Quarriors!
Players take on the roles of Quarriors —mighty mystical warriors—who have the power to capture dangerous quarry from the untamed Wilds! They must conjure the mysterious powers of Quiddity, cast powerful spells, and summon their creatures to battle if they hope to overcome rivals and earn their rightful place as the Champion!
The game features 130 custom molded dice, 53 creature and spell cards and everything needed to play for 2 to 4 players.
In this game of "Uber Strategic Hexahedron Monster Combat Mayhem," players compete to capture the most powerful Spells and Creatures (in the form of dice!) from the Wilds and add them to their collection. Players then roll their powerful cubes and summon them into play to battle each of their opponent's forces. Strategy is key in assembling a force that you can roll to victory!
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Quarriors! is one of those games that doesn’t come along very often. It has a ton of very nice dice (with a few exceptions), nice quality cards with a great art style, and a lot of built in fun.
Quarriors! is the new dice-building game from Wizkids. The game is unique in that everyone builds their specific bag of dice from the same pool of dice available in the middle of the table. Think Dominion, but with dice. One key difference though, is that each of the dice, having six sides, has the chance to give you one of six different results. For example, a dice that is representing a creature has only a few of it’s six sides with that creature on them. The rest of the sides may contain Quiddity (money) or even a special action.
What this means is that you won’t always get the creature, even though you have that creature’s dice.
I am normally not a huge fan of luck based games, but I feel that Quarriors! does an excellent job of using just enough luck to keep the game fresh and fun, but allows the player the ability to strategically build his bag of dice. It can be frustrating when you don’t get the dice you need, but when you do…Look out!
The fast paced game-play goes a long way toward keeping the luck part of the game from drowning it in frustration. You can play four players in about 25-30 mins. If you have a bad game, reset, get some new cards/dice on the table, and try again.
Quarriors! is a great game for gamers of all levels. It is my 12 year old son’s favorite game. (he has beaten me 15 out of 20 games.) And my wife even enjoys it. Give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed!
Game play: 9
The game is easy to learn, plays quickly, and is overall just a lot of fun.
Replayability: 9
There are three variants of each of the ten creatures in the game and four variants of each of the five spells. This means a different game every time you play!
Quality: 9
The quality of the game’s components is top notch. The dice are etched, not stickered, which is a huge plus for a game with over 130 dice. The only exception to this is that the portal dice are a bit hard to read because of the size of the die and the pattern they chose to put on it. The cards are of good stock and filled with nice artwork.
Let’s get some basics down, anyone who has played a deck building game in the last few years will be fairly familiar with the basics of Quarriors. This is a deck building game, but with dice. This, of course brings a unique twist to the game. In a card-based game, each card you purchase for your deck grants exactly the same resource each and every time it is played (a gold will always be a gold). However, in Quarriors, each die has several different sides to each die. When you roll a Quake Dragon die, only 3 sides of that die actually represent the Quake Dragon creature. The other sides will give you different resources like money (called Quiddity) or possible re-rolls. This does add an element of randomness to the game, but in my opinion it also adds another element of excitement.
First impressions:
I was quite impressed with this game from the first time I saw it. It comes in a beautiful metal tin shaped and colored like one of the dice. Mine looks like a giant version of the Quake Dragon die. It has a sturdy card paper wrapping with very nice artwork and a few tongue-in-cheek jokes for those who care to look closely at the writing.
Inside you find four cloth bags of different colors that are sturdy enough to hold up to many games without tearing. There is a cardboard score card to track points with although it can be slightly confusing at first glance. The score track zig-zags back and forth down the card. 1-5 track from left to right, then the next line with 6-10 goes from right to left and so on down the board. There are also four wooden cubes, one of each color, for tracking each player on the score board. The instruction manual is fully colored and easy enough to read if you can keep track of all the odd names and terminology (Quiddity is money, Quarry are dice in the Wild, etc.)
