“The greatest Summoner must master their art in all its forms.”… but this includes Dinosaurs… ok
Jordan Macnab
MeepleGamers
7.5/10
Publisher: Decking Awesome Games
Designer: Eoin Costelloe
Designer: Ciara Costelloe
Designer: Brian O Moore
Artist: Kate O Moore
Artist: Brendan Purchase
Game Type: Deck/Pool Building
Game Type: Card Drafting
Initial Year of Release: 2018
Age Range: 14+
Expected Playtime: 30 Minutes
Number of Players: 2
Theme and What is it?
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9/10
In the world of Dice Summoners you take the role of powerful Summoner that must master their art and become the greatest in the land.
To do this you’ll draft cards and build a pool of abilities and monsters to attack your opponent and deal as much damage as possible while trying to stay alive.
Gameplay Mechanics
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8.5/10
The game is simple enough. Each player starts with base set of cards and the board is filled with various creatures and spells that can be purchased as the game progresses.
Players, in turn order, gain dice based on the creatures they have in front of them. The more creatures and the higher level they are the more dice you get or the better dice you get.
Building your troop of creatures is key to victory but your spells can also be a great advantage.
Initial Impressions
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10/10
I had the pleasure of previewing Dice Summoners before the UKGE where this game was officially released. It caught my eye right of the bat and I really wanted to play it just based on what little information I had about it at the time.
Game Build Quality
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8.5/10
The component quality of Dice Summoners is excellent, The card stock is great and the custom dice are very pleasing to the eye. One thought is that the shield tokens are standard card stock and seeing those upgraded to plastic would have been nice but not a deal breaker.
Artistic Direction
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6/10
This is where I have a slight issue with Dice Summoners, the art direction confused me a little. We have a high fantasy game with mythical creatures like demons etc mixed in with… dinosaurs. I can not , for the life of me, understand how dinosaurs ended up in the mix with this game.
Again, this isn’t a major issue and I’m sure there are lots of people out there that love dinosaurs, I’m one of them, in the right context. This just felt like a very odd choice.
Apart from that the art is very good, for the most part, it sits very well with the rest of the theme.
One other little niggle… so. much. brown!
Fun Factor
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8/10
We had a lot of fun playing Dice Summoners. The gameplay is fast and smooth and by the end of the first game we had a firm grasp on what we were doing and felt comfortable moving to the harder cards.
One minor gripe I will say is that it rarely let us power up as far as we wanted. It was rare that a game would last long enough to get one of the big ritual creatures out onto the board for it to be of any use. Maybe that’s just how we played the game so I’ll be interested to see if anyone else had the same issue.
We wanted to clash heads with some big naughty creatures but by the time we got them we were rolling fist fulls of dice and really doing some damage. It didn’t make me dislike the game, it was just a shame that was all.
Age Range & Weight
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7/10
I’m not sure why this would be 14+, perhaps its some of the art but its certainly not the complexity if the game. I’m pretty sure this could be taught to almost any age.
30 Minutes is pretty accurate for most games. We did have a few games where they stretched on but that can be very much down to the dice rolls.
Conclusions
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7/10
Overall Dice Summoners is a solid 1v1 game with tight mechanics.
Putting my gripes about the art work aside I general like the way the game looks and its a lot of fun to play. Having such a short play time could make this an excellent filler between some larger 2 player games.
Simple to play and teach but potentially very deep on tactics depending on the cards you have in play.
If you like the fantasy theme and fancy some 1v1 action then this is certainly worth a look.
- All
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Designer: Ciara Costelloe
Game Type: Deck/Pool Building
Game Type: Deck/Pool Building
Game Type: Deck/Pool Building
