Who would win between Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel?

Or between Black Panther and Black Widow?

Or between Loki, Mile Morales Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, and Thor in a free-for-all match?

Well, in Marvel Dice Throne, by The Op and Roxley Games, you’ll get to find out.

And as you might guess, who comes out on top will change from one play to the next. That’s what makes this dice-rolling, dice manipulating, and card playing game a hoot. With a high amount of luck and some card management, almost anything could happen to turn the tide of fortune.

 

How to play Marvel Dice Throne

The objective in Marvel Dice Throne is to be the last player standing.

All players start with a set amount of health – depending on the number of players and type of match. Players take turns rolling their custom dice, playing cards, and dealing damage to the other players. When a player’s health is reduced to 0, they’re out of the game. The remaining players keep battling until there’s only 1 player left. That player is crowned the winner.

Now, let’s back up and start at the beginning.

 

Set up

Setting up a game of Marvel Dice Throne is super simple. Just choose which Marvel character you want to play, grab that pack, open it up and you’ve got everything you need to start battling.

Each character’s custom dice, card deck, and abilities are unique to them and are perfectly themed.

Players shuffle their character’s deck of cards and draw 4 for their starting hand. They also set their Combat Points dial to 2 and their health dial to 50 (for a 1 vs 1 game or 2 vs 2 team game) or 35 for a 3-player game.

As you’re getting familiar with the different characters, it’s also helpful for players to read their character’s leaflet to discover how their unique abilities and tokens work.

 

Game play

Each character’s pack comes with a reference card that reminds players of the Turn Phases and Timing of effects. A player’s turn consists of 8 phases:

1. Upkeep Phase – resolve any status effects or abilities that trigger at the start of a player’s turn.
2. Income Phase – gain 1 combat point and draw 1 card from their deck.
3. Main Phase – spend combat points to put cards into play (upgrade cards or main phase action cards) and sell (discard) any cards to receive 1 combat point for each card sold.
4. Offensive Roll Phase – the player rolls any number of their dice up to 3 roll attempts (like Yahtzee with setting some aside for subsequent rolls) and activates a single offensive ability on their character board.
5. Targeting Roll Phase – if playing with more than 2 players, players may need to roll to see who they attack.
6. Defensive Roll Phase – if the player attacked someone, the attacked player now activates their defensive ability with a single roll attempt.
7. Main Phase (2) – the same as Main Phase (chance to spend combat points to put cards in play).
8. Discard Phase – sell cards for 1 combat point each until the player has 6 or fewer cards in hand.

While this may look like a lot of steps, the basics come down to this:

Players spend combat points to put cards in to play that either let them upgrade their abilities on their character board or do special actions. Then they roll their dice and see which of their offensive abilities they’re close to activating from the roll. They set aside some dice and choose to re-roll the others, hoping to get the right combo to activate the offensive ability they’re aiming for. Then they dish out the damage listed for that ability (and any other associated benefits) to another player. Then that other player gets a single roll for their defense and damage is issued. Then the active player can spend combat points again to put more cards into play. Then play moves on to the next player.

Of course, since each Marvel character has unique abilities, those abilities will stir things up by adding in more elements for players to keep in mind. For example, when attacking, players may also place status tokens on their victim – each of which will impact players in different ways. Plus, there are different types of damage (normal, undefendable, pure, collateral, and ultimate) that each can be reacted to in different ways.

During the dice rolling phases, players can also spend combat points to play roll phase action cards that modify or otherwise impact the results. This can be done by any player – even if that player isn’t directly involved in the attack – to alter the results.

Once a player’s health is down to 0, they’re out. With only 2 players, the other player wins. With more than 2 players, play continues until there’s only one player (or team) remaining.

 

Can the whole family enjoy Marvel Dice Throne?

I often refer to Marvel Dice Throne (and the original Dice Throne) as “battle Yahtzee”. That’s because it’s similar in having 5 dice and up to 3 rolls on your turn to get different combinations of dice – like full house, small and large straights, or sets. Plus, the Ultimate ability of each character is triggered when all 5 dice results are 6’s (like getting a Yahtzee with 6’s that we all love).

However, unlike Yahtzee, you aren’t scoring points for your dice combinations. Instead, you’re dealing different types of damage to the other players trying to knock them out.

And with that “battle” mode, the complexity of the game ratchets up from Yahtzee as well.

Since each character has their own unique dice, cards, and abilities, there’s plenty of additional rules to pick up on each game. After having played the game many times, we’re still learning. That’s because we like to choose different characters each time we play. And we imagine your family and friends would probably do the same.

In this regard, we’re happy to see that each character has a difficulty rating listed on the game box as well. The rating gives you an idea of how hard it may be to play that character because of their special abilities.

Yet it’s those special abilities (dice, tokens, and character deck) and how well they tie to each Marvel character that make the game fun to play.

As such, it becomes more than just a dice-rolling game.

Because of the dice, there’s a lot of luck involved in the game. Yet, players can mitigate or enhance that luck by using their cards at the right moments.

It seems obvious when you have an Upgrade card in your hand to play it to your character board. After all, it will help you deal more damage when you activate that ability.

However, if doing so will cause you to spend all your combat points, you may want to rethink doing so. Because you may want to hang on to some of those combat points for playing a special card during the dice rolling phases (offensive and/or defensive).

Which also leads us to another cool aspect of the game design – the card border colors.

You’ll notice on the Turn Phases reference card that the text is in different colors. These same colors are used as border colors on the cards to make it easy to know when you can play certain cards. That’s great design.

We played the game in many different configurations of players, 2-player head-to-head, 4-player teams, and multi-player free-for-all, and our favorite way to play is still 2-player head-to-head. That’s because there’s less downtime and you get to roll and play in more rapid succession.

We’ll also note that the game is sold in different character sets. So far, there’s a 4-character set that includes Thor, Loki, Spider-Man, and Scarlet Witch, a 2-character set with Captain Marvel and Black Panther, and another 2-character set with Black Widow and Doctor Strange.

You can also play any of the Marvel Dice Throne characters against the original Dice Throne Season 1 or Season 2 characters.

As they’re all standalone games, if you just want to try it out, you can grab a 2-character set and dive right in.

We love how each character’s materials are self-contained in an easy-to-grab pack. It makes it so easy to choose a character, grab the pack, and start playing. Which is also great for where I’m playing Marvel Dice Throne the most – over lunch breaks at work!

Many people at the company I work for love playing games and they really enjoy Marvel Dice Throne. So I now keep the game at the office. Over the last few weeks there have been plenty of lunchtime dice battles and I know there are many more to come.

 

How does Marvel Dice Throne score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

As just mentioned, Marvel Dice Throne is getting a lot of repeat plays at my office during lunch breaks. With 8 unique characters and everyone wanting to try playing each character, there’s a lot of replay value with this dice game.

It’s also nice that games don’t take too long. And if we’re shorter for time, we just reduce the amount of health that we start out with. The only downside to that is that it doesn’t feel as fulfilling because you don’t have the chance to get as many upgrades and cards in play before you’re knocked out.

If you’re a Marvel fan and love rolling dice, Marvel Dice Throne may be a great fit for your family game collection.

We’d like to thank The Op for a review copy of Marvel Dice Throne.