Dice and Cards:
Holy moly there are a lot of dice in this thing, 130 total. The dice are by far the most impressive feature of this game, each creature and spell has a completely unique set of dice for it and they are all quite nice. In total the game includes cards and dice for 10 creatures, 5 spells, and the 3 basic cards of Quiddity, Portal, and Assistant. The standard setup of the game calls for 7 creatures and 3 spells in addition to the basic cards. In order to avoid the game becoming stale, each creature has 3 variations and each spell has 4 variations. Because of this, the possible combinations for play number in the hundreds of thousands.
Bonus: Quaxos Promo:
There is a promo pack of cards available that will net you one new variation for each of the Scavenging Goblin, Warrior of the Quay, and Quake Dragon creatures. I would say these variations are interesting at best. They are each designed to interact with other creatures in the Quaxos promo. First of all, each Quaxos creature takes no damage from any other Quaxos creature and they all gain +1 attack and defense for each other Quaxos creature in play. Aside from that, each creature has another ability who’s usefulness is highly variable.
The Scavenging Goblin give +1 money when summoned for each Quaxos creature in play.
The Warrior of the Quay when summoned allows you to summon a second creature in your active area for free.
And the Quake Dragon will, when summoned, destroy another creature outright and score a point for you.
Overall, I would say that if you are a huge fan of Quarriors like myself, the Quaxos Promo pack is a must buy, but anyone else can feel free to pass.
So just admit it, you want play/buy this game because it has a lot of dice.
What gamer doesn’t like rolling dice? Quarriors! takes the fundamental urge to roll dice and mixes it with the recently popular deck-building strategy for entertainment galore. The game consists of both cards and dice, but rather than collecting cards to build a deck, players collect dice to build a pool and use the cards as a reference. The interesting twist is that each dice represents a host of game options due to the multiple faces available – not only are you hoping to pull the dice you want, but also to roll a favorable result on that die. Fortunately the player interaction is fun and straight-forward and thus Quarriors! is just plain fun.
Replay: Great! Similar to the deck-building games available, Quarriors! has replay value built into it by way of providing more reference cards and dice than are used in a single game. The very fact that your turn also hinges on the roll of the dice make for a high replay value. The game is addicting with all the dice rolling.
Components: Fun artwork, smaller than average dice with hard to read details, would benefit from a play mat. The artwork is definitely light-hearted and has a graphic novel feel with decent graphic design. You can’t complain for the price point, but the dice are smaller than your typical d6 and the details stamped on the faces can be hard to determine at a glance. I’d imagine folks with poor eyesight would also have their issues with the dice details. I’m a fan of play mats in general, but Quarriors! would benefit even more than its deck-building brother as you can’t easily turn your dice or change their facing like you could with cards to keep track of what area of the player’s space they should be in.
Learning Curve: Turn by turn: very simple; strategy: medium. Once a hand or two has been played, your turn flies by making this a very easy game to pick-up and is part of its addictive quality. The overall strategy is very similar to a deck-building game as you choose which dice to add your pool, but is less strategic as your still roll those dice for a random result. Some of the card interactions could be explained better in the rulebook, but nothing game breaking.
Defense:
Dice are random – yup;
Dice are random – I like dice;
Dice are random – re-roll for another answer.
Obviously there are folks who will not like this game; don’t take the game too seriously. Based on the artwork and snippets from the designer/publisher, they don’t intend for you to take it too seriously either.
Personal:
I haven’t played a ton (yet) as the game is still new, but it is definitely going to take a top spot for the quick, easy, and fun games I like to have on hand to fill in the free-time. I think I’ve said this before, but I love rolling dice so Quarriors! had my name written all over it from the beginning. I also think there is some room for improvement, so I’ll be keeping my eye on what may be in store for the future.
I want to preface this by saying that although I love dice, dice do not love me. Dice do not even like me. In fact, dice take an odd, particular sort of pleasure– nay, delight, in destroying my dreams any time I pick them up to roll them. Friends laugh at this when I tell them, until they see it in action. Seven workers on the Gold spot in Stone Age, Sharv? Why would you need to roll so many for one resource? ::Rolls:: 1,1,1,2,1,2,3. “Oh.”
