Second Look—Daemon Dice

New from SFR is Daemon Dice, a constructible, 2-player dice game about Daemons battling by tearing pieces off of each other. The game is a rewrite of an older dice game, Chaos Progenitus. I say rewrite, because this isn’t just a reprint. The game has been significantly reworked, though is based upon the same principles of Chaos Progenitus. Also, Dameon Dice isn’t to be confused with Demon Dice, which was a straight reprint of Chaos Progenitus by Lester Smith. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the…uh…meat…of the game.

In Daemon Dice, each player has a daemon made up of 13 body parts. Each body part is represented by a die. During the game each player will roll these dice and try to diminish the other player’s ability to roll their dice. Each turn you’ll roll dice, recover lost dice, defend against the other player’s last roll, and setup an attack for your opponent to try and defend the next turn. The game has a wonderful back-and-forth flow where you’re always working against the other player’s last roll and trying to one-up them at the same time. The player who can’t roll any more dice on their turn loses the game. It makes for a very fast-paced game once you’ve gotten the basics down.

The simple actions of defending and attacking are given depth by the special abilities of the body parts you choose for your daemon. Some parts can grapple, poison, target certain dice, or even effect multiple dice. The way you build your daemon is directly going to effect the way you’re going to play the game. Add in the fact that purebred daemons (daemons of only one die/ink color) will get extra boosts that halfbreed daemons (daemons with 2 different die/ink color dice) don’t. There’s even rules for creating larger or smaller daemons by using more or less dice.

While all the symbols make take a bit to learn, there’s a great play mat that you can print out that makes things MUCH easier when you first start playing. After a game or two you’ll be furiously rolling dice and trying to tear apart your opponent with ease.

Right now SFR has the starter sets available for $19.95. Soon we’ll see more  dice coming out for various different daemons, along with rules for multiplayer games. I, for one, am really looking forward to getting my hands on more for this game. While my younger children really didn’t get their heads around it, my 8-year-0ld and I really had a blast with this one. Combine that with its portability, and this game has come with us various places to be played in our downtime.

A copy of Daemon Dice was provided free for review by SFR, Inc.