Skip to main content

The Dice Tower Awards 2012

Presenting the nominees of the sixth annual Dice Tower Awards for games released in 2012 in categories including artwork, small publisher, new designer, and the game of the year!

Game of the Year

Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game is a tactical ship-to-ship combat game in which players take control of powerful Rebel X-wings and nimble Imperial TIE fighters, facing them against each other in fast-paced space combat. Featuring stunningly detailed and painted miniatures, the X-Wing Miniatures Game recreates exciting Star Wars space combat throughout its several included scenarios. Select your crew, plan your maneuvers, and complete your mission!

Whatever your chosen vessel, the rules of X-Wing facilitate fast and visceral gameplay that puts you in the middle of Star Wars fiercest firefights. Each ship type has its own unique piloting dial, which is used to secretly select a speed and maneuver each turn. After planning maneuvers, each ship's dial is revealed and executed (starting with the lowest skilled pilot). So whether you rush headlong toward your enemy showering his forward deflectors in laser fire, or dance away from him as you attempt to acquire a targeting lock, you'll be in total control throughout all the tense dogfighting action.

Star Wars: X-Wing features (three) unique missions, and each has its own set of victory conditions and special rules; with such a broad selection of missions, only clever and versatile pilots employing a range of tactics will emerge victorious. What's more, no mission will ever play the same way twice, thanks to a range of customization options, varied maneuvers, and possible combat outcomes. Damage, for example, is determined through dice and applied in the form of a shuffled Damage Deck. For some hits your fighter sustains, you'll draw a card that assigns a special handicap. Was your targeting computer damaged, affecting your ability to acquire a lock on the enemy? Perhaps an ill-timed weapon malfunction will limit your offensive capabilities. Or worse yet, your pilot could be injured, compromising his ability to focus on the life-and-death struggle in which he is engaged...

The Star Wars: X-Wing starter set includes everything you need to begin your battles, such as scenarios, cards, and fully assembled and painted ships. What's more, Star Wars: X-Wing's quick-to-learn ruleset establishes the foundation for a system that can be expanded with your favorite ships and characters from the Star Wars universe.

Reimplemented by Star Wars: X-Wing (Second Edition)

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jason Little
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Daniel Clark (I)
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Peter Lee
Publishers: Wizards of the Coast
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Joanna Kijanka
Publishers: Portal Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Geoff Engelstein
Publishers: Stronghold Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Richard Garfield
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Aaron Dill
Publishers: Gale Force Nine, LLC
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Vital Lacerda
Publishers: Giochix.it
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Bryan Pope
Publishers: Arcane Wonders

Best Family Game

All of the eligible young men (and many of the not-so-young) seek to woo the princess of Tempest. Unfortunately, she has locked herself in the palace, and you must rely on others to take your romantic letters to her. Will yours reach her first?

Love Letter is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2–4 players. Your goal is to get your love letter into Princess Annette's hands while deflecting the letters from competing suitors. From a deck with only sixteen cards, each player starts with only one card in hand; one card is removed from play. On a turn, you draw one card, and play one card, trying to expose others and knock them from the game. Powerful cards lead to early gains, but make you a target. Rely on weaker cards for too long, however, and your letter may be tossed in the fire!

Number 4 in the Tempest: Shared World Game Series

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Seiji Kanai
Publishers: Alderac Entertainment Group
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Paul Peterson
Publishers: Alderac Entertainment Group
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Geoff Engelstein
Publishers: Stronghold Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Devin Low
Publishers: Upper Deck Entertainment
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Peter Lee
Publishers: Wizards of the Coast

Best Artwork

In Mice and Mystics, players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Collin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice and Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come – assuming they can all squeak by...



