The Dice Tower Awards 2018

Root is a game of adventure and war in which 2 to 4 (1 to 6 with the 'Riverfolk' expansion) players battle for control of a vast wilderness.

The nefarious Marquise de Cat has seized the great woodland, intent on harvesting its riches. Under her rule, the many creatures of the forest have banded together. This Alliance will seek to strengthen its resources and subvert the rule of Cats. In this effort, the Alliance may enlist the help of the wandering Vagabonds who are able to move through the more dangerous woodland paths. Though some may sympathize with the Alliance’s hopes and dreams, these wanderers are old enough to remember the great birds of prey who once controlled the woods.

Meanwhile, at the edge of the region, the proud, squabbling Eyrie have found a new commander who they hope will lead their faction to resume their ancient birthright. The stage is set for a contest that will decide the fate of the great woodland. It is up to the players to decide which group will ultimately take root.

Root represents the next step in our development of asymmetric design. Like Vast: The Crystal Caverns, each player in Root has unique capabilities and a different victory condition. Now, with the aid of gorgeous, multi-use cards, a truly asymmetric design has never been more accessible.

The Cats play a game of engine building and logistics while attempting to police the vast wilderness. By collecting Wood they are able to produce workshops, lumber mills, and barracks. They win by building new buildings and crafts.

The Eyrie musters their hawks to take back the Woods. They must capture as much territory as possible and build roosts before they collapse back into squabbling.

The Alliance hides in the shadows, recruiting forces and hatching conspiracies. They begin slowly and build towards a dramatic late-game presence--but only if they can manage to keep the other players in check.

Meanwhile, the Vagabond plays all sides of the conflict for their own gain, while hiding a mysterious quest. Explore the board, fight other factions, and work towards achieving your hidden goal.

In Root, players drive the narrative, and the differences between each role create an unparalleled level of interaction and replayability. Leder Games invites you and your family to explore the fantastic world of Root!

—description from the publisher

Within the charming valley of Everdell, beneath the boughs of towering trees, among meandering streams and mossy hollows, a civilization of forest critters is thriving and expanding. From Everfrost to Bellsong, many a year have come and gone, but the time has come for new territories to be settled and new cities established. You will be the leader of a group of critters intent on just such a task. There are buildings to construct, lively characters to meet, events to host—you have a busy year ahead of yourself. Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?

Everdell is a game of dynamic tableau building and worker placement.

On their turn a player can take one of three actions:

a) Place a Worker: Each player has a collection of Worker pieces. These are placed on the board locations, events, and on Destination cards. Workers perform various actions to further the development of a player's tableau: gathering resources, drawing cards, and taking other special actions.

b) Play a Card: Each player is building and populating a city; a tableau of up to 15 Construction and Critter cards. There are five types of cards: Travelers, Production, Destination, Governance, and Prosperity. Cards generate resources (twigs, resin, pebbles, and berries), grant abilities, and ultimately score points. The interactions of the cards reveal numerous strategies and a near infinite variety of working cities.

c) Prepare for the next Season: Workers are returned to the players supply and new workers are added. The game is played from Winter through to the onset of the following winter, at which point the player with the city with the most points wins.

The great and forgotten Kami have returned from the underworld, displeased with the affairs of the Empire’s present Shōgun. At the start of spring in the Great New Year, the Kami have gathered their sacred clans with one quest: reclaim the lands of Nippon and return them to their honorable, spiritual traditions. However, each clan is bound by their own proud traditions to a unique vision for this great return and must wage a powerful diplomatic war across eight provinces. Alliances must be forged, betrayal is inevitable, honorable standing rises and falls. Political mandates must be navigated and devastating war must be fought, each won by expert skill and cunning negotiation. And only one may stand victorious at the coming of winter. You, honorable Shōgun, lead one of these great clans. Do you have the strength of honor, virtue, and spirit, as well as the mastery of steel necessary to deliver on this ancient promise?

