Dice Throne Adventures: Surviving the First Portal Crawl
Travel through a portal crawl to level up a character on the quest to defeat the Mad King in Dice Throne Adventures.
Onto another gigantic game in my set of unplayed solo games! Dice Throne Adventures itself is enormous enough, yet it requires heroes from other Dice Throne games. Good thing my husband loves the system. Ha ha! Eager to set out on this campaign with a combination of dice and cards, I eagerly tore into the box and chose my very first campaign character!
Game Overview
Game Name: Dice Throne Adventures
Publication Year: 2020
Designers: G. Brown, N. Chatellier, and M. Trembley
Artists: G. Brown, D. Mammoliti, and M. Trembley
Publisher: Roxley
Solo Mode: Included in Dice Throne Adventures
The original game involves unique characters with their own dice and cards. Abilities may be upgraded, dice may be manipulated, and all manner of status effects change with each play. With this version, solo is now possible on a quest to clear areas, battle minions, and fight bosses!
First Play
January 14, 2022
Complexity
2
Latest Play
January 22, 2022
Expansions
5
Setup Time
10 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
9
Play Time
1 Hour
High Score
29
Game Area
36" x 26"
Low Score
-10
Barbaric and Perfect
All of the characters exist within my collection, offering 16 options. I decided to keep things simple and start way back at the beginning with Dice Throne: Season One Rerolled.
This alphabetic challenge has been working well for me, so that also made it easy to choose! It helped that the Barbarian was a simpler character to understand, too.
Custom dice are rolled each turn up to 3 times in an effort to try to fulfill certain abilities, which might be upgraded.
Cards provide instant actions, upgrades, and other ways to affect dice and damage. It’s a lot, but still pretty easy.
Starting the Crawl
Nothing fancy here! My husband ordered the pre-painted miniatures, so my only contribution was picking out the matching one and setting him on the starting tile. Ha!
This seemed like an exciting way to make the original game solo-friendly. I don’t know about how it might work cooperatively, though, as it’s a very head-to-head game.
I was most excited about the loot cards of different rarities that could be added over time. Legendary cards? Nice!
For as huge as the game box was, the play area seemed reasonably contained, all for a very important reason…
Storage as Game Trays
All of the trays inside the box feature lids and stack neatly for storage. Yet they come out easily enough and fit right into the play area to act as functional component trays!
I didn’t take photos of everything, but all of the cards fit inside a huge tray with dividers. There is no need to lay out stacks of cards and manage discard piles. Self-contained!
This is a pretty pricey game system, yet not all publishers go through the effort of thinking through these details.
I was impressed! Setup and cleanup were simple, and I didn’t have to figure out how to keep the tokens separated.
The Simple Things: Why Organization is Key
Everyone stores game components and sets up a play area in a different way. I’ll admit that individually bagging each type of token is rather tedious. Yet I’m someone who likes to have things organized! I like counting components when I first get a game, partially to make sure everything is included, and partially to admire everything that’s there.
The ideal solution is present here, where storage trays can be removed from a game box and used during play. Token storage is amazing, yet I found the cards to be the highlight! That tray kept everything together. Had it not, I would have needed to work out the space for at least 8 card decks. I can’t say enough how happy this made me.
One element that isn’t always taken into account when playing solo is how there aren’t other players to manage components. I’m the active player, banker, sorter, dealer, and every other role, all at the same time! That’s part of the charm of solo, at least for me, yet making it easier to manage components is a vital and often overlooked element.
Setting Out
There is a lot of information to process, yet it’s all laid out neatly in a pretty intuitive manner. All of the scenario details were right there for me to see at a glance.
I’m not sure why the portal crawls feature variable layouts… In looking through them, it was only the tile arrangement that changed. Maybe there’s more, though!
Lovely dice, dials to track all sorts of things, and tons of useful components all made for a colorful play area.
I was excited, even though I had no idea what I was doing! It had been ages since I last played, and dice can be rude.
Explored Regions
As it happened, I got so wrapped up that I didn’t pause for any photos until the end! Exploration was so much fun. A tile could lead to all sorts of surprises, good or bad.
The color-coded levels also helped a lot because the minions certainly ramped up in difficulty!
I struggled a lot in what I called the Emerald region. After coasting along and thinking the game was way too easy, it hit me. This was all about endurance. Much harder!
It gave me a chance to figure out the Barbarian’s strengths while offering a survival challenge. So much fun!
