crimedoc

Martian Dice is an easy-to-learn push-your-luck dice-rolling game (goodness, all the hyphens in this sentence!)

Anyway, it’s a great quick game that’s perfect to play as a filler or when you’ve only got a short time. The game includes a dice cup and 13 dice. Basically, you are a Martian invading Earth and trying to collect living creatures. The humans are trying to stop you with tanks but you have death rays to retaliate!

Each die shows two death rays, a tank, a chicken, a cow, and a human (these are the three types of living creatures you want to collect). On your turn, you roll all the dice and first set aside any tanks. Then you can set aside one other symbol. The catch is that except for the death rays and tanks, you can only set aside each type of creature once – so if you set aside a human on your first roll, you can never keep humans again that round. Death rays can be set aside repeatedly becuase you must have at least as many of those as there are tanks or you will be driven away from Earth and score no points that turn. You can stop rolling at any time and score your dice or keep rolling to try to eaern more points. You earn one point for each creature, and you get a bonus of three points if you collect all three types on the same turn.

This sounds more complicated than it really is – it takes less than 5 minutes to teach someone the game and start playing. It’s fun, quick, and surprisingly addictive! And since it’s basically just 13 dice, it’s really portable too.