Board Game Review: Dice Forge

I’ve always been partial to pretty games. I can handle mediocrity in a game as long as I get nice-looking stuff to look at while I’m playing, so I’m especially happy when I find a game that is both beautiful and has great mechanics.

Dice Forge is a customizable dice game by Libellund and Asmodee. Players each have two dice with a few simple faces. Throughout the game they’ll remove these faces, as seen here:

By sticking one of the corners under the face of the die, you can pop off the old face and put on a new one.

On each players’ turn, all players roll their dice, which means there’s never downtime. You’re always paying attention to what you can use your resources on. Speaking of…

There are three types of resources in the game: Gold, Sun Shards, and Moon Shards. You also have die faces which give you Victory Points. Players use Gold to purchase new die faces, Sun and Moon Shards purchase cards from the center of the table.

The die faces can replace any other face. You could turn one of your dice into a pure gold machine, but near the end-game, you don’t need to buy any more die faces, so the gold is worthless. You also don’t need too many of either shard. You can max out on a resource, meaning any further rolls for that resource are completely useless.

The cards provide different abilities, from getting extra rerolls, to getting an extension onto your resource board (allowing you to hold more resources), to simply giving you more VPs.

The game is a constant balance, trying to get the right combination of resources to maximize your Victory Points. The whole game turns into a well-oiled machine as you take in resources and efficiently turn them into VPs. One of the things I really enjoy about it is that each time I’ve played, I’ve focused on a different strategy to find the perfect way to build my machine.

One really fantastic thing about the game that’s remained completely untapped for me is that there is a whole separate set of cards to replace those around the board. Completely different mechanics for each, so you can mix and match to make it so it’s never the same game twice at all.

The artwork throughout the whole game is absolutely stunning. The board in the center, the board where the new die faces fit perfectly is beautiful. The dice themselves are beautiful and have a great weight. You really feel like you’re playing on a work of art.

I regularly rave about the box insert for Lords of Waterdeep, and the insert for Dice Forge is almost as good. Everything fits perfectly inside and stays snug and secure whether or not you’re storing the game flat or upright.

I’m shocked that Dice Forge’s MSRP is only $40, because it should be so much more based on the quality of the components and the amount of gameplay you can get out of it. I highly recommend picking up a copy at your FLGS.