Expansion advice:

For those who have expansions for this game the recommended order by the game designer for playing them is as follows (see original post HERE):

Sorrow and Remembrance (Base game)
Cat's Cradle (Lost Chapter 1)
Heart of Glorm
The Ghost of Castle Andon (Lost Chapter 2)
Downwood Tales
Portents of Importance (Lost Chapter 3), connected to the story in Tail Feathers



Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Paul Peterson
Publishers: Alderac Entertainment Group
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Paolo Mori
Publishers: Marabunta
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Devin Low
Publishers: Upper Deck Entertainment
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Régis Bonnessée
Publishers: Libellud

Best Expansion

In Core Worlds: Galactic Orders – the first expansion to Core Worlds, the deck-building card game of intergalactic conquest – players begin to forge alliances with the six Galactic Orders, powerful organizations that have maintained their independence in the midst of a crumbling empire. These Orders consist of the Galactic Senate, the Science Guild, the Merchant Alliance, the Mining Coalition, the Order of Knighthood, and the Mystic Brotherhood. The Galactic Orders expansion focuses on these six independent organizations and their influence upon a galaxy at war.

Each Galactic Order is represented on the table by a large Galactic Order card that specifies the special power associated with that Order, and each player starts with 20 Faction Tokens that match the Faction symbols on their Starting Decks. Whenever a player deploys a Unit or plays a Tactic with a Galactic Order icon on it, he gets to place his Faction Token onto the corresponding Galactic Order card. Players must choose between leaving their Faction Tokens on the Galactic Order cards to score points at the end of the game, or removing their Faction Tokens in order to use the unique special powers associated with each Order.

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Andrew Parks
Publishers: Stronghold Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Tory Niemann
Publishers: Clever Mojo Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Antoine Bauza
Publishers: Repos Production
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Vlaada Chvátil
Publishers: WizKids
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Richard Garfield
Publishers: IELLO

Best Reprint

Welcome to New Angeles, home of the Beanstalk. From our branch offices in this monument of human achievement, NBN proudly broadcasts all your favorite media programming. We offer fully comprehensive streaming in music and threedee, news and sitcoms, classic movies and sensies. We cover it all. Ours is a brave new age, and as humanity hurtles into space and the future with an astonishing series of new advances every day, NBN and our affiliates are keeping pace, bringing you all the vid that's fit to view.

Android: Netrunner is an asymmetrical Living Card Game for two players. Set in the cyberpunk future of Android and Infiltration, the game pits a megacorporation and its massive resources against the subversive talents of lone runners.

Corporations seek to score agendas by advancing them. Doing so takes time and credits. To buy the time and earn the credits they need, they must secure their servers and data forts with "ice". These security programs come in different varieties, from simple barriers, to code gates and aggressive sentries. They serve as the corporation's virtual eyes, ears, and machine guns on the sprawling information superhighways of the network.

In turn, runners need to spend their time and credits acquiring a sufficient wealth of resources, purchasing the necessary hardware, and developing suitably powerful ice-breaker programs to hack past corporate security measures. Their jobs are always a little desperate, driven by tight timelines, and shrouded in mystery. When a runner jacks-in and starts a run at a corporate server, he risks having his best programs trashed or being caught by a trace program and left vulnerable to corporate countermeasures. It's not uncommon for an unprepared runner to fail to bypass a nasty sentry and suffer massive brain damage as a result. Even if a runner gets through a data fort's defenses, there's no telling what it holds. Sometimes, the runner finds something of value. Sometimes, the best he can do is work to trash whatever the corporation was developing.

The first player to seven points wins the game, but not likely before he suffers some brain damage or bad publicity.

The Revised Core Set for Android: Netrunner released in late 2017 includes cards from the original Core Set released in 2012 as well as cards from the Genesis Cycle and Spin Cycle series of Data Packs. While the cards in this set have been released previously, the art on some of them is new.

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Richard Garfield
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Daniel Clark (I)
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Roberto Di Meglio
Publishers: Ares Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Richard Hamblen
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2011
Designers: Christopher Badell
Publishers: Greater Than Games, LLC

Best Theming

In Mice and Mystics, players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Collin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice and Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come – assuming they can all squeak by...



