There’s a good chance that Dominion from Rio Grande Games has caught your eye, or that you’ve even played it. It’s a classic example of a game built around the deck-building mechanic and is widely considered one of the genre’s flagship titles. The same publisher has another game in its portfolio that strongly resembles Dominion—at least in many aspects, it repeats the mechanics that made it such a great game. The key difference is that this time, instead of building a deck, we build dice that we roll every turn. That game is Dice Realms. It sounds great. Let’s see whether it actually delivers.
Gameplay
The game transports us to a medieval world in which we develop our own kingdom represented by… dice. Each type of die face represents a different aspect of the economy, defense, or development. As the game progresses, we specialize our dice by swapping out their faces to better suit the needs of a given phase of the game.
Each player starts with two dice and in every round goes through four phases: rolling, collecting resources, upgrading faces, and checking for the end of the game. Crucially, most of the gameplay happens simultaneously, and player actions only need to be synchronized when players compete for a resource that is currently in short supply.
The Four Steps of a Round
- Roll
All players roll their dice simultaneously, and one of them also rolls the Fate Die. This die can significantly affect the course of the round—it may trigger winter, change the effectiveness of harvests, or activate negative events. Each player also has one free reroll of a die and can use effects and tokens that allow for additional rerolls or even setting a specific face on a chosen die.
This is also when any attacks launched by players are resolved—each one targeting all other players. - Collecting Resources
After rolling is complete, players collect everything shown on their dice: grain, coins, and victory points. This is also the moment to spend coins—we can buy new dice. During this phase, we accumulate upgrade points that will be used in the next step. - Upgrading Faces
The upgrades gained earlier are exchanged for new die faces. We can strengthen existing symbols or entirely change their function by moving along different development tracks. This is the most decision-heavy part of the round—this is where we build our long-term engine and give our dice their unique character. - End of Game Check
At the end of the round, we check whether any of the game-ending conditions have been met, usually tied to the depletion of one of the shared resource types. If not, the Fate Die passes to the next player, and a new round begins.
The heart of the game lies in upgrading die faces. With the upgrades we earn, we can replace individual faces with more powerful versions or completely alter their function. In practice, this means that with every round, our dice resemble random collections of symbols less and less and increasingly become precisely designed point-generating engines.
Die faces in Dice Realms are divided into several main categories, corresponding to different aspects of kingdom management. The most common are resource-producing faces—coins and grain—which fuel the entire game economy. Alongside them are faces that grant victory points, either directly or indirectly through the conversion of other resources.
Another group consists of upgrade and reroll faces, which speed up die development or increase control over randomness. There are also defensive faces that provide shields against attacks, as well as more aggressive ones that enable negative interactions with other players. Thanks to this, even at the level of a single die, we can decide whether it should serve an economic, scoring, defensive, or highly specialized combo-oriented role.
An important element is also the Fate Die, which introduces events affecting all players each round. Winters force players to pay grain, poor harvests reduce profits, and some effects can even destroy die faces. This element keeps the game’s pace in check and prevents players from endlessly producing a single resource without consequence.
Review
As you can see, compared to Dominion, Dice Realms replaces cards with die faces. However, there is one fundamental difference. In Dominion, the deck grows endlessly, and there is a need to remove cards that no longer provide sufficient value or effect. In Dice Realms, each die is effectively its own mini-deck from which we “draw” one card per round. By adding dice, we increase the number of these decks. What Dice Realms lacks compared to Dominion are the inter-card interactions that power engines capable of chaining together spectacular multi-card turns.
This leads to a secondary effect in the form of a certain guarantee. If you have a die with only green faces that grant victory points, you can be sure you’ll receive those points every round. This characteristic limits randomness and allows you to assign specific roles to individual dice. However… no one forces you to base your strategy on this approach. You can shape your dice however you like, and this freedom both creates space for experimentation and provides fertile ground for long-term planning.
Dice Realms makes a strong impression even before the first game begins. The box is filled with interchangeable die faces, tokens, and tiles. A significant amount of time is also required just to organize all the faces into the inserts provided by the publisher, which can feel a bit overwhelming before the first play. Still, the idea of “dice crafting” sounds like a dream come true for any eurogame fan: you roll dice, but you also have real control over what appears on them. That motivation alone is strong enough to push through the initial setup. We already got a taste of this idea a few years ago in Dice Forge, which leaned more toward adventure than economics. Even then, I found myself wishing there were more games focused on building dice.
The first game can be moderately overwhelming. Although the rules are simple, it’s challenging to find your footing among hundreds of die faces and a dense iconography. Fortunately, after a few rounds everything starts to click, and subsequent games run much more smoothly. Dice Realms offers immense satisfaction from progression. The moment when you begin setting up your dice for specific outcomes is one of the game’s strongest points. Randomness is still present, but thanks to rerolls, die-setting tokens, and specialization, you feel a genuine sense of control.
Dice Realms boasts enormous replayability thanks to the tiles drawn at the beginning of each game. Five tiles are drawn from a bag, each introducing a set of five additional die faces available only for that particular session. These tiles determine whether the game will focus more on peaceful engine-building, intense interaction, or risky, tempo-driven resource management.
Tiles can be drawn randomly, but the game also offers predefined tile sets that allow for a more controlled experience or an easier introduction to the game. What’s more, Dice Realms also includes a cooperative mode with mini-campaigns, in which players jointly face an escalating threat—an interesting and fully fledged alternative to classic competitive play.
Player interaction is moderate. In its basic form, it mostly comes down to racing for resources and faces in the shared pool, but with certain tile sets, attacks and direct interference also appear. As a result, Dice Realms can be both a calm eurogame and a surprisingly confrontational one—depending on the configuration.
Summary
Dice Realms is a game for players who enjoy deep eurogames, engine building, and the feeling that every decision has long-term consequences. It offers high replayability, satisfying progression, and a fresh take on dice mechanics. If you value complexity, planning, and moments when luck starts playing by your rules, Dice Realms can easily earn a spot among your favorite eurogames.
Dziękujemy wydawnictwu Rio Grande Games za przekazanie egzemplarza gry do recenzji.
