Dwarves: Dig, Delve, Die
Hello and welcome to my review for Dwarves. This game was sent to us by Imbalanced Games LLC for the purpose of this review. They provided us a full retail copy. Now that the details are handled, lets talk games.
Dwarves is a dice drafting game with a twist. The game plays in about a half hour and I was able to teach it in under 5 minutes. These are both great attributes for a light game. So set up involves everyone grabbing one die, you then set the Dig/Delve card on the left of the deck and the gold cards in a separate deck of their own.
You start your turn by drafting a die. You then roll your die and place them on the available cards. You must place all your dice. Once that is done you collect the lowest value die or dice of the applicable stack and resolve those abilities. They resolve in order from left to right. The only other time an ability resolves in when the card is initially played. The play field will look something akin to this picture below. The first player to five gold wins. The game is very simple to play and learn.
I did mention a twist and I was very surprised to see it. The deck contains three optional drinking cards. These can be removed for normal play but they do make this into an entertaining drinking game. In the interest of being thorough I of course tried the game both ways and several times. Let me start by saying I enjoyed the theme. My coworkers and I immediately smiled when we opened the box and saw the dwarf dice. They are a neat little touch that helps connect the theme with the game. The card stock is nice enough though the cards tend to stick together for the first couple plays. I really do enjoy the art though. I love the pitch black with highlights look. The text is easily legible and concise. Its an overall aesthetically pleasing package.
The game has a nice depth of strategy which comes from how you divide up your dice. So using the photo above as an example you could add sixes on the fives. This would allow you to activate all the cards. However you may want to avoid doing that because activating the dragon lair causes everyone to lose a gold. These situations come up constantly and it makes an excellent give and take. This keeps the game fun and interesting right till the end. The game doesn’t change drastically with the use of the drinking cards. They are just a way to earn a bit of extra gold. However since we were drinking Gin and Tonics we started to get pretty fuzzy on our tactics fairly quickly. This was incredibly entertaining. I must thank my brother and sister-in-law for providing the booze for that play through. They also greatly enjoyed the game.
I had only one issue which was with the instructions. They do not mention making the gold a separate pile. I understand that is probably self evident, however this reviewer is not ashamed to admit that he asked. We really enjoyed ourselves and I have no reservations about giving this game an 8/10. Possibly 8.5 when your sloshed and trying to get that last gold.
As always thank you for reading and game on.
You can find Dwarves on amazon.com for 24.99
Tabletop Addicts 