I love Dice. The problem is…… they rarely love me! Back in my competitive Dice Masters playing days I was actually given a catch phrase – “Stuart: Doing the most with the least.” So yeah, that’s my relationship with dice. All that to say, I love dice and I love Dice Miner.
Dice Miner Overview
Dice Miner, designed by Joshua DeBonis and Nicola Risteski, and produced by Atlas Games, is a 1-4 player dice rolling and dice drafting game that is rated 10+ and should last 20-30 minutes. Players take the on the role of Dwarves that live beneath a mighty mountain and must stave off an attack by Dragons while also avoiding tunnel cave-ins. On your turn, each player drafts a die from the mountain in order to create straights (mining Tunnels), collect Treasure Gems, and Tools such as a Pick-Axe, Chests or a Shield. And since we are Dwarves, we also brew our own renowned Beer, which when drafted, allow us the opportunity to draft more dice on later turns!
The game is played over a series of 3 rounds, with 4 phases in each. All of your dice are kept between rounds and re-rolled unless you have an ability to keep the die on its current side.
Heroes
Before the game starts, each player is haded a Hero Card with a slight Asymmetric ability. Each Hero Card has a few permanent traits that you can carry through each round ranging from a Tool, a 1 or 2 pip die, Magic, or Treasure. Be sure to pay attention to what you start with as it can slightly change the way you play and what you draft!
Tunnel Dice (White – 27 Dice)
These are your “normal” white dice with pips. You’ll see pips ranging from 1 through 5 while the “6” side is a Beer Stein. The Beer side is found on all of the dice in the game and represents the same thing on all dice (will discuss later on).
The goal with these tunnel dice is to create straights starting with 1 all the way to 5. You must have a 1 to start scoring your tunnel. Tunnels score the total pips in the tunnel. So a tunnel of dice of 1-2-3-4 would score 10 points. You can have as many tunnels as you’d like, but it must be in numerical order and only score if it starts with a 1.
Treasure Dice (Yellow – 8 Dice)
Treasure dice are straight up points. You’ll find 1, 2 or 3 Treasure on the dice sides along with a Beer. The one fascinating part of the Treasure dice is the player with the most at the end of the round score double the points. If there is a tie though, no one gets the bonus. This can be a huge source of points if you are able to have the most with no ties.
Hazard Dice (Black – 10 Dice)
Hazard dice represent tunnel Cave-ins and Dragons! And of course, there’s a Beer on one side. Each cave-in symbol and Dragon represent a negative point. The Cave-in sides of the dice have either 1, 2 or 3 cave-ins and the Dragon sides have either 2 or 4 Dragons. Most importantly, these dice cannot be re-rolled during the round! Once you get them, you are stuck with them (except when given as a Beer, which we will discuss a little later).
Tool Dice (Green – 7 Dice)
Mitigation! That’s what these dice do. The Pickaxe/Shovel side of these dice (two sides) turn the negative Cave-in sides of the Hazard dice into positive points! The Shield side turn the Dragon dice into positive points! Most important, multiple of these tools multiply the positive points! So if you have 3 Shields and 6 points worth of Dragons, you will score 18 points! (I once score 48 points on Dragons in one round!)
Also of note is that the Shield is only on 1 Side of the Tool Die. That makes it the most rare symbol in the game. This is because it can grant the most points of any die as the Dragons are either -/+2 or -/+4.
The other two sides of these dice are Chests. For each Chest you have, you’ll be able to stash a die in your trove and carry it over into the next round. For instance, if you have 5 Chests, you’re able to carry over 5 dice to the next round. So keep your straight 1 through 5 to guarantee 15 points next round. Keep your 2 Pickaxes and 3 Cave-in Dice! These are extremely valuable in Rounds 1 and 2, but essentially worthless in Round 3.
Magic Dice (Blue – 8 Dice)
Magic dice allow you to re-roll dice in your pool at the end of the round, but before you score points for your dice. This allows you to try to make a larger straight (or fill in the missing number), get the tool you need to turn negative points into positive points, or to stack up on more Treasure. Again, you can’t re-roll Hazard dice, so you can only try to mitigate their damage by getting the correct tool. Lastly, you must re-roll the exact number of dice as there is magic on each die. If you have a die that has 3 Magic on it, you must re-roll 3 different dice. If you can’t, then you can’t use the re-roll ability of the die. Once its used to re-roll, set it aside, as it can’t be re-rolled or used for any purpose the rest of the round.