That said, I really enjoy rolling dice. I think most gamers do. It’s strange, how although so many gamers claim dice games and luck games aren’t as good as “pure” strategy games, they still play games with dice, treating it as a shady back-alley deal to be hidden. “Kingsburg? Okay, okay, but don’t tell anyone! Pass the dice.”
In that vein, I ordered a copy of Quarriors for myself before I had actually played it. The next day a friend brought their copy over and I played a 4-player game.
Setting up the game itself is interesting. So many little tiny bags of dice to open up and randomizing the Quarry (selection of cards to be used for the game). Basically you will have a small number of spells and a larger number of creatures available each time you play, with the cards dictating which dice represent which abilities.
Once those are set up, you take a starting pool of dice into your bag. (If you’ve played Thunderstone, think 6 militia and a handful of cheap utilities).. A bunch of Quiddity dice (read: money) and a few utility dice which can either be Quiddity, re-rolls, or very weak creatures. You jumble them up in your bag and you’re ready to start.
During the game you will, each turn, randomly draw 6 dice from your bag and roll them. Then you use Quiddity to either summon creatures, cast spells, or purchase new dice to expand and improve your repertoire. Unlike Thunderstone, where a dagger may be used either for an Attack bonus OR gold, in Quarriors, each die will (generally) only give you one effect, making decision making a bit streamlined.
You may also roll portals, which basically allow you to draw extra dice from your bag and roll those as well, allowing you to afford larger, better things, or creatures, which are the way you win.
The attacking and defending mechanism in Quarriors is one aspect I am not thrilled with. Basically, you summon (a) creature(s) and they attack every other player. If a player has no creatures, nothing happens to them. Your creatures wander up to them, look around, and then go “Oh, sorry. Thought you might have had something over here for me to poke at. I’ll let myself out.” If they DO have any creatures, however, your opponent totals up the attack value of all your creatures and has to assign that as damage to their creatures.
Then play passes around the table until it comes back to you. If any of your creatures have survived the other players’ turns, they score Glory (read: Victory) points for you. Then they go away. Yep, nothing sticks around here (except spells). Everything is a one-turn-wonder. This prevents one player from simply popping out a handful of dragons and nasty things and trouncing everything else anyone tries to do.
The reason I don’t really care for it, is that it feels less interactive than using blockers/defenders/etc.. Once your turn is over, you just listen every turn to see how much damage you have to assign and figure out what dies. The only decisions you have to make is what dies first and if you have any spells prepared.
Spells are the exception to the “nothing sticks around” rule I mentioned earlier. If you roll a spell die and get the spell symbol, you can keep that spell “readied” indefinitely. When something happens that makes it useful, you can cast that spell and then the die goes back into your cycle of rolling. This is handy for two reasons: first it means you don’t have to have the die rolled the specific turn you want to use it, and two it thins your dice bag out while the spell is prepared, giving you better chances to get those big, nasty creatures you want to summon.
You also get to thin your dice out each time you have a creature survive a round and score for you. Generally, you get rid of those basic quiddity-only dice from the start of the game.
The creatures have interesting effects as well, making things cost more for opponents, or making all of your other creatures stronger, or allowing you to swap them for an opponent’s creatures that have already been used. All in all, with the cards changing each turn, it really makes for a nice change in gameplay each time.
I took a few points off on components because some of the dice are just very difficult to read. The portal dice especially – you have a big swirl on it, with a number in the center, but the 1′s and 2′s look very similar and are so tiny it can be difficult to figure out what you rolled.
Pros
Fun, fast gameplay.
Great replayability.
No sense of “picking on” or “being vindictive” to other players.
Cons
Sometimes difficult to read the dice.
Limited interaction between turns.