Rising Sun is a board game for 3 to 5 players set in legendary feudal Japan. Each player chooses a Clan and competes to lead theirs to victory by accumulating Victory Points over the course of the Seasons. Each Clan possesses a unique ability and differs in Seasonal Income, Starting Honor Rank, and Home Province.
Over the course of the game, players will forge and break alliances, choose political actions, worship the gods, customize their clans, and position their figures around Japan. In the process, Honor is a palpable element in Rising Sun: Having high Honor gives several advantages, while having low Honor may grant the allegiance of the darker elements of the world. But above all, Honor settles all disputes: Whenever there is a tie, the tied player with the highest Honor wins.

In Rising Sun, players are encouraged to use diplomacy, negotiation, and even bribery to further their cause. Players can make deals at any point in the game but no deals are truly binding.
Victory Points can be gained in several ways, from winning battles, to harvesting the right provinces, to playing to the Virtues accumulated by your Clan.

The game is played over the course of 4 rounds or Seasons: Spring, Summer, and then Autumn; when Winter comes, the game draws to a close and players calculate bonuses to decide who is the winner.
Each Season is divided into five phases:
1) Seasonal Setup because every Season has a certain Season deck with different cards,
2) Tea Ceremony in which players sit down and negotiate their Alliances for the Season,
3) Political Phase during which players will select Political Mandates to prepare their Clans and position their forces,
4) War Phase, during which players battle over several Provinces, and
5) Seasonal Cleanup.

As already mentioned, the start of the Winter Season signifies the end of the game. Peace falls over the land as it gets covered in white snow, and a new Emperor will rise under the power of the great Kami.

Chronicles of Crime is a cooperative game of crime investigation, mixing an app, a board game and a touch of Virtual Reality.

With the same physical components (board, locations, characters and items), players will be able to play plenty of different scenarios and solve as many different crime stories.

Players start the app, choose the scenario they want to play, and follow the story. The goal being to catch the killer of the current case in the shortest time possible.

Using the Scan&Play technology, each component (locations, characters, items, etc.) has a unique QR code, which, depending on the scenario selected, will activate and trigger different clues and stories. That means players will be able to get new stories way after the game is released simply by downloading the app's updates, without any shipping of new physical components involved.

The VR experience only requires a mobile phone. Players simply put the VR glasses (optional buy) onto their mobile device, and put the VR glasses on their nose, holding their mobile device in front of their eyes, to immerse themselves in the game's universe and search for clues in a virtual world.

The game comes with 1 tutorial and 5 scenarios, but more can be downloaded directly inside the app!
Each session last around 1h to 1h30 minutes and many scenarios are connected to each others in order to tell a much bigger story.

—description from the publisher

Empires have risen and fallen in the aftermath of the Great War, and Europa stands on the precipice of a new era. The economy is robust, morale is high, and defenses are strong. There are reports from the countryside of strange soldiers with glowing eyes, but they seem distant and harmless.

Scythe: The Rise of Fenris, the conclusion to the Scythe expansion trilogy, enables two different options for any player count (1-5 if you have Scythe; 1-7 players if you have Invaders from Afar):


Campaign (8 games): The story of Scythe continues and concludes with an eight-episode campaign. While the campaign includes surprises, unlocks, and persistent elements, it is fully resettable and replayable.
Modular (11 modules): Instead of—or after—the campaign, the new modules in The Rise of Fenris can be used in various combinations to cater to player preferences. These modules are compatible with all Scythe expansions, and they include a fully cooperative module.


While the exact nature of the episodes and modules will remain a mystery (most of these components are in 5 secret tuckboxes and on 6 punchboards), the components in this expansion include a detailed episodic guidebook, 13 plastic miniatures, 62 wooden tokens, 2 custom dice, 25 tiles, and 100+ cardboard tokens.

