Dice Throne has been a mainstay in the board game community for quite some time. The unique spin on Yahtzee makes for a fun duel game, but the original fantasy-based theme didn’t have broad appeal outside of the dedicated hobbyists.

Now, The Op has collaborated with the giant that is Marvel, bringing in 8 different superheroes to the experience. With the ability to play as Spider-Man, Thor, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, Loki, Captain Marvel, and Doctor Strange, Dice Throne finally has a shot to break into the mainstream. 

Few games are as straightforward during setup as Marvel Dice Throne. Each player will choose between one of the eight available Marvel superheroes. They will set up the character’s board with dice, cards, and tokens. The decks are shuffled, then the players will draw four cards. Each player sets their character’s health to the proper amount (This scales based on the number of players) and their combat points (CP) to 2.  Just like that, the game is ready to be played. 

From here, players alternate, going through a handful of  phases. During the main phase, players have the opportunity to play cards from their hands that do a variety of things like upgrade their abilities or give them more resources. Most cards use CP, which is slowly replenished at the start of every turn or through other cards. After the main phase is the combat phase, in which players will roll five dice up to three times to use a corresponding ability. Anyone who has played Yahtzee will be familiar, as it boils down to getting certain combinations, and instead of scoring, players damage their opponent. The defending player will get one roll to counter and use their own defensive abilities. After this, there will be one more main phase, then the next player will take their turn. 

There are certain cards that are tied to certain phases, which add a bit more strategy to the experience.  Some cards and abilities utilize markers that will have various effects on the player and can even aid in rolls. Play will continue until a player depletes their opponent’s HP. The remaining player is the winner. 

Marvel Dice Throne heavily benefits from a short playtime and even shorter turns. It’s just complex enough that the first few games will take a while as players adapt to the mechanics and the individual playstyles of all of the characters. After players get comfortable though, games will go by quickly, and one-sided games can be as short as 20 minutes. 

The turns flow rather well, and the order of the phases feels quite natural. Any fans of card games like Yu-Gi-Oh will fit right in while playing Marvel Dice Throne.  At a glance, Marvel Dice Throne looks like a variant of the game of Yahtzee, and to an extent it is. Still, the formula works incredibly well, with the experience feeling much more interactive. The game moves at a great speed, and the stakes feel higher when deciding what dice to keep after you roll them.

When the attacking player finishes choosing what dice configuration they will use for their attack, the other player gets a chance to defend. Most characters only have one defense move, but some have two, and this makes for a satisfying amount of choice and depth. To add to the amount of interactivity, most characters have moves that leave tokens on a character that can result in passive effects later on. This allows players to enjoy a wide variety of play styles that don’t all boil down to aggro tactics. 

When purchasing Marvel Dice Throne, players have a few options, and each choice will give them a set amount of characters. Players can opt to buy the four hero box, one of the two hero boxes, or a massive box that contains all eight heroes in one package. Depending on what they choose, players can have quite a few characters to choose from, meaning that there are up to eight different playstyles to explore. Between the various possible player counts and all of the characters, Marvel Dice Throne sometimes feels like it has endless replayability. 

These characters are also compatible with previous versions of Dice Throne as well. 

When a board game uses another IP as its base, it can be easy to expect a cheap cash-in Fortunately, Marvel Dice Throne avoids this by making full use of the characters’ move sets. The boards, cards, and tokens all line up well with the characters’ abilities and even personalities. The names of the moves are sometimes based on the actual move, but other times they reference a moment in the characters’ history. Fans of Marvel comics will feel greatly rewarded when playing Marvel Dice Throne. 

If Marvel Dice Throne fails anywhere, it’s that the cards themselves don’t feel spectacular. They are pretty average in quality, and players can expect them to experience wear and tear rather quickly without care or sleeves. While the card and even token components aren’t noteworthy, the way they are all packaged is quite nice. Each character has its own little container that allows for players to just pop them open and play. There is no shuffling through a box’s worth of pieces. 

It’s worth noting that unless players shed a large amount of money, they will likely be purchasing one of the three smaller boxes. The nice thing here is that the smaller boxes with 2 characters might look like expansions, but they are actually standalone. This gives Marvel Dice Throne a low buy-in for those who are skeptical, giving them a chance to try the game with just two players in a fun duel before expanding their roster. 

Anyone who is a sucker for dice games like Yahtzee will find themselves enjoying the gameplay mechanics that Marvel Dice Throne shares with it. It shouldn’t surprised anyone that fans of Marvel content will also have a good time playing this one, even if its only for the theme. 

Marcus isn't good at a lot, but he is an expert at replaying Final Fantasy games despite there being a lot of good stuff out there. He also loves comics, board games, and anime. He thinks Chip Zdarsky is a treasure.

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