Quarriors has been called a dice builder game. It does play like some deck builders but this isn’t a bad thing in my opinion. Simply by utilizing the dice, there is a fairly large amount of luck involved, but that doesn’t mean there is no strategy in this game. It’s a fast paced and fairly short play time game, but it’s fun and has a lot of replayability.
The components of this game are high quality. The art on the cards are well done and imaginative, the dice are very well made as well as quite abundant, and it even comes in a nice metal box. A score card as well as wooden place markers are included. The packaging and presentation are convincing enough to make the purchase, but the fun keeps you from regretting it.
Game play is pretty simple. You roll your dice, use the points or spell or creature that is showing on each dice, then use them for yourself or against your opponents to score points to win. Word of caution though, the rule book isn’t the most easy read. It is not complicated, but some things are out of order from the way I figured they would be presented, or just not very clear. After a full playthrough or two everything will be fine though.
The game can turn into a game of “first person to get the dragons” pretty fast though. It’s easy to go for the big monsters and just go for the win, but this game offers many other interesting spells and creatures. Remember your other options and take out the dragon hoarders.
Pros:
-High quality components
-A lot of fun
-Short game
-Easy to learn, teach and play
-Game makes it an ease to play multiple times in a row and still want to play again the next week
Cons:
-It can feel like there are not enough different variations on your card options at times. There is an expansion for this out and another one on the way which could resolve this issue pretty easy.
-If you don’t like dice/luck based games, this may not be for you. Lots of luck, but you still have options and strategies.
Conclusion:
I purchased this game based only upon a few reviews and the packing presentation and description on the box. I mean, a game with 130 dice is enticing. I was not disappointed. I keep wanting to play this game and I’m planning on picking up both expansions. It’s an easy game that will entertain. Worth the money and worth the time.
I’ll start of by saying I’m a fan of both of these designers. So when I found out that Mike Elliot and Eric Lang teamed up and created this game.,I was ready to get it (it was pretty much a sold copy). So when the doors opened at 10am on Thursday for the GenCon Main Floor, it was a bee-line to the WizKids booth to get in on a demo.
The rules are available to download, but here’s a summery:
Players start with 12 dice, use 6 per turn, roll and spend Quiddity for new dice to increase you pool in the bag. Bring out dudes to score glory if they can survive. Most glory wins.
It’s called a dice-building game. I loved Dominion when it came out, moved on to Thunderstone and Ascension (also a huge fan of the new Rune Age from FFG too, my other rock star purchase from GenCon). So I was really excited about this because it had 130 DICE! It brought back the feeling I had when Dragon Dice came out many years back.
Here are my thoughts (the review part), FWIW:
• The cards with the dice give it great replayability. It will be easy to expand this by just creating a new card for the specific dice. (as evident with the new announced expansion, 11 new creature cards for the dice in the core set). I’m looking forward to some creative fans to start making some home-brew cards. Get cracking now!
• I love chucking dice, this game has plenty of that.
• They call it a dice-building game, yeah, I see that, but this doesn’t feel like Dominion and such. It is it’s own creature. Everyone who has tried it and played other “deck-building” games has loved it, but says it has a different feel, which I think is good.
• Yes, it’s random, so what, it’s short enough that it doesn’t over-stay it’s welcome.
• Plays very different with the number of players. A 4 player game seems to be over before it gets started. Many have chatted about playing to 20 Glory instead of 12. We are going to try that next week, but I’m concerned it really won’t make that much of a difference.
• People have mentioned start player and culling dice are issues. I haven’t really seen it. Sometimes the dice roll you way, sometimes they don’t.
• The tin that the game comes it doesn’t make it very stackable when bring other games to game night. I could take it or leave it. When the expansion comes out, the tin will stay home when it travels
• The score markers are really close in color (blue and black). I replaced them with meeples that the colors are not as close
• The dice bag opening is kinda small for my fat hands, so you just shake out your six dice or scrunch the bag to grab from the bottom.