—description from the publisher

Welcome to Fireball Island! You may have heard stories. You may have visited when you were younger. Perhaps you even saw a fireball engulf a fellow traveler in a hellscape of horror that makes you afraid to close your eyes at night. Whatever the case, welcome back! Turns out that Vul-Kar didn't like having his gem stolen way back when, so there has been some volcanic upheaval, an explosion in our snake population, feral tigers, new types of trees bent on ending human life, and swarms of bees everywhere. But don't worry — we have top people working on it.

Start your day of adventure at the helipad. Be sure to sign the waiver, which legally obligates you to take snapshots across the island. You'll race down the many paths, avoiding hazards all the while. On the plus side, you get to keep all the treasure you find.

Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar is a restoration of the classic 1986 game Fireball Island that features a unique 3D island and a host of marble mayhem. This new version boasts an island that is even bigger than the original (and yet fits in a smaller box) and more marbles. It is a family-weight game for 2-4 players (5 with an expansion) that plays in 30-45 minutes. Simple card play replaces the random roll-and-move of the original, and the set collection for the treasures offers some interesting choices for players.

Remember, you don't have to outrun the fireball — just the other players.

—description from the publisher


Bienvenue sur l'Île Infernale ! Vous avez peut-être entendu des histoires. Vous l'avez peut-être visité quand vous étiez plus jeune. Peut-être avez-vous même vu une boule de feu engloutir un compagnon de voyage dans un paysage d'horreur qui vous empêche de fermer les yeux la nuit. Quoi qu'il en soit, bon retour sur l'Île! Il s'avère que Vul-Kar n'a pas apprécié qu'on lui vole sa gemme ... alors il y a eu des bouleversements volcaniques, une croissance de notre population de serpents, des tigres sauvages, de nouveaux types d'arbres pour mettre fin à la vie humaine & des essaims d'abeilles partout. Mais ne vous inquiétez pas — nous avons des gens de haut niveau qui travaillent dessus.

Commencez votre journée d'aventure à l'Hélipad. Assurez-vous de signer la renonciation, qui vous oblige légalement à prendre des instantanés à travers l'île. Vous dévalerez les nombreux chemins, en évitant tout le temps les dangers. La bonne nouvelle : vous gardez tous les trésors que vous trouvez.

Fireball Island : La Malédiction de Vul-Kar est une restauration du jeu classique L'Île Infernale, datant de 1986, qui présente une île 3D unique & des billes chaotiques. Cette nouvelle version dispose d'une île encore plus grande que l'original (tout en tenant dans une boîte plus petite) & plus de billes. C'est un jeu de type familial pour 2-4 joueurs (5 avec une extension) durant 30-45 minutes. Un jeu de Cartes remplace le rouler-déplacer aléatoire de l'original, & la collection de trésors offre des choix intéressants pour les joueurs.

Rappelez-vous, vous n'avez pas à distancer la boule de feu — juste les autres joueurs.

In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, players are charlatans — or quack doctors — each making their own secret brew by adding ingredients one at a time. Take care with what you add, though, for a pinch too much of this or that will spoil the whole mixture!

Each player has their own bag of ingredient chips. During each round, they simultaneously draw chips from their bags and add them to their pots. The higher the face value of the drawn chip, the further it is placed in the pot's swirling pattern, increasing how much the potion will be worth. Push your luck as far as you can, but if you add too many cherry bombs, your pot will explode!

At the end of each round, players gain victory points and coins to spend on new ingredients, depending on how well they managed to fill up their pots. But players whose pots have exploded must choose points or coins — not both! The player with the most victory points at the end of nine rounds wins the game.

Root is a game of adventure and war in which 2 to 4 (1 to 6 with the 'Riverfolk' expansion) players battle for control of a vast wilderness.

The nefarious Marquise de Cat has seized the great woodland, intent on harvesting its riches. Under her rule, the many creatures of the forest have banded together. This Alliance will seek to strengthen its resources and subvert the rule of Cats. In this effort, the Alliance may enlist the help of the wandering Vagabonds who are able to move through the more dangerous woodland paths. Though some may sympathize with the Alliance’s hopes and dreams, these wanderers are old enough to remember the great birds of prey who once controlled the woods.

