Research Guides: TableTop Games: Dice/Tile/Spin

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Dice games are games that use or incorporate one or more dice as their sole or central component, usually as a random device.

A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment games. Some board games use tiles to create their board, giving multiple possibilities for board layout, or allowing changes in the board geometry during play.

Dice/Tile/Spin Games

Bananagrams
A Scrabble-like game without the board -- much like Pick Two!, but without the letter values.
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Using a selection of 144 plastic letter tiles in the English edition, each player works independently to create their own 'crossword'. When a player uses up all their letters, all players take a new tile from the pool. When all the tiles are gone, the first player to use up all the tiles in their hand wins.
There are also variants included in the rules, and the game is suitable for solo play.

About the Game:
# of Players: 1-8 Players
Playing Time: 15 Minutes
Age: 7+
Chupacabra
Turn out the lights and try to be the last mammal standing in this survival dice game based on Latin American folklore. Can you survive the night?
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In Chupacabra: Survive the Night, which includes 24 glow-in-the-dark dice, each player rolls six dice at the start of the game and uses their rolled Chupacabra to steal other players' chickens, goats, and bulls. One Chupacabra can capture up to two chickens or one goat, and two Chupacabra can capture a bull – but animal packs are immune to Chupacabra so be sure to roll a lot of the same animal! (As if you have the power to control your dice rolls...)
When a player rolls all Chupacabras, he becomes "Chupacabra Loco" and can capture all of one type of another animal from a player.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2-4 Players
Playing Time: Not available from publisher
Age: 8+
Connect 4
Challenge a friend to checker-dropping fun with CONNECT 4! There are three ways to play, so choose your game.
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Original: Drop in your checkers and be the first to get 4-in-a-row to win.
Pop Out: Get 4 in a row by popping a checker out instead of dropping one in!
Pop 10: Pop checkers out of the grid. If your checker is part of a 4-in-a-row, you get to keep it. The first player to get 10 checkers wins.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2 Players
Playing Time: 15 Minutes
Age: 6+
Dice Forge
Heroes, stand ready! The gods are offering a seat in heaven to whichever hero defeats their rivals. Your courage and wits will be your most precious allies as you use divine dice to gather resources along the road to victory.
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Your divine dice are exceptional, with removable faces! Customize your dice to make them more powerful as the game progresses. Sacrifice gold to the gods to obtain enhanced die faces. Upgrade your dice to produce the resources you need. Overcome ordeals concocted by the gods to grow in glory and earn rewards. Skillfully manage the luck of the dice and take charge of your destiny. Only the greatest will ascend to the heavens!
Dice Forge is a development game featuring innovative mechanics based on dice with removable faces. In this dice crafting game, players build their own dice. Roll your dice, manage your resources, complete ordeals before your opponents and explore multiple winning strategies.
Now you control the luck of the dice!

About the Game:
# of Players: 2-4 Players
Playing Time: 40 Minutes
Age: 10+
Patchwork
In Patchwork, two players compete to build the most esthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt on a personal 9x9 game board. To start play, lay out all of the patches at random in a circle and place a marker directly clockwise of the 2-1 patch.
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Each player takes five buttons — the currency/points in the game — and someone is chosen as the start player. On a turn, a player either purchases one of the three patches standing clockwise of the spool or passes. To purchase a patch, you pay the cost in buttons shown on the patch, move the spool to that patch's location in the circle, add the patch to your game board, then advance your time token on the time track a number of spaces equal to the time shown on the patch. You're free to place the patch anywhere on your board that doesn't overlap other patches, but you probably want to fit things together as tightly as possible. If your time token is behind or on top of the other player's time token, then you take another turn; otherwise the opponent now goes. Instead of purchasing a patch, you can choose to pass; to do this, you move your time token to the space immediately in front of the opponent's time token, then take one button from the bank for each space you moved.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2 Players
Playing Time: 15-30 Minutes
Age: 8+
Pop-O-Matic Trouble
This is the game with the Pop-O-Matic dice roller. It's a simplified Parcheesi variant in which only one die is rolled per turn.
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The game is abstract, each player has set of pawns of his color. Each turn player rolls a die using the Pop-O-Matic and selects one of his pawns to move. Pawns can enter the track from Home base only on a roll of six. Each pawn needs to travel around the board and finish on the Finish lane. If pawn of another player is bumped, the bumped pawn is returned to home. The goal is to be the first one to get all the pawns to the Finish lane.
For advanced players, we suggest that when a piece gets bumped, it should only be bumped back to its START space, rather than to its HOME. Only when bumped from their START space are pieces sent HOME.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2-4 Players
Playing Time: 45 Minutes
Age: 4+
Pop-O-Matic Trouble: Despicable Me
Uh-oh, Gru and his minions are in Trouble! Pop the bubble to save the minions in this Despicable Me version of the classic Trouble game! Can you get all your minions safely around Gru's conveyor belt?
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Move your minions and send other players' minions home when you land on the same space. If you pop Siren Bob with the Pop-O-Matic, your minions are safe from being sent home - until someone else pops him! If all your minions make it to your Finish steps before anyone else's, you win! Trouble, Pop-O-Matic and all related characters are trademarks of Hasbro.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2-4 Players
Playing Time: 45 Minutes
Age: 4+
Rick and Morty: Anatomy Park
Based on the hilarious "Anatomy Park" episode, each player in Rick and Morty: Anatomy Park attempts to construct the world's greatest theme park inside of a homeless guy named Reuben.
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Players build while battling both monstrous diseases and fellow park-builders with creative differences concerning how the park should be laid out. The object of the game is to score points by placing your park tiles into the best spots within the body. Move your character pawn around the park to scout out the best locations and stay away from (or shoot) the monster diseases that will pop up and cause chaos. Whoever has the most victory points wins and is the master builder of Anatomy Park!

About the Game:
# of Players: 2-4 Players
Playing Time: 30-60 Minutes
Age: 18+
Sagrada
Draft dice and use the tools-of-the-trade in Sagrada to carefully construct your stained glass window masterpiece.
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In more detail, each player builds a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which color or shade (value) of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement...as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.
Special tools can be used to help you break the rules by spending skill tokens; once a tool is used, it then requires more skill tokens for the next player to use them.
The highest scoring window artisan wins!

About the Game:
# of Players: 1-4 Players
Playing Time: 30-45 Minutes
Age: 14+
Yahtzee
Yahtzee is a classic dice game played with 5 dice. Each player's turn consists of rolling the dice up to 3 times in hope of making 1 of 13 categories. Examples of categories are 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, straight, full house, etc.
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Each player tries to fill in a score for each category, but this is not always possible. When all players have entered a score or a zero for all 13 categories, the game ends and total scores are compared.
There are four basic scoring difference between the tradition game Yacht and Yahtzee. They are: 1) Yacht has no Three of a Kind category, 2) there are no bonuses in Yacht, 3) there are no Joker rules in Yacht, and 4) the Full House category is scored as the sum of the dice. The other scoring rules are identical between the two games.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2-10 Players
Playing Time: 30 Minutes
Age: 6+
Zhongguo Xiang Qi
XiangQi, commonly referred to in English as "Chinese Chess", is played with 32 pieces (16 per player) on a board that is 9 lines wide and 10 lines long. As in the game of Go, the game is played on the intersections of the game board.
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The area of play is divided into two territories by a river in the middle of game board. In each territory there is a 3 line by 3 line palace, in which each player's respective General/Marshal is located. The object of the game is to capture the opponent's General/Marshal.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2 Players
Playing Time: 60 Minutes
Age: 8+
Zombie Dice
In Zombie Dice, you are a zombie. You want braaains – more brains than any of your zombie buddies. The 13 custom dice are your victims. Push your luck to eat their brains, but stop rolling before the shotgun blasts end your turn!
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Whoever collects 13 brains first wins. Each game takes 10 to 20 minutes and can be taught in a single round.

Each turn, you take three dice from the box and roll them. A brain symbol is worth one point at the end of the round, while footsteps allow you to reroll this particular dice. Shotgun blasts on the other hand are rather bad, cause if you collect three shotgun blasts during your turn, it is over for you and you get no points. After rolling three dice, you may decide if you want to score your current brain collection or if you want to push your luck by grabbing new dice so you have three again and roll once more.

About the Game:
# of Players: 2-99 Players
Playing Time: 10-20 Minutes
Age: 10+