The bottom line is my group and I love this game and I will play it anytime someone wants too. Lots of dice, well-designed, excellent production from WizKids, I can’t wait for the new expansion for those demon dice and corrupt Quiddity. If you are not a fan of random dice games, pass on this. But if you are looking for a fun game where dice and combos are aplenty, pick this up. And 130 DICE!
So, I’ve finally got the darn game in the mail today. People all over the internet proclaim how amazingly easy it is to play, and it really is to be honest. I watched a video and read the book real quickly to get the rules, and in about 5 minutes or so I’d gotten my wife (who speaks a language other than English as her first language) to know how to play the game. So, when people day that it takes about 5 minutes to learn they really are not kidding.
On first glimpse, the game comes in a very nice dice-like tin. The tin is pretty well constructed all in all and the art work on it is rather pretty nice. The components fit rather snugly in the tin itself, and I haven’t tried to put the expansion in it yet, but I figure it MAY be a tight fit. Again, I haven’t tried this yet – so we will see in a little bit. Opening the box, you get bombared with dice and cards and such. Its all neatly put together, and easy to figure out what’s what.
Gameplay wise, the game is rather fun. You start the game with 8 white dice, which represent money, and 4 brown dice – which represent potential money or a potential tiny creature. The objective of the game is to score Glory points, you do this by starting your turn with your creatures in play. After you find your dice, put together your field. You start with the Assistant card, Quiddity card and a Portal card for sure. After that, you flip over 3 random spell cards – placing any spells that share the same art work to the bottom of the deck. Then you flip creatures over, putting any creatures with the same art work on the bottom of the deck.
A turn consists of drawing dice, rolling them and doing a variety of effects based on what you roll. If you roll a creature, pay its level cost and put it to your active field. If you roll a spell’s effect, do the effect on the spell. If you roll money, well – you have money to capture quiddity (dice) from the field.
I won’t go too much into the gameplay, but suffice to say its rather simple. Overall its a very fun game. Unlike other deck building games, you still have a bit of luck no matter what cards you end up buying. In our first game, I had OWNED more creatures in my deck than my wife did, but she rolled HER creatures more than I did. This led to her just beating the snot out of me. The second game was much closer, but the randomness factor makes the game more interesting I’d say.
My gripe with the game is a bit small, really. Some of the numbers and pictures on the cards are a little too small or distorted to see clearly, something both my wife and I had some issue with. My other problem is clean up. With so many dice flying around the floor/table clean up, and putting them into their bags, could be a bit troublesome. The art work on the cards is cartoony, but fun and the gameplay itself is really simple and very interesting.
So, if you can’t tell, I really enjoyed the game. Who would I recommend it too? That’s pretty easy – most people. Non-gamers will enjoy the simplicity of the game and the nice colorful artwork on the cards. People who enjoy Dominion-style games will enjoy that each card they buy essentially is a few more cards than just one. And the randomness makes for a good equalizer I think. Altogether, I give Quarriors! two big thumbs up.
Deckbuilding games are huge. The perfect combination of a little randomness (i.e. which cards will I draw?) and good strategic choice (i.e. which cards do I buy?) make for a really compelling package.
But, what if you make a dice building game? Quarriors! answers that question. Quarriors! is a highly random, very quick playing, and highly entertaining game.
Know this going in. It’s really random.
It’s random. You need to be okay with that (and you should be, it’s fun!).
You start with 12 dice, each custom with sides that give you currency to buy things, the ability to re-roll dice, etc. On your turn you can buy one of a certain number of dice out in front of you. The game works much like Dominion in that the dice available for purchase each game are different. Furthermore, the dice are further modified by having different cards/rules each game. There is a TON of variety in Quarriors!
You can also summon monsters, which you put in front of you. Somewhat like Magic: The Gathering, monsters battle automatically when summoned. Players earn points if their monsters survive an entire round based on the monster.
So, you add the dice you bought into your bag, draw 6 more, roll them, buy stuff, summon monsters. That’s it. It’s really that simple! The act of rolling dice is a lot of fun. Combining deckbuilding with dice and some additional variety on top of that is really entertaining. Plus, the components are outstanding. Great art on the cards and tons of custom dice.