Meanwhile, at the edge of the region, the proud, squabbling Eyrie have found a new commander who they hope will lead their faction to resume their ancient birthright. The stage is set for a contest that will decide the fate of the great woodland. It is up to the players to decide which group will ultimately take root.

Root represents the next step in our development of asymmetric design. Like Vast: The Crystal Caverns, each player in Root has unique capabilities and a different victory condition. Now, with the aid of gorgeous, multi-use cards, a truly asymmetric design has never been more accessible.

The Cats play a game of engine building and logistics while attempting to police the vast wilderness. By collecting Wood they are able to produce workshops, lumber mills, and barracks. They win by building new buildings and crafts.

The Eyrie musters their hawks to take back the Woods. They must capture as much territory as possible and build roosts before they collapse back into squabbling.

The Alliance hides in the shadows, recruiting forces and hatching conspiracies. They begin slowly and build towards a dramatic late-game presence--but only if they can manage to keep the other players in check.

Meanwhile, the Vagabond plays all sides of the conflict for their own gain, while hiding a mysterious quest. Explore the board, fight other factions, and work towards achieving your hidden goal.

In Root, players drive the narrative, and the differences between each role create an unparalleled level of interaction and replayability. Leder Games invites you and your family to explore the fantastic world of Root!

—description from the publisher

Just One is a cooperative party game in which you play together to discover as many mystery words as possible. Find the best clue to help your teammate. Be unique, as all identical clues will be cancelled!

A complete game is played over 13 cards. The goal is to get a score as close to 13 as possible. In case of a right answer, the players score 1 point. In case of wrong answer, they lose the current card as well as the top card of the deck. Thus losing 2 points. In case of lack of answer, the players only lose the current card, and therefore only 1 point.

You have the choice – make the difference!

Small Historical Point:

Originally, Just One was called We Are The Word and was published by Fun Consortium.

Repos Production bought the rights in early 2018 and adapted the game. The Sombrero-wearing Belgians decided to improve the quality of the components, add 50 new words, and change the name of the game. Following this new edition, the game went from having only a French edition to having a world-wide edition.

Welcome to Fireball Island! You may have heard stories. You may have visited when you were younger. Perhaps you even saw a fireball engulf a fellow traveler in a hellscape of horror that makes you afraid to close your eyes at night. Whatever the case, welcome back! Turns out that Vul-Kar didn't like having his gem stolen way back when, so there has been some volcanic upheaval, an explosion in our snake population, feral tigers, new types of trees bent on ending human life, and swarms of bees everywhere. But don't worry — we have top people working on it.

Start your day of adventure at the helipad. Be sure to sign the waiver, which legally obligates you to take snapshots across the island. You'll race down the many paths, avoiding hazards all the while. On the plus side, you get to keep all the treasure you find.

Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar is a restoration of the classic 1986 game Fireball Island that features a unique 3D island and a host of marble mayhem. This new version boasts an island that is even bigger than the original (and yet fits in a smaller box) and more marbles. It is a family-weight game for 2-4 players (5 with an expansion) that plays in 30-45 minutes. Simple card play replaces the random roll-and-move of the original, and the set collection for the treasures offers some interesting choices for players.

Remember, you don't have to outrun the fireball — just the other players.

—description from the publisher


Bienvenue sur l'Île Infernale ! Vous avez peut-être entendu des histoires. Vous l'avez peut-être visité quand vous étiez plus jeune. Peut-être avez-vous même vu une boule de feu engloutir un compagnon de voyage dans un paysage d'horreur qui vous empêche de fermer les yeux la nuit. Quoi qu'il en soit, bon retour sur l'Île! Il s'avère que Vul-Kar n'a pas apprécié qu'on lui vole sa gemme ... alors il y a eu des bouleversements volcaniques, une croissance de notre population de serpents, des tigres sauvages, de nouveaux types d'arbres pour mettre fin à la vie humaine & des essaims d'abeilles partout. Mais ne vous inquiétez pas — nous avons des gens de haut niveau qui travaillent dessus.

