansion or OGRE tanks in the OGRE expansion) represented by paper 8-sided solids. These remarkably resilient dice are rolled one at a time onto a table of just about any kind (pool tables are definitely ideal). The side that lands facing up is the status of that character, its facing, etc. The throwing is the dexterity part of the game, and it takes less skill than it sounds like to do this fairly well (after playing just a couple of games I was remarkably better at it). Then, dice can be rotated one face side to have various other things happen. When they get hit by weapons or spell effects or what not, they can also be rotated to other less beneficial face sides.

To my mind, this is as innovative a game system as Magic: The Gathering and the genre of collectible card games that it created. I have not seen anything like it before, and I think it will be around with us for a long time. If the dice were more easily transported (their one great weakness), and if people got over their fear about the dexterity component, this would be just as popular as MTG in my humble opinion.

--Eric_Yarnell,_ND?

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