In the world of Dice Miner, the life of a dwarf is hard. Between being terrorized by dragons and being forced to live underground, no wonder why they can be so grumpy sometimes. After centuries of war, the dragons were defeated and the dwarves were able to finally come above ground and build their empire. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. The dragons have returned and the dwarves must once again head underground and pick up their mining heritage.

If this seems like a thin plot for a game that has you picking dice from a mountain, that’s because it is. However look past the theme and you have a game that combines several of my family’s favorite mechanics and is advertised as playing in about 20 minutes.

Overview

Dice Miner, by Joshua Debonis and Nikola Ritenski and published by Atlas Games is a dice drafting, set collection, push your luck smorgasbord with a pinch of take that thrown in for good measure. Over 3 rounds up to 4 players will take turns drafting dice, collecting sets, swapping and manipulating dice, and of course chucking dice, to determine the winner.

At the start of the game players select a character, each with their own abilities that can be used once per round. All the dice are then loaded into the bag and according to the rules, shaken as loud as possible. The kids loved this part and they quickly made a dance out of the act while shaking the bag like a musical instrument around the living room. 20 dice are then pulled at random from the bag and set on the mountain in the shape of a pyramid.

Set up is quick and the inclined mountain game board that houses the dice makes for a cool show piece as well as a practical component that keeps all the dice in place and in order during drafting. I had backed the deluxe version of this game that comes with the plastic mountain shown here. The retail version of the game has a punch out 3D board to hold the dice and the plastic board is available for order as an upgrade direct from Atlas Games.

Dice Miner is played out over 3 rounds with each round consisting of the following 4 steps:

1. Excavation Phase – Players each take turns drafting dice from the mountain.
2. Magic Phase – If magic dice were drafted, players can re-roll certain amounts of dice to better their score.
3. Scoring Phase – Based on the sets collected and the result of the dice players will score the round.
4. Replenish Phase – Player dice that was collected are theirs to keep and are re-rolled to start the next round. Then the mountain gets filled from the bag and the next round begins.

Each player’s score over the 3 rounds is then added up and the player with the highest total is the winner.

Experience

It is a simple set of rules that helps the game move along but it is the details of these phases and the types of dice themselves that present for some interesting decisions. For starters, the dice you draft you keep for the whole game over all the rounds, so your pool of dice only increases with each round that passes. There are 5 different types of dice that each either score differently or have different actions based on their values.

• White Tunnel Dice – These dice score at the end of the round by adding up the sum of all of your numbers involving straights that start with 1.
• Black Hazard Dice – These will give a negative score based on the value of the dice at the end of the round
• Green Tool Dice – These dice have the ability to reverse the effects of hazard dice from a negative score to a positive score at the end of the round. They also have treasure chests that let you hold on to dice and not re-roll them during the replenish phase.
• Yellow Treasure Dice – These dice score 1 point for each treasure at the end of the round, unless you are the player that has the most treasure, then your score is doubled.
• Blue Magic Dice – These dice allow you to re-roll some of your dice before scoring to help swing chance in your favor.

All of these dice have a beer mug on one side of them. You can use this mug during the excavation phase to help or potentially hurt one of your fellow players. You take the mug die, yell cheers, and toss it toward another player. They get the new value of that die in their pool. Don’t like that hazard die in you pool? Send it to another player.

But why would you do that with other dice that could benefit the opponent? Well, when you send a beer mug to another player, you get to draft 2 dice off the mountain and they can be dice that are covered by other dice (drafting covered dice normally is a no-no).

You also must re-roll the dice you have collected at the end of every round. The re-roll was a big win for my family and gives a nice yahtzee feel (plus who doesn’t like tossing gobs of dice). This really can randomized things and a good set of dice the first round can turn pretty quickly into a negative score the second round with one roll. Thankfully, you have treasure boxes on some of the dice that will allow you to reserve dice and protect them against the re-roll.

Finally, you have your hero characters. Each hero card has a unique set of die faces printed on the bottom of the card that act as extra dice in your pool. These can be used once per round and act as if you rolled that value.

All of these details and mechanics come together is some cool and satisfying ways. There is a nice balance of short term planning vs long term light strategy that makes for some interesting decisions. Do I load up on hazard dice if I have a bunch of tool dice in my pool? Should I take that magic die to re-roll some of my hazard dice and lessen the blow? Should I send a beer to my opponent that could give them a straight but I will be able to draft that treasure chest that is covered? These are just some of the decisions that are made over the course of the game.

In addition to these choices, this is a fairly easy game to pick up and play. Our 10 year old had no issues with the decision making while the 6 year old needed a little help. As far as time it takes to play, our first play through was done in about 30 minutes. Subsequent plays were over in about 20 and everyone wanted to play again. It also makes for a good, light, entry level game for just about any group and plays well at all player counts.

While there is a lot to like here I could see some people being turned off by the luck and how swingy this game can be. You could be king of the dwarves in one round and after one bad roll, your fortunes could change so drastically, that you could be knocked to last place. Now there are ways to mitigate a bad roll but luck certainly does play a factor here. I personally like the luck in this game as it always keeps any player in the game no matter how experienced they are. Some players can get disinterested if they have no shot at winning and this game keeps you in it until the end.

Final Verdict

A really good filler game that will have appeal for a large audience. Beginners can get into this game quickly and it will keep everyone puzzling over the mountain until the end. While I think some will not like how luck based it can be, it can be somewhat controlled for more favorable outcomes. If you love chucking dice, puzzling, scoring points and giving people grief, all in a package that can be played quickly over drinks or popcorn, Dice Miner should have a place in your collection.