My 6 favorite spring dice games!

Who doesn’t like playing with dice? Well certainly not me! Dice games are downright brilliant, even in big strategic games! I’m completely addicted to it, but it can sometimes be hotly debated. Dice, these sworn enemies of expert players who cannot tolerate randomness in their games! But fortunately, it’s not just big games that I like with dice, so I’ve made you a selection of my favorite games with dice.

White Castle

In White Castle you will be at the head of a clan, and you will have to accumulate influence in order to enter the courtyard of Himeji Castle.
Help your courtiers climb the ranks, hire gardeners and train your soldiers in order to accumulate as many points as possible.

White Castle is a worker placement, where the workers are represented by the dice, these dice are placed on the three decks corresponding to their color and in ascending order. When it is your turn to choose, only the dice at the ends of the bridges will be available, if you take the smallest die, to the left of the bridge the player gains a lantern bonus, which corresponds to several bonuses in the game.

When you position your die on a square of the same color, you must perform the associated action. If the die you cover has a higher value, you must pay the difference in coins. In case your die has a lower value, you receive coins as a reward.
By doing this, you can either: gain coins, resources etc, or send a gardener to the gardens, send a courtier to the white castle and send a soldier to the training camps. I talk about it in more detail in a fun Face to Face if you want more details.

Do you like brain challenges? Then this game is made for you! With combos bigger than a garbage truck and only 9 possible actions, you’ll have to think faster than Einstein to avoid getting confused. After enjoying a few games, you will see things with crystal clarity and the game will become as smooth as flour!

The White Castle – from 1 to 4 players – from 12 years old – duration 80 mins – price: €31.90

Pikit

Don’t be fooled!

In the Pikit game, you will be asked to roll dice and try to collect the most advantageous card combinations. Are you making a double? Catch a mecha worth 15 points. It is possible to add or subtract the dice to get a card, or separate the numbers to get two, which could be two identical cards or one of each.

Before taking the card, you have the option of discarding a card from your hand to activate its effect. There are many beneficial effects, but the more powerful the card, the more beneficial the effect. However, discarding more cards will reduce your final score. At the end of the game, you will add up all your cards to get your result.

It’s crazy, we can’t live without it, and we can play it again and again, but make no mistake, it’s not a walk in the park!

Pikit – from 2 to 4 players – from 8 years old – duration 20 mins – price: €15.50

Encore Deluxe

Ready to check off with your loved ones?

Roll the six dice, then you choose a combination of dice based on their color and value. Place them in front of you and check the corresponding boxes on your sheet. From the remaining 4 dice, all other participants will select a pair of dice (one colored die and one numbered die) and check the appropriate boxes on their sheet.

Be careful not to check exactly the same number of boxes as the number indicated on the number die! You have the right to skip your turn if there is no combo that matches what you have to do on your sheet.

It’s cool, it’s a change from the ordinary and above all it’s super quick and childish!

Again ! Deluxe – from 1 to 4 players – from 8 years old – duration 30 mins – price: €22.50

Discordia

Be the best at developing your city in order to satisfy the empress and her son, maximize your resources and your inhabitants as much as possible in order to be as prolific as possible.

Expand your city by building barracks, ports, farms, markets and also defense. It’s a tile laying game, where you will need to have terrain tiles before laying building tiles. And depending on what the dice display at the start of the round and the actions you can take, you can recruit merchants, or soldiers, farmers, etc. depending on the color of the die and the tile. At the start of the turn, you will have to draw 15 meeples of different colors at random and your goal will be to discard all your meeple.

But be careful, at the end of the round when you have an empty “buildings” tile, you will have to draw a meeple for all the places where there is a meeple and a bag not and for each tile where the meeple location will not be filled. You will be able to combo by placing terrain tiles, by achieving certain objectives during the game, by developing your technologies and your exteriors.

If you want a lot more information and details on Discordia, Mélanoch talks about it very well here!

Discordia – from 1 to 4 players – from 12 years old – duration 75 mins – price: €49.50

Sagrada Artisans

Sagrada artisans is a legacy game which uses the same principle as its big brother, Sagrada, except that here, the dice are not placed on your stained glass windows, but are placed directly on a board of the cathedral according to their number, and you will have to choose them gradually. measure and color them with your colored pencils (provided with the game!). If I already found the classic Sagrada with big roll and write vibes, the publisher wanted to prove me right by publishing a real roll and write Sagrada! And to my greatest pleasure.

In this legacy we will each have a personal file for the progress of the campaign (there are 4 provided in the box) which will follow us throughout the game? There are 10 scenarios (officially), with different stained glass windows on each page and truly magnificent. The box contains lots of surprises, which I won’t spoil for you here, you’ll have to discover them for yourself, but we were surprised more than once, and too well, nothing is lost in this box. The rules added gradually are just perfect, not too heavy, if not enough, there are sometimes some misunderstandings in the rules, but we can understand them quite easily.

So indeed the legacy side might push you away, but once you have finished the campaign you have a ton of additional coloring pages to play with the complete rules and all the constraints of Sagrada that we love so much, so you won’t be able to You won’t be able to redo the campaign, but you can completely continue playing for a while!

Sagrada Artisans – from 2 to 4 players – from 10 years old – duration 60 mins – price: €62.90

Small bonus: because it is no longer on sale (but it will come back)

16 lights of winter

16 glimmer of winter is a roll and write created by Théo Rivière and Hervine for Joke Friday and whose profits go to the Accessijeux association. I’m telling you about it here even if you can’t get it at the moment so you can jump on it during Joke Friday 2024! It’s a very small, super strategic roll and write, you have lots of small actions to do depending on the number you choose.

In 16 Glimmers of Winter, you will roll 3 dice and choose one die to know in which zone you are going to check, the second to know what to check, and the last will be used to check the top bulbs in order to gain certain bonuses depending on the bulb groups checked.
Each zone will have different and super interesting scoring, dominoes, specific additions, ascending and descending orders, a sort of touchdown run with nesting boxes… In short, lots of super fun mini games that work really well with the whole family!

And the illustrations are so pretty, thank you for this pretty nugget! FYI, 61 Autumn Leaves (its big brother) is playable on BGA

Another selection of dice games: