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Review of Dicenstein
Blurb from the publisher: 'Become a mad scientist, digging through graveyards to stitch together wacky hybrid monsters and send them to battle!
Dicenstein is a great new dice game in which you are a mad doctor, collecting and stitching together body parts to build monsters. But the body parts aren't just condemned criminals or disease victims - you are after the best! You are digging up the world's most infamous monsters, and piecing them together for your Ultimate Creation!!!
You'll send your monster forth to battle your rival's monsters and fight for the best body parts, meanwhile building your Monster Army to terrorize the countryside. May the best (or worst) monster win!
Dicenstein contains huge colorful 18mm dice with high-quality imprinting so you can easily read the symbols. The mapboard is sturdy cardboard, and folds up nicely. Each monster consists of exactly 9 dice, a monster token, a Secret Army monster card, and an oversize Monster card featuring its characteristics so you can easily thumb through them and see what each monster is like. Dicenstein also comes with 9 custom battle dice.
Dicenstein's rules are simple and straightforward, letting you get right to the monster-making and battling (which is why you're here, no?). It usually takes less than an hour to play. The game is being produced by Petersen Games, publishers of Cthulhu Wars, Theomachy, and Orcs Must Die! - The Board Game.'
What you get: Dicenstein is currently on kickstarter up to the 6th of October 2015. The game can be purchased during this period for a pledge of USD 50, along with all the extra components from the stretch goals it achieves. When the kickstarter campaign is over the full game will cost USD 65; that’s a saving of more than 23%. In any case the game will not magically appear tomorrow on your doorstep. Weather allowing, it is most plausible and prudent to expect Dicenstein somewhere around August 2016.
In the interest of full disclosure I received a prototype to review. Most components were already included, but not all. The final wording of the rules is almost set in stone, I do not however have first hand knowledge of the final visuals and the art of the game. As to its final components (and excluding any stretch goals that will only be handed out to kickstarter backers), these are: the rulebook in English, one Graveyard (the board), one Victory Point track (also a board), the Burial Key (a third board), 4 Labs with slots for controls, 24 plastic spindles for sliders, 4 player VP Pawns, 4 Monster Meeples, 12 Secret Monster Army Cards, 12 Monster Info Reference Cards, one large dice bag, die-cut tokens (12 monster tokens for the burial key and 3 monster boss tokens), 108 Monster Parts Dice (9 dice per monster type) and 9 attack dice.
The rules can be also freely found at the company's website if you wish to read them before committing.
Gameplay: Dicenstein is played in a graveyard-like board, with two or three graves per area (three in the center and two in the edges). Monsters are randomly put on the Burial Key in order to later fill the Graveyard with three dice of each matching monster on the tombstones. Each player secretly receives three Secret Monster Army cards, keeps two and returns one. The Lab is set in front of each player and its values are set as per the standard Hunchback (Head: Health 1, Body: Health 4 / Dig 1 / Move 1, Hand: Dig 1 / Attack 1 and Foot: Health 1 / Dig 1 / Move 1, for a grand total of Brains 0, Health 6, Attack 1, Move 2 and Dig 2). In a turn, a player can perform three phases out of the following four: the Starting Lab phase (if you start your turn in the lab), the Action Phase (mandatory), the Dig Phase (if you end your turn in the Graveyard) and the Final Lab phase (if you end your turn in your Lab).
During the Starting Lab phase, a player can Build a New Monster and turn in a Monster Army, in any order. The core of the game is the four-part and five-attribute Monster; its starting configuration is the Hunchback, a being rather limited in scope. To build a Monster the player takes all the dice already collected in his Lab dice pool and rolls them together. He can then use any of the body parts that he rolled in order to construct what he considers the perfect monster, seeing how each body part confers advantages to different attributes that might be useful at that point in the game. Additionally, every single monster whose parts a player use provides a special ability to the final creation. As an example the Giant Mantis' Non-Central Nervous System means that your if your Monster contains Giant Mantis' parts, it can stay on the board up to your next Dig phase. The Clown's parts on the other hand can cause Terror to the other Monsters, which will need an extra Move to enter his location and engage him in combat. Should a player lack a particular part he can always use the Hunchback's default, even though that is less than ideal: at the end of each turn his Monster will suffer two damage, and should it by any chance die, the player will also lose a Victory Point.
Turning in a Monster Army is optional but provides Victory Points. The player effectively surrenders a set of his dice, which are taken out of the game. Depending on how many parts are returned from the declared types and how high in the Burial Key the monster is, the player wins anything from zero to five Victory Points. Three Monster Bosses also exist, which can be constructed from parts of any monster but require a high number of parts. The Bosses grant six, four and two Victory Points respectively for surrendering seven, five or three Monster Parts, and are available in a first-come first-served basis.
The Action Phase is always mandatory, and allows a player to move his monster and attack other monsters, as well as to bump them from his area to another. It is comprised of two segments, Move/Attack and Retreat. A monster may only move orthogonally and has to end his move in another square than the one it started from. The amount of moves a Monster has is linked to his Move attribute; the more Move a Monster has the faster it is. If, during its moves, a Monster enters an area with another Monster, the two Monsters have to fight. There is a single exchange of blows only: the Monsters will roll as many dice each as their Attack attribute. If any of the players is not satisfied with the result of the roll, he may reroll a number of dice up to his Brains attribute. Each attack die has two miss sides, three one-damage sides and one critical hit (two-damage) side. After the attack each player reduces his monster's Health score by the amount of damage rolled by his opponent. If it falls to zero the Monster is killed. The winner immediately wins 4 Victory Points and claims one die of his choice from the killed Monster as his trophy for his dice pool. If at the end of the Action phase a Monster is still in an area with an enemy Monster, the latter must be pushed into an orthogonally adjacent area. That area however must not be a lab or another monster-infested area.
The Dig phase is extremely straightforward. Like in the good old days of grave-robbing, the Monster digs up for monster parts in the area is it at. The Monster does not select the parts; all the parts from all the gravestones in the area are put into the bag, mixed and the player randomly draws as many parts as his Dig attribute, immediately adding them to his dice pool. The remaining parts are returned back to their proper tombstones.
Finally, if a player ends his turn in his Lab he must perform the Final Lab phase which is comprised of three steps. In the first step, he Disassembles his Current Monster. This is mandatory. He many then turn in a Monster Army just like in the Starting Lab phase, but only if he voluntarily returned to his Lab. He finally builds his new Monster, again as per the Starting Lab phase.
Once a player reaches 20 Victory Points the game will end after all remaining players take a final turn. In the end, all players reveal their Secret Monster Army cards and score one Victory Point for each monster part in their lab from the two monsters displayed. The player with the most victory points wins, while in case of a tie, the biggest Secret Monster Army carries the day.
The strong points: Dicenstein is the first dice crafting game I either play or review, and I am utterly surprised by how incredibly good it is! Don't get me wrong; the previous offering from Petersen Games is the outright stunning Cthulhu Wars, these guys know how to make games. What I did not expect at all however, was that even people who do not enjoy dice games would be captivated by Dicenstein.
The reason behind it is that its dice are effectively resources, making it partially a resource and set-collection game, which differs quite a bit from more traditional dice games. There, the dice combinations one aims for are fixed and an end in themselves. Here, the combinations are not only fluid but just a preparatory step towards creating a roaming monster that will rob graves and battle others. Depending on what the player aims to achieve, even results that might initially register as suboptimal might create a useful monster. This is not about perfection; this is about having the right Monster on the board at the right time or simply change tactics if the current ones are not working. Its five attributes (Brains, Health, Attack, Move and Dig) are as useful as you want them to be. At the beginning you might want to field a Monster better at digging and moving, while the more the game proceeds the more attack oriented and tougher monsters become.
I particularly liked the fact that monsters are half-stupid. They won't stay in for a fight until its end, they just exchange a few blows and get out. The dynamics that this rule creates are deeper than one initially expects. Fights are not to the death. One can't create a killing machine that will run from one area to the other bashing its enemies. An insanely high Attack number will by necessity mean compromises elsewhere, like in Move or in Health, with body injuries accumulating over time. What good is a high Attack against monsters with a high Health which can topple yours with a single blow due to your own low Health? There are all sorts of considerations to make for tactics which follow one easy, basic principle: your Monster must make the most out of its time in the Graveyard, preferably without dying. Be it collecting dice, or battling other monsters and stealing their dice, your creation can't be aimlessly wondering around. Nobody creates such a monstrosity without a plan after all. Even more so, your Monster might have to take a pit-stop every now and then, to deny from your opponents any potential Victory Points as well as body parts. Your Monster will die once, twice or even thrice; you don't need to make a habit out of it.
And then came the special abilities; these are genuinely fun. One doesn't need a pure breed in order to claim special abilities; a single part from a particular Monster is enough. Seeing how there are twelve buried Monsters (plus the Hunchback) whose parts you can use, a number from zero to four monsters may be present in your own creation and the number of combinations is very high. Again, what suits you better? Is the Unicorn's Charge (he fights first in a battle and if the opponent dies he does not get to retaliate) preferable to the Plant-Man's Regeneration (regain as much Health as there are opponents at the beginning of your turn)? The question becomes even more pressing when special abilities are not compared only to one another but in relation to the final construct you are aiming for. You might prefer the Clown head instead of the Robot head, but you if have no other Robot dice and you absolutely need the Robot ability you might have to compromise for a few less points here and there.
Even in prototype form, the Monster Info Reference Cards were pivotal in better appraising tactics during the game. Monsters are not one-sided and highly asymmetrical. As an example, the six dice of the Plant Man are Head (1 Brain), Body (9 Health), Body (10 Health), Arms (1 Attack, 1 Health), Legs (2 Move, 2 Dig, 1 Health) and Legs (2 Move, 1 Dig, 1 Health, 1 Attack). Just for comparison's sake, here is the Clown: Head (3 Brain), Head (3 Brain), Body (6 Health, 1 Brain), Arms (1 Attack, 1 Brains, 1 Dig), Legs (2 Move, 2 Dig, 1 Brain) and Legs (3 Move, 1 Dig, 2 Brains). These Monsters have significant differences. One has two Head sides, while the other two Body. One is heavy on Health while the other on Brains. Even within the same Monster one Leg (or Body) result is different than the other. Light-hearted as it is, the game has quite the depth.
Are these monsters balanced? With a half-dozen plays I can positively say that they balance each other out when players start their monster building. That, alone, is a major achievement.
The rules might appear to be exception-based, in reality however Dicenstein is an extremely easy game to learn and teach, especially to the younger ones among us. It also plays fast, allowing for at least two, if not three plays in a single sitting. It plays fast and furious and gives out quite the laughs. I kept on having a sense of urgency, a frantic rhythm while playing, as if my poor creation would dissolve into its constituent elements before midnight. At the end of the day there is something that isn't fully stable (or serious) about a RoboVampiric Plant-Clown or a Mummified Unicorn-like Giant Mantis Swarm.
It will be pointless to comment on the art, the quality of the components, the layout of the board etc seeing how everything is in the process of being finalised. Taking the game's nature into account as a family entertaining game, I suspect it will tilt towards the cartoony, humorous and exaggerated, as opposed to grim and dark. One can definitely rule out the style and prose of Cthulhu Wars. I, for one, am fully confident of the final result for two reasons. First, the prototype was in an extremely advanced state and was enjoyable to play even with the provisional art. Second, Cthulhu Wars quality. I don't believe for a second that the guys who made that game with those incredible, oustanding miniatures will drop the ball here.
I found the price to be fair for the amount of dice that the game contains. As is usual with practically all kickstarters, if you can afford it now, it's clearly preferable to buy it now with all its stretch goals and add-ons.
Incredible as it sounds, the theme fits the rules fantastically. I will personally slap anybody who doubts the theme with 'but, how do the unearthed findings reach the Lab when a Monster is killed?' or 'how come the unearthed findings change time after time?'. It is called poetic license and this is a light-hearted game for crying out loud.
The weak points: Nothing serious here to be honest. In order to deal with the potential downtime that the monster creation process might create, Dicenstein actively encourages players to create their monsters while waiting for other players to finish their turn. Many other games do this and in Dicenstein's case it indeed eliminates downtime. For my personal tastes however it removes some of the control I enjoy having. I am not suggesting that players actively cheat by changing their dice's sides while creating their monsters, even though for some groups that might be a very real possibility. I am suggesting however that mistakes might happen a lot more easily through clumsiness (toppling dice) or lack of concentration (changing a die's side while perusing it and forgetting what side it was initially on); both these cases occurred quite a few times during playtesting. The solution we found was to always have a supervising opponent when monster creation was taking place. That was usually one of the players sitting next to the player creating the monstrosity. If none were available (because of fighting it out amongst themselves for example), monster creation would have to wait for a bit later.
I noticed the dance of death effect a couple of times, i.e. opponents nearing each other but being unwilling to fight, not because they did not wish to, but because they knew that, all things considered, they could not deliver the killing blow and that somebody else, on a future turn, could profit from their initial hard work. I don't want to pass the wrong message here: mindless monster bashing is neither the objective nor the theme of the game. Building a tough monster whose extremely high Health deters its enemies from attacking it is a valid part of the game. It's just that a couple of times it kind of felt against its spirit.
At the end of the day Dicenstein is still a dice game. Your freshly undug findings might only be comprised of heads or arms. Yep, it feels bad. Yep, the others will be laughing at you. Yep, get over it.
There was some fiddliness on the board due to the very high number of dice involved. I want to believe that the final version will have a bigger board and will accommodate all elements better without the need to moving things around. Should that happen, make sure you have a big table and an equally big rolling surface. Dice Towers or other big, contained rolling surfaces are really recommended if you don't want to chase dice all over the place.
Conclusion: I have no doubts about the success of the Dicenstein kickstarter; it funded one third of its goal within a few hours only. I have personally waited years upon years for a light-hearted, family-oriented grave-robbing game. As an extra bonus this also includes monster creation and fighting (manic laughter not included). Honestly, what is there not to like?
To find out more about Dicenstein visit the Petersen Games website at https://petersengames.com. If you like what you see, the current kickstarter, closing on the 6th of October 2015, can be found right here.
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