Expansion advice:

For those who have expansions for this game the recommended order by the game designer for playing them is as follows (see original post HERE):

Sorrow and Remembrance (Base game)
Cat's Cradle (Lost Chapter 1)
Heart of Glorm
The Ghost of Castle Andon (Lost Chapter 2)
Downwood Tales
Portents of Importance (Lost Chapter 3), connected to the story in Tail Feathers



Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Joanna Kijanka
Publishers: Portal Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Geoff Engelstein
Publishers: Stronghold Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Aaron Dill
Publishers: Gale Force Nine, LLC
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Vital Lacerda
Publishers: Giochix.it

Best Game from a New Designer

It's your lifelong dream – to join the Star Patrol and be part of the crew of an interstellar Starship. You've worked hard, graduated from the academy, and received your first assignment as part of a team of young recruits, confident in your training and ready to be put to the test. Nothing can possibly go wrong as you are prepared for anything...

You are the Space Cadets.

Space Cadets is a fun and frantic cooperative game for 3-6 players who take on the roles of Bridge Officers of a Starship. Each officer must accomplish his specific task in order for the team to successfully complete the mission. You might be the...


Helmsman, plotting the ship's course through asteroid fields and nebulae.
Engineer, using dominoes to get enough power to each system.
Weapons Officer, completing puzzles to load the torpedoes and flicking a disc down a track to launch them.
Shield Officer, using tiles to form poker hands to get the strongest shields.
Sensor Officer, using your sense of touch to scan and lock on enemy targets.
Captain, setting the plan and making sure that everyone stays focused and does their job.


If your crew can work together to accomplish the mission goals, you just might make it home in one piece.

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Geoff Engelstein
Publishers: Stronghold Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Bryan Pope
Publishers: Arcane Wonders
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Peter Lee
Publishers: Wizards of the Coast
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Aaron Dill
Publishers: Gale Force Nine, LLC
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games

Best Party Game

All of the eligible young men (and many of the not-so-young) seek to woo the princess of Tempest. Unfortunately, she has locked herself in the palace, and you must rely on others to take your romantic letters to her. Will yours reach her first?

Love Letter is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2–4 players. Your goal is to get your love letter into Princess Annette's hands while deflecting the letters from competing suitors. From a deck with only sixteen cards, each player starts with only one card in hand; one card is removed from play. On a turn, you draw one card, and play one card, trying to expose others and knock them from the game. Powerful cards lead to early gains, but make you a target. Rely on weaker cards for too long, however, and your letter may be tossed in the fire!

Number 4 in the Tempest: Shared World Game Series

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Seiji Kanai
Publishers: Alderac Entertainment Group
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Rüdiger Dorn
Publishers: alea
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Stephen Glenn
Publishers: Asterion Press
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Rikki Tahta
Publishers: Indie Boards & Cards
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Dominic Crapuchettes
Publishers: North Star Games

Best Board Game Production

Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game is a tactical ship-to-ship combat game in which players take control of powerful Rebel X-wings and nimble Imperial TIE fighters, facing them against each other in fast-paced space combat. Featuring stunningly detailed and painted miniatures, the X-Wing Miniatures Game recreates exciting Star Wars space combat throughout its several included scenarios. Select your crew, plan your maneuvers, and complete your mission!

Whatever your chosen vessel, the rules of X-Wing facilitate fast and visceral gameplay that puts you in the middle of Star Wars fiercest firefights. Each ship type has its own unique piloting dial, which is used to secretly select a speed and maneuver each turn. After planning maneuvers, each ship's dial is revealed and executed (starting with the lowest skilled pilot). So whether you rush headlong toward your enemy showering his forward deflectors in laser fire, or dance away from him as you attempt to acquire a targeting lock, you'll be in total control throughout all the tense dogfighting action.

Star Wars: X-Wing features (three) unique missions, and each has its own set of victory conditions and special rules; with such a broad selection of missions, only clever and versatile pilots employing a range of tactics will emerge victorious. What's more, no mission will ever play the same way twice, thanks to a range of customization options, varied maneuvers, and possible combat outcomes. Damage, for example, is determined through dice and applied in the form of a shuffled Damage Deck. For some hits your fighter sustains, you'll draw a card that assigns a special handicap. Was your targeting computer damaged, affecting your ability to acquire a lock on the enemy? Perhaps an ill-timed weapon malfunction will limit your offensive capabilities. Or worse yet, your pilot could be injured, compromising his ability to focus on the life-and-death struggle in which he is engaged...

