Ed Liming

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!

I picked this game up from the TMG booth. Great packaging, the bright purple attracted me. Cool graphics, ( as usual from TMG) and the are colored and great quality. I’m a sucker for quick filler dice games, and this is as billed… Quick family fun.

Roll dice to collect humans, chickens, and cows. Use your ship death rays to fend of the military tanks. An extra 3 points for a complete set of specimens. You only collect points if you have more rays then tanks and then you score your collection when you stop. First to 25 points win. We just played it last night camping and everyone liked it. My friend asked to buy my copy from since it’s not in stores yet and they were going away for a reunion, so now my copy if off to Oregon for labor day. (I loaned it)

I also own SJG Zombie Dice, and I can’t really say there is a huge feel/difference between the two(some rule differences and diffent dice) but I would pick Martian Dice over it based on theme and graphics. Love Josh Cappel artwork, I’m a big fan.

Highly recommend this if your looking for family friendly themed dice filler game. TMG is really creating a nice catalog this year, and this was one it didn’t expect (I had pre-ordered their other titles before the con), but glad I picked up, even it being loaned for a couple weekends to go the coast with my buddy. If there was any cons, the tube/dice cup has two plastic ends, and we got kinda into shaking it and ti was holding the top, but the bottom cap popped out and dice went flying all over the place. We have since hot glued the bottom cap in so that won’t happen again.

But really, this was the best $10 I spent at Gen Con. Cool graphics, good game, great price, and family fun.

the was one of the games I didn’t plan to buy at Gen Con, but it was too much fun.

I’ve played Rune Wars once and liked it, but this plays under 45min with 3 players and under a hour with 4 players and has a great feel. I’ve played every race and I look forward to trying it solo. I’ve liked exploring all the differences and strategies for each race. Keep that discard pile big for the Undead, the human want a thin deck with all their big guys in it. Good stuff here.

It doesn’t feel like a deck building game to me. It’s an army manipulation building game to me, based on the scenarios. And that’s where it shines. FFG really can support this or fan-created scenarios can breath continued fresh life into this game. And the tug of war for the cities. Plus to two diirent resources, gold and influence is great.

Fantastic artwork, great game mechanics, quick playtime, different army strategies, and multiple scenarios. FFG has a real winner here.

This may sound weird, but it kinda feels/reminds me like an old TSR ccg, Spellfire, which we loved, but that game was unbalanced, this one is far from that, plus it’s all in a nice small travel size box, even if it’s all sleeved.

As someone who grew up playing King Oil, there is nothing better then getting a “Gusher!”

This game brings back that feeling for us. I really like the race for discovery of the wells and the amount of oil it will produce. The action card selection is great. Do you go for maximum travel, advance your rails for delivery, or grab deeds to win the auction? There are some agonizing decisions just in selecting which action card to grab.

The storage and auction element to sell the oil is great. And the Baron’s train movement really is a great turn clock, but still have to be catious of the game end. All in all. There are great mix of cool mechanics that blend together in a cool euro-economic-race-auction game.

But the real kicker besides great game play, are the bits. The oil derricks, trains, trucks and the oil splashes themselves are super cool. It really cool how the oil stacks up on your derricks. Top-Notch FFG goodness in great bits.

FFG added some great variants and different game options to play, plus the different board segments can change things up too. Plus they give you an option to fix the random set up so everyone knows the exact well distribution count, if you like. It’s really scalable (but I’ve yet to play 5 player), but FFG adjusts the rules nicely for each player count.

This has been our our sleeper hit of the year so far for our family and game group.