Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Odang

Publisher: Mandoo Games

I have been playing a lot of small-box Knizia dice games lately. Into the Blue, Pickomino, High Score and Excape all have a somewhat similar feel to it. There will always be a push-your-luck component to these games but more importantly, these games allow you to roll and reroll your dice a number of times before stopping. Usually, that number is three. Gang of Dice uses the same time-tested mechanism from Knizia’s play book, but the question is whether it provides enough variation to make it worthwhile for you to part with your hard-earned money.

Roll, reroll, reroll, score

In Gang of Dice, at the very basic level, everyone decides how many die/dice to roll and the highest score wins after 3 rolls/rerolls. But wait, why not roll all the dice in your reserve to maximize your score? There’s a twist of course! Each round, a rule card will be flipped over and on it states the conditions for what is considered an invalid roll. If you hit or exceed the stipulated rule, then your throws will be considered invalid and you automatically lose all your dice to the eventual winner for that round. The rule cards are pretty standard for this sort of game. For example, a roll is invalid if: “the total score exceed 7”, “there are two consecutive values on the dice”, “Any odd values are present”…etc. Rules are enforced either immediately after the first roll or delayed till the second depending on the card type revealed. Some of the rules sound draconian, and indeed, they can be. It will clearly limit the number of dice you choose to roll and clearly, more is not always good. There is another twist to the dice: A roll of “6” which show a “boss” symbol is a null value, which is not the same as zero. While this may seem silly, the dice number of dice rolled function as tiebreakers. So while you may have the same cumulative score, a player that rolls more dice to get to that number will win the tiebreaker. So rolling and setting aside some “6s” may actually work to your advantage.

A dice game that excels with more players

I think it is pretty clear that the game is designed for more players. I would definitely say no to two players, and perhaps even three. Four to five sounds like a sweet spot, but I am not sure yet. As the title suggests, the game is all about dice, dice and more dice. In fact, the game comes with 36 dice to be evenly distributed among participating players. Additional tokens representing dice are also given out in case there aren’t enough dice and you need to cash in from your neighbors. In which case, you can buy dice from anyone in exchange for the tokens. This is basically just a cost reduction move as I am sure the publishers didn’t want to package 150 dice in the box.

After a few games, I noted that the last player to roll either have a lot of incentive to go all to beat the front runner, or just sit out and roll a single die. For us, it was more often the latter case. Especially if it feels too overwhelming to beat the leader. I mean you just feel compelled to pass because the odds feel stacked against you. This makes the latter rounds somewhat anticlimactic. That said, there theoretically should be a last player advantage especially if multiple people foul out. The last player can afford to push the envelope as the last challenger. For some reason, the games did not pan out that way for us. Again, player count may have something to do with it.

Conclusion

I am on the fence with this Knizia variant compared to say, Excape. I didn’t feel the rush in playing the game and that probably because of player count. The idea of hoarding lots and lots of dice is visually appealing and invites some trashing talking and boasting that is in line with the party atmosphere the game is suited for. I haven’t yet broken this out with more players, but I can see how it could be successful. With family or small group gaming, there are better options than Gang of Dice. I just don’t see this coming out nearly as often.

Initial impression: Average