Many, Many Minions
Each minion had its own roll objective, so I didn’t have to make any major decisions. It was just a matter of looking at the dice and figuring out which ones to reroll.
Such a multitude of different beings! There were attacks that didn’t do much damage, thereby giving me a chance to draw cards or heal. Others… Definitely not so easy!
This was a marathon that culminated with the dreaded Goblin Horde. Which ended up rolling extremely poorly.
I think the last battle dragged on because I could only do 6 damage at a time, and they kept healing up. Bad goblins!
The Best Abilities
How did the Barbarian fare? I learned about him quickly and absolutely loved the combination of offense and healing. He was probably the best choice to start with!
Slowly but surely, I managed to cycle through the deck to upgrade almost every ability. Base abilities provide decent options, but upgrades make them more powerful.
A few even gained additional bonuses, like being able to do more damage or removing a status effect. Very helpful!
This was another excellent way to save space, as the upgrades merely replaced the printed text. Awesome!
Shiny New Loot Cards
Over the course of the portal crawl, I picked up loot from treasure chests and minions. This was a simple process of rolling a d20 and consulting a chart to see what I got.
At the end, I also drew a few loot cards as additional options. Anything from the portal crawl was unidentified, so I had to take a chance in paying to collect the card.
I rolled a 20 once, thereby gaining a legendary card. What?! They’re foil cards. Like, shiny foil. Exciting!
Pretty sure I yelled out in surprise and danced a little. Then I picked up a tiny cat friend. My year was made. Ha!
Session Overview
Play Number: 1
Main Expansion: Dice Throne: Season One Rerolled
Other Expansions: Many
Solo Mode: Included in Dice Throne Adventures
Play Details: Scenario 1 at the Normal Difficulty Level
Outcome: 25 Points (Win)
Rosella presided over the market, and she was the one who identified my shiny new legendary card. So cool! I had a great time, although the scenario felt just a tad long for what it offered. Still, that sense of discovery and building up my deck was awesome. Onto the boss battle next!
%
1 Play
Affordability
Price & Value
3
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
8
Originality
Design & Theme
8
Quality
Components & Rules
10
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
8
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
10
+ Pros (Positives)
- Exploration leads to interesting discoveries as tiles are flipped over and loot is collected with simple dice rolls.
- Matching dice to various abilities offers plenty of meaningful decisions without feeling overly complex.
- Choosing when to use command points adds to the challenge since nearly everything costs something.
- All of the artwork is bright and vibrant in a unique style that gives the world its own sort of atmosphere.
- The way the storage trays work within the play area is implemented well to cut down on setup and cleanup time.
- Campaign progress is tracked and has mechanisms to provide little boosts should a scenario end in defeat.
– Cons (Negatives)
- Play time feels a little lengthy for a single portal crawl scenario since the end goal is to move onto the boss battle.
- Although the solo experience is great, the need to purchase other boxes for character variety is a bit annoying.
- Most of the terminology and status effects are covered in the rules, yet some interactions can be confusing.
- There is practically no storyline apart from some small pieces of lore, making gameplay purely battle-based.
Victory Conditions
Complete the Scenario
- Overall Goal Progress 100%
Goals and Milestones
Complete the campaign as the Barbarian.
Complete the campaign at the normal difficulty level.
Score at least 150 points for the total campaign score.
Continue the Conversation
Have you played Dice Throne Adventures? Is the campaign something that interests you? I’m certainly excited to continue on, especially since it alternates between portal crawls and boss battles. With some new cards in my deck, there are even more possibilities! This was very close in the end, and I can’t wait to see what the boss battle introduces!
I basically bought this along with one of the character packs because it just looked so cool, but the base game was really simple and it turned out me and my wife just totally got into the base game… so I ended up ordering more characters, and the adventures are still unplayed.
Really great points about the organisers. Now I’m contemplating seeing if there are some general card organisers like this I can use for other games.
The base game is so much fun! My husband have been playing all different sorts of characters. I had the edge for a bit, but finally lost for the first time with about 4 health remaining. Tons of fun trying to puzzle through the cards and dice!
I’ve heard from some that playing cooperatively takes away a little bit from the fun in head-to-head matchups. We still have yet to play this together, although I could see it getting a big bogged down with more than 2 players. Still, I look forward to tryint it out or at least having more reasons to play the base game!
I have some nice deck holders, yet they don’t quite solve this issue. I’m with you: If there are some nice card organizers that work as storage and play area organization, I need them. Ha ha!