Commencez votre journée d'aventure à l'Hélipad. Assurez-vous de signer la renonciation, qui vous oblige légalement à prendre des instantanés à travers l'île. Vous dévalerez les nombreux chemins, en évitant tout le temps les dangers. La bonne nouvelle : vous gardez tous les trésors que vous trouvez.

Fireball Island : La Malédiction de Vul-Kar est une restauration du jeu classique L'Île Infernale, datant de 1986, qui présente une île 3D unique & des billes chaotiques. Cette nouvelle version dispose d'une île encore plus grande que l'original (tout en tenant dans une boîte plus petite) & plus de billes. C'est un jeu de type familial pour 2-4 joueurs (5 avec une extension) durant 30-45 minutes. Un jeu de Cartes remplace le rouler-déplacer aléatoire de l'original, & la collection de trésors offre des choix intéressants pour les joueurs.

Rappelez-vous, vous n'avez pas à distancer la boule de feu — juste les autres joueurs.

Travel back in time to the greatest city in Mesoamerica. Witness the glory and the twilight of the powerful pre-Columbian civilization. Strategize, accrue wealth, gain the favour of the gods, and become the builder of the magnificent Pyramid of the Sun.

In Teotihuacan: City of Gods, each player commands a force of worker dice, which grow in strength with every move. On your turn, you move a worker around a modular board, always choosing one of two areas of the location tile you land on: one offering you an action (and a worker upgrade), the other providing you with a powerful bonus (but without an upgrade).

While managing their workforce and resources, players develop new technologies, climb the steps of the three great temples, build houses for the inhabitants of the city, and raise the legendary and breath-taking Pyramid of the Sun in the centre of the city.

Each game is played in three eras. As the dawn of the Aztecs comes closer, player efforts (and their ability to feed their workforce) are evaluated a total of three times. The player with the most fame is the winner.

In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game you are going to solve FIVE different cases and find out what connects them, you are going to BREAK THE 4th WALL by using every resource you can, you are going to browse the game's DEDICATED DATABASE simulating your agency's resources, you will enter a city maze of old mysteries and fresh CRIME, and you will be able to COOPERATE with other agents or solve the mystery on your own.

Take the job of a real detective in a modern setting! In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, 1-5 players take on the role of investigators, solving mysterious crimes while working as an Antares National Investigation Agency team members. This board game tell rich stories - stories you will participate in. Let's hope that you will be able to deduce the end, before there is another crime... The game will challenge you with five different cases, that have to be played in order. Seemingly unconnected at first, they will unveil an immersive meta-plot based on facts and fiction alike.

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game brings classic, card-based, puzzle-solving gameplay into the 21st century with the introduction of online elements. You will gain access to the online Antares database that contains data about suspects, witnesses, and documentation from arrests and trials related to your case. Use every tool at your disposal to solve these crimes - consult the Internet, check the facts and constantly discover new clues. You are not playing a detective; you ARE a detective!

In 2020 Game of the Year special edition of Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game was published. Thanks to the overwhelmingly great response for the game and a worldwide success Portal Games was able to improve the basic game and add an additional component to the box. The new edition includes a set of 30 photos of character portraits, which the players can use during their investigation to make a mind map. The pictures show the suspects met throughout the game, and bring an amazing immersion to the gameplay. The set was previously available for purchase only as an additional promo item at the Portal Games store and during conventions. With the Game of the Year edition of Detective, now all players will be able to enjoy this great tool.

From the imagination of legendary game designer Richard Garfield comes a game unlike anything the world has ever seen—a game where every deck is as unique as the person who wields it and no two battles will ever be the same. This is KeyForge, where deckbuilding and boosters are a thing of the past, where you can carve a path of discovery with every deck, where you can throw yourself into the game with the force of a wild wormhole and embrace the thrill of a tactical battle where wits will win the day!

