Wednesday 1 August 2012

D-Day Dice - a beautiful game!

D-Day Dice - a fantastic, fun and just wonderful dice game!

Me, considering the next move!
I Kickstarted this game back in November 2011 (mentioned in this blog post). Last week I finally received the game by mail. And wow, what a big surprise! Just staring at the components and the gorgeous artwork makes me cry of happiness! And playing is certainly a lot of joy.

D-Day Dice (BoardGameGeek entry here) is a 1-4 player game (with several expansions available and more to follow in the future), that simulates (of course in a very abstract sense) the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. The players storm the Normandy beaches with one Allied unit each and co-operate in reaching the German bunker in the top of the map. All Allied units must reach the bunker, or all players lose. A challenging task, to say the least.

My buddy Jonas,
ready to storm the
beach!
To your help, when storming the beach, you have various specialists and items, and sometimes vehicles. They all have abilities that alter the base rules. You move your unit sector by sector towards the bunker, and in every sector, the Germans fires at your unit.

Since Thursday last week (when I received the game), I have played it 30 times (27 solitaire sessions and 3 two-player sessions). My conclusion is that the game is near perfect. When playing, I have fun, and have to make a lot of tough decisions. I love dice and I love war games, so the combination is spot-on. Of course, there is a lot of luck involved, there are a lot of dice rolling after all, but how one manages resources (like soldiers, items etc) is crucial - without careful planning and consideration, the game will quickly be lost.

So, if you love (abstract) war games and dice, that are quick to setup and play, are challenging, fun, solitaire/co-operative and just wonderful - then this is the game for you!

4 comments:

  1. I haven't heard of this one but it sounds pretty cool. Nice to see some recent content too, keep it coming!

    ReplyDelete
  2. First of all, sorry for the late reply. Just got back from a week's vacation in Turkey - relaxing, swimming and enjoying the sun! Unfortunately, I had no internet access during my stay there (=abstinence warning!).

    @Mik: This is indeed a very fresh game, released this summer. Extremely addictive!

    @Patrik: I bought this game through a Kickstarter pledge. The Kickstarter campaign has ended, but the game should be at the retailers by now. Don't know which ones within Europe though, but I found copies on eBay and there are people on BGG trading it.

    By the way, the same designer as for D-Day Dice has a new game up on Kickstarter called "Airborn in My Pocket" (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1325766284/airborne-in-your-pocket-board-game). AiMP is also a solo/coop game. There is no good European shipping/pledge option yet, but Valley Games (the game company producing the game) is working on it (there is still 34 days to go for this Kickstarter campaign).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Seems like Valley Games has opened up for European shipping today, for AiMP. Good news, I will pledge, the game looks fun!

    ReplyDelete