D-Day Dice - Tips & Strategies

A tendency of first time players is to rush towards the bunker as soon as possible thinking this is a race game. They will stay in a sector only long enough to get the courage they need to advance.

First off, the designer has granted us up to 3 turns in the same sector, use that! Especially in the earliest sectors, the enemy fire is less damaging and you can use this time to build up your reserves. Even though you take more soldier losses, you are rolling more and should be able to overcome that loss and then some.

Second, don’t be afraid to move laterally. Again, this is typically seen by new players as a “plan b” when you failed to get enough courage to advance. But again, this is a means to build up your reserves at a much cheaper cost than by advancing. The caveat is to make sure you don’t pin yourself into a dead end (since you can only visit each sector once) and force a loss upon yourself.

Consider a slow ascent to the bunker and build up as much as possible before storming the bunker.

D-Day Dice has been going over well for groups I’ve taught it to. Each time, I’ve felt the training scenario is the way to go for teaching the game, which does a great job of getting across the gameplay. The biggest problem I’ve seen with this scenario is that it offers limited difficulty for the players, especially if they camp out on the lower sectors (which is typically a tactically strong play, as suggest by the rules). When the scenario ends, it can be hard to get people interested in playing again. They say they enjoyed it, but there is little tension and they don’t see that changing with another play. If you’re able to get another play in, they see how tight and fun the game can be.

After a few turns of the training scenario, be sure to point out that future scenarios offer quite a bit more challenge. If people are loading up on tools and soldiers, consider encouraging a quick charge of the bunker to keep soldier counts from reaching triple digits, and adding the sense of urgency of future maps.

It helps to present the training scenario as just that, training. When offering to teach the game, don’t say you’re playing one scenario, say you’re going through a training and then will play a scenario (a different board).

Setting expectations in this way will help avoid the common response of “that’s it?, ok, let’s try something else”, and allow the game to shine and hook in more comrades!