The Star Wars: X-Wing starter set includes everything you need to begin your battles, such as scenarios, cards, and fully assembled and painted ships. What's more, Star Wars: X-Wing's quick-to-learn ruleset establishes the foundation for a system that can be expanded with your favorite ships and characters from the Star Wars universe.

Reimplemented by Star Wars: X-Wing (Second Edition)

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jason Little
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Raphaël Guiton
Publishers: CMON Global Limited
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Daniel Clark (I)
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Simone Luciani
Publishers: Czech Games Edition
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games

Best Game from a Small Publisher

In Mice and Mystics, players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Collin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice and Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come – assuming they can all squeak by...



Expansion advice:

For those who have expansions for this game the recommended order by the game designer for playing them is as follows (see original post HERE):

Sorrow and Remembrance (Base game)
Cat's Cradle (Lost Chapter 1)
Heart of Glorm
The Ghost of Castle Andon (Lost Chapter 2)
Downwood Tales
Portents of Importance (Lost Chapter 3), connected to the story in Tail Feathers



Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Ryan Laukat
Publishers: Red Raven Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jason Maxwell
Publishers: 8th Summit
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Aaron Dill
Publishers: Gale Force Nine, LLC
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Bryan Pope
Publishers: Arcane Wonders

Best War Game

1812 - The Invasion of Canada

The year is 1812. War is raging across Europe and Russia. Napoleon, emperor of France, is seeking to dominate Europe through conquest. France’s enemies, led by England, are engaged in a desperate struggle to defeat Napoleon. England, in dire need of men, is impressing men to serve in its navy. Included are Americans who are pressed into service at gunpoint.

The young American nation objects. Eager to defend its sovereign rights and to strengthen its position in North America, the United States declares war on Britain on June 18, 1812. Taking advantage of the British Army being occupied in its struggles against Napoleon, American forces invade Canada in order to drive the British from its last remaining colony on North American soil. Surprised, Britain reels from the attack and now has to face another enemy threat on another front.

In 1812 - The Invasion of Canada, players take on one of the roles of the major factions that took part in the War of 1812. On the British side these are represented by the British Regulars (Redcoats), Canadian Militia and Native Americans; and the American Regular Army and American Militia comprise the American players. Players for each side will cooperate with each other in order to plan and conduct their campaigns. Each side will attempt to capture Objective Areas on the map. When a truce is called, the side that controls the most enemy Objective Areas wins.

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Beau Beckett
Publishers: Academy Games, Inc.
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Ed Beach
Publishers: GMT Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Volko Ruhnke
Publishers: GMT Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Dan Verssen
Publishers: Dan Verssen Games (DVG)
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jason Matthews
Publishers: GMT Games

Most Innovative Game

It's your lifelong dream – to join the Star Patrol and be part of the crew of an interstellar Starship. You've worked hard, graduated from the academy, and received your first assignment as part of a team of young recruits, confident in your training and ready to be put to the test. Nothing can possibly go wrong as you are prepared for anything...

You are the Space Cadets.

Space Cadets is a fun and frantic cooperative game for 3-6 players who take on the roles of Bridge Officers of a Starship. Each officer must accomplish his specific task in order for the team to successfully complete the mission. You might be the...


Helmsman, plotting the ship's course through asteroid fields and nebulae.
Engineer, using dominoes to get enough power to each system.
Weapons Officer, completing puzzles to load the torpedoes and flicking a disc down a track to launch them.
Shield Officer, using tiles to form poker hands to get the strongest shields.
Sensor Officer, using your sense of touch to scan and lock on enemy targets.
Captain, setting the plan and making sure that everyone stays focused and does their job.


If your crew can work together to accomplish the mission goals, you just might make it home in one piece.

Read more Read less
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Geoff Engelstein
Publishers: Stronghold Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Bryan Pope
Publishers: Arcane Wonders
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Carl Chudyk
Publishers: Asmadi Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Simone Luciani
Publishers: Czech Games Edition
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Kristian Amundsen Østby
Publishers: Queen Games