Dice Conquest review ⏤ a challenging gauntlet of monsters!

I’m a sucker for a set of polyhedral dice, so when I saw Dice Conquest show up in the review inbox, I had to give it a shot. The artwork, setup, and expandability make this an easy replay experience.

For 1 to 4 players, Dice Conquest is a dice manipulation game released in 2022 by Wizkids, in which players face a gauntlet of monsters, on the path of fighting the dragon Kalterstorm. Challenges for this game are focused on relying on player cooperation and dealing with the specifics of certain monsters and traps.

Each round, players choose dice to place on the cards to deal damage to monsters from a fantasy pantheon, like Ogres who need to be killed first or a Gremlin who can only be killed with 3 damage. This works in conjunction with “critical hit” hero powers, items collected from monsters, and player strategy. This game can tend to be very difficult if you let it, which might turn some players off, but after repeated plays, I found it enjoyable.  Personally, I like it when I die in my first play of a game, as I did with Dice Conquest. I was low on health, the Ogre showed up, a Hag triggered another card to be drawn…the resulting fiasco made me laugh, and I was happy to play again.

Dice Conquest supports a single player experience pretty well by bumping up the health of the main character, but I do wish there was some more rule clarification & support for the single player. There were certain monster cards that were designed to affect multiple players, and while I handled the situation correctly, I can see other players getting frustrated.  Not to mention, a single player can only take advantage of one power, which ramps up difficulty and the desire to try different heroes. It’s also easy to forget the critical hit rules & the ever important re-roll rule, so keep that in mind in your playthroughs.A criticism that I have is that I  wish that the trap cards were named as such…in my first playthrough, I accidentally shuffled all of the traps into my creature deck, which resulted in an extremely difficult session. It wasn’t until pulling several traps in a row, I referenced the rules and realized my error.

Setup and breakdown of the game is especially fast, and the footprint is minimal, making this very easy to take with you. And you can use any set of d20 polyhedral dice with the game, meaning if you have a special set of dice you love to use, do it!

Lastly, I’m super curious to see if Wizkids releases some expansion packs or themed versions of this game. The fantasy setting already screams “Dungeons and Dragons” but I could see a variety of other IPs and settings using this game platform to produce multiple sequels.

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