If you want a quick game while setting up the next big Euro, get Quarriors! It’s also a great lunch game, a fun game to play with kids, or just a fun romp to play while enjoying a beverage with friends.
Although this game didn’t jump out and SCREAM “AWESOME!” during our play sessions, my wife and daughter somewhat enjoyed the game.
This was another one that my daughter (age 7) had been requesting for about 5-6 months. I kept putting it off, because it looked like it might just be out of her range of play. After playing other games with her though, and seeing her work out some strategies and whatnot, I figured I’d let her get it.
Unboxing was fun, as she just giggled with glee over all of the dice. She loved the cards and artwork as well (and I agree). I did notice a few minor imperfections in one or two dice, but nothing worth complaining about. I did not, however, care for the tin as a storage option. That was barely functional for storing the dice, and a complete waste at trying to organize anything (without rebagging each individual set of dice, which we were not interested in).
I removed the Oozes and the Quake Dragon for first play with the family, watched a few videos on how to play, and set the game up. Setup went a bit faster than I expected, only 2 cards had me looking harder than I should have been for the appropriate dice (Hint – don’t always go strictly by color, look for the creature/spell symbols instead and it will be easier to match with cards).
Within about 10 minutes I had the game set up and ready to go, explained the basics to my wife and daughter, and off we went.
Still had to check the rulebook on occasion, as when we would purchase creatures/spells from the “Wilds”, and then get the opportunity to summon them, we forgot to discard after scoring. This caused me to get a “runaway” train of monsters quickly in the first game, and I raced to 20 points (only wife and I were playing at this point).
My daughter joined, and I double checked the rules, and we played game #2. This one took longer, and required a lot more planning once we started playing right. My daughter got a bit frustrated early on, trying to figure out which dice were better than others (but she did start to grasp it better towards the end). She also got hung up rolling a bunch of quiddity (the game’s currency) and not much for creatures. She also wanted to buy purple and pink dice (her favorite colors), without caring (at first) about what it actually did…lol. This of course, didn’t help her much.
This game, my wife took the win, with some smart creature and spell purchases (boosting defense and making it very hard to destroy her creatures before they scored) and good luck of the dice. I tried to mount a comeback, but it was too little too late. When she hit the 15 point mark, I was around 9 points.
My wife was a bit “meh” on the game. She enjoyed the second game more (of course she did, she won!), but said it wasn’t a game she would insist on playing.
My daughter, beginning to grasp the gameplay and importance of the dice/creature statistics, wanted to play a third game, but it was already past her bedtime. Since then, she and I have played 2 other games of it, and although she still has yet to win, she is getting closer and does enjoy the game (and asked for the expansion, Quarmageddon).
Myself, I found the game INTERESTING. It wasn’t my favorite game of my collection, nor my favorite purchase this year. But, I love dice. And I like magic/creature combat games. This one kind of reminded me of playing Magic: The Gathering with dice, crossed with a bit of “deck builder” mechanic in it. I’m not all that familiar with many deck building games, as my experience is limited to Thunderstone (online version) and “Eaten By Zombies”, but I enjoyed that aspect of culling dice that I didn’t want anymore, to increase the chances of pulling the better dice I had purchased. Only being able to cull dice when you score (up to the number of creatures you scored with) was a nice feature, imo.
I’d rate this game a solid 7/10. It didn’t make anyone jump out of their seats and holler with joy, but it was a solid and mostly enjoyable experience. A few rules and abilities required some reading and faq/rules browsing online, which slowed things down on just a few occasions. As people learn more of the cards/dice/abilities, it will only serve to improve the gameplay, however. The rules aren’t the worst I’ve read, but watching a gameplay/how-to video made it much easier to figure out how things should progress.