Along with this new breed of game comes a new world: the Crucible, an artificial world built from the pieces of countless planets across the stars. Here, anything is possible. This world was built for the Archons, god-like beings who, for all their power, know little about their own origins. The Archons clash in constant struggles, leading motley companies of various factions as they seek to find and unlock the planet’s hidden Vaults to gain ultimate knowledge and power.

This starter set contains two starter decks, two unique Archon Decks, and all the keys and tokens two players need to play!

KeyForge: Call of the Archons is the world's first Unique Deck Game. Every single Archon Deck that you'll use to play is truly unique and one-of-a kind, with its own Archon and its own mixture of cards in the deck. If you pick up an Archon Deck, you know that you're the only person in existence with access to this exact deck and its distinct combination of cards. In fact, in just the first set of KeyForge: Call of the Archons, there are more than 104 quadrillion possible decks!

Every Archon Deck contains a full play experience with a deck that cannot be altered, meaning it's ready to play right out of the box. Not only does this remove the need for deckbuilding or boosters, it also creates a new form of gameplay with innovative mechanics that challenges you to use every card in your deck to find the strongest and most cunning combinations. It is not the cards themselves that are powerful, but rather the interactions between them—interactions that can only be found in your deck. Your ability to make tough tactical decisions will determine your success as you and your opponent trade blows in clashes that can shift in an instant!

KeyForge: Call of the Archons is played over a series of turns in which you, as the Archon leading your company, use the creatures, technology, artifacts, and skills of a chosen House to reap precious Æmber, hold off your enemy's forces, and forge enough keys to unlock the Crucible's Vaults. You begin your turn by declaring one of the three Houses within your deck, and for the remainder of the turn you may play and use cards only from that House. For example, if you take on the role of the Archon Radiant Argus the Supreme, you will find cards from Logos, Sanctum, and Untamed in your deck, but if you declare "Sanctum" at the start of your turn, you may use actions, artifacts, creatures, and upgrades only from Sanctum. Your allies from Logos and Untamed must wait.

Next, you must strive to gain the advantage with a series of tactical decisions, leveraging both the cards in your hand and those in play to race ahead of your opponent. If you wish to weaken your rival’s forces, you may send out your allies to fight enemies on the opposing side, matching strength against strength. Otherwise, you may choose to use your followers to reap, adding more Æmber to your pool.

Notably, no card in KeyForge has a cost — choosing a House at the start of a turn allows you to play and use any number of cards from that House for free, leading turns to fly by with a wave of activity! Yet balance is key. If you simply reap more Æmber at every opportunity, your rival may quickly grow their team of minions and destroy yours, outpacing your collection and leaving your field barren. But if you focus on the thrill of the fight alone and neglect the collection of Æmber, you won't move any closer to your goal! If you succeed in finding a harmony within your team and have six Æmber at the start of your turn, you'll forge a key and move one step closer to victory. The first to forge three keys wins!

—description from the publisher

Chronicles of Crime is a cooperative game of crime investigation, mixing an app, a board game and a touch of Virtual Reality.

With the same physical components (board, locations, characters and items), players will be able to play plenty of different scenarios and solve as many different crime stories.

Players start the app, choose the scenario they want to play, and follow the story. The goal being to catch the killer of the current case in the shortest time possible.

Using the Scan&Play technology, each component (locations, characters, items, etc.) has a unique QR code, which, depending on the scenario selected, will activate and trigger different clues and stories. That means players will be able to get new stories way after the game is released simply by downloading the app's updates, without any shipping of new physical components involved.

The VR experience only requires a mobile phone. Players simply put the VR glasses (optional buy) onto their mobile device, and put the VR glasses on their nose, holding their mobile device in front of their eyes, to immerse themselves in the game's universe and search for clues in a virtual world.

The game comes with 1 tutorial and 5 scenarios, but more can be downloaded directly inside the app!
Each session last around 1h to 1h30 minutes and many scenarios are connected to each others in order to tell a much bigger story.

—description from the publisher