Beer Side Dice
A Beer dice is passed to another player on your turn and allows you do draft two dice instead of one. The Beer die that was passed to another player is then re-rolled by the player that acquired it and becomes a die in their trove.
So remember when we said that you can’t re-roll Hazard dice during your turn……. Well there is one way. The only time they can be rolled is if you’re given one as a Beer. So roll well Sir Dwarf, because you’re stuck with it no matter what!
Phase 1 – Excavation (Draft Dice)
Each player drafts a single die on their turn. The draft condition is that the die drafted has to have at least two exposed vertical sides, or another way of thinking about it, dice that create mountain “peaks.” The side facing the players is the side that is active when you draft it. Dice drafted join your pool (trove).
Beer Dice are shared, or passed, to another player instead of drafting a single die on your turn. Choose a player to pass a beer die in your trove to. They will then re-roll that Beer die and it joins their trove on whatever face they rolled it to. You then select two dice, ignoring the “two exposed faces” rule. You are able to select any die that has at least one exposed side, so anything on the outer or upper edge of the mountain. Choose one at a time as the first die you select could cause others to slide down the mountain!
Phase 2 – Magic (Re-Rolls)
This is where you will spend your Magic Dice to re-roll dice in your trove. Remember, you must re-roll the same number of dice as you have magic pips on each individual die you spent. You only spend one die at a time, and you can choose not to spend a Magic die if you don’t want to re-roll that many dice.
Phase 3 – Scoring
Total the number of pips on each Tunnel (straight), total Treasure, and any negative/positive points from your Cave-Ins and Dragons. Remember – if you have the most Treasure at the end of the round (no ties), than you double your Treasure points!
Phase 4 – Replenish (Refill the Mountain)
This is where you would spend your Chest dice pips to Cache (save) dice in your trove to the next round. After selecting which dice to save, you will Re-roll the remaining, including your Hazard Dice. The player with the lowest total points now becomes the 1st Player, and the mountain is replenished with dice for the next round!
The player with the most points at the end of 3 Rounds is the winer! If there is a tie, players do an additional Scoring Phase after re-rolling their entire trove. They can spend Magic after this re-roll. Keep adding additional Re-roll/Scoring Phases until an ultimate winner is declared!
Solo Mode
Yup! Thereās also a solo mode! And itās actually a really neat variation of the game. In short, you fill the mountain as usual. You can only draft Hazard Dice if you have the specific Tool to mitigate the Hazard. Treasure Gems score points as normal but for every Chest Symbol you have prior to drafting the Treasure die, you can bank the Treasure die to score double. Beers are straight up Wild and can be drafted as anything on the die. Tunnel dice canĀ onlyĀ be drafted in numerical order, so you have to start with a 1 and then so on. Magic allow you to remove dice from the mountain to reveal dice beneath them. You can refill the mountain at any time, but only twice in the game. also, you don’t re-roll your trove between the replenish and next round and you only score at the end. Just keep drafting until there are no options!
Final Thoughts
Itās a lot of fun. It plays quick, is easy to explain, and hasnāt gotten old after over a dozen plays and three solo plays. The Heroes add a nice little touch of variety. The dice are a little oversized and feel great in your hands and the cardboard quality of the Hero cards/tiles and the mountain are top notch. After playing it with a group of friends I actually bought two copies because I 100% expect the next group I play it with to want their own copy!
-Stuart
I bought this for solo but found it better as a 2 player game (max). The more players the less dice you get so it felt less fun to me at a higher player count.
I can see that, though I think it plays really tight at 3 and 4 players and makes all of the decisions even that more important. I never felt dice “poor” during the game. As to the KS Exclusive stuff, that’s just the nature of the industry and I think its an appropriate reward/incentive to help bring the game to market. I will note that all of the KS player cards for Dice Miner are available to be purchased for $10 and you can download the Lava Mountain to 3d print yourself from their site.
Fun game. I like dice. I hate companies that withhold gameplay stuff as KS exclusives.