Expansions should, theoretically, help the game, because the one negative that did really seem to stand out, was that after setup I noticed only 3 types of dice that weren’t used. So although there APPEARS to be more creatures and spells, in all actuality there are 3 strengths of each creature, all using the same dice. To be fair, however, each strength/version of a spell/creature has unique abilitie(s) on the card, so it does get changed up. For the price, though, I don’t think the variety was good enough, nor the tin a good way of storing everything.
There are so many things that I love about this game that trying to pick and choose among them is harder than you might think. Where to begin? Well, let’s start with the beginning, shall we?
The first thing I love about this game is the design of the box/tin itself. The box itself is a die, representing one of the most powerful monsters in the game. You could literally roll the tin as a die itself, except that it isn’t EXACTLY like a die. The bottom is indented to provide a base, and there is some edging around the opening of the tin. But the tin isn’t truly meant to be rolled itself, so moving on, yes?
The game tin in itself is elegant, in that it can contain the entirety of the game in one neat package, and is arranged in a way so that you can put everything back into the tin easily once you pull everything out. The game comes with everything you need to keep all the dice inside separated, which is a huge bonus. Oh, did I mention this was a dice game? Oh, is this ever a dice game.
The best way to describe Quarriors (as I’ve heard it described so many times before) is a deck-building game using dice instead of cards. I guess in that respect you could call it a dice pool building game instead, but the game DOES use cards. The difference is that it uses cards to represent what the dice actually are, in terms of monsters, spells and the game’s resident currency, Quiddity. Quiddity is used both to buy and summon monsters; you can’t do anything without Quiddity.
What I appreciate most is how the game designers came up with a way of making the dice represent different things. Since you can’t change what the dice are (the faces are carved in, so one type of die will always have the same symbols), you change what the dice represent by the use of the cards. Each monster and spell has several different variants that can be selected during the start of the game, and they all have special abilities that can come into play, either naturally or by rolling a burst (represented by a * or ** symbol on the die and card). This lends a lot of replayability to the game, so that you don’t get used to one die being the same all the time.
The combat system is simple, but fair. If you roll a monster symbol and enough quiddity to summon it, you can summon it to the field. It then attacks all the monsters on the field. Not the player itself, but the monsters. And it attacks all monsters at once. If the attack beats the defense of a defending monster, it goes away. There is only attack damage; there is no defensive damage returned. Every player’s monsters are attacked at once, so there is no favortism, and if you summon a monster, you HAVE to attack. This is important because you earn victory points by having your monsters survive a single turn, and if they’re still on your field of play when your turn comes around again, you score the monster for its glory (victory point) value, and it goes away. Monsters are not permanent in this game, which forces you to live in the moment rather than planning long-term.
Something else to note about monsters in this game; they have level! Yep, that’s right, your monsters can be comparatively weak or strong depending upon what you roll. Monsters can range from level 1 to level 3, depending upon what you roll, and can have varying attack and defense values for each level. The catch is that the strong a monster you roll, the more quiddity you need to pay to summon it, which means you have less left to buy monsters and spells. So sometimes you have to decide whether you want to score points, or prepare a stronger arsenal.
Quarriors is a quick game; you can get through a two-player game in a good half-hour to 45 minutes, and three and four-player games can end just as quickly. This means you can get in several games, which is good if you play people that like to play two out of three sets. There’s a lot of random luck in this game due to die rolling, but it doesn’t really feel that way as you play, as the choices you make in what monsters and spells to buy with your quiddity can make a world of difference.
Where this game really shines, however, is in its potential for expansions. There are already a few expansions out on the market, and the creators have taken the trouble to make them easy to integrate into the base game. Couple that with a game that is already easy to carry with you anywhere you go, and you can literally have a pick-up game of Quarriors just about anywhere.
The only detraction of the game I have is that sometimes, the die faces are carved in such a way that it can be difficult to make out little differences, like the difference between a 1 and 2. This can cause a little squinting of the eyes, but it’s not a detraction of the gameplay itself, so it can be forgiven. Hey, sometimes mistakes happen, right?