Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men – Two Boxes, Eight Heroes – Box 1

We reviewed some of the first entries into the Dice Throne series nearly six years ago. Since then, Roxley Games has only improved on its solid formula. After Seasons One and Two, Roxley released Dice Throne Adventures, a cooperative role-playing tabletop game with Dice Throne characters.

In 2022, The Op joined the fray. Alongside Roxley in their own cooperative adventure they released Marvel Dice Throne featuring iconic Marvel characters from the MCU (plus Miles Morales).

Well, they’re back. This time, The Op and Roxley are reaching deeper into Marvel licensing. It’s time to welcome prodigies from Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters to the battle arena. Eight X-Men are available in two four-character boxes (though there is a battle chest available directly from dicethrone.com).

• Box One contains Iceman, Psylocke, Storm, and Wolverine.
• Box Two contains Cyclops, Gambit, Rogue, and Jean Grey.

We found some hits and some misses in our exploration of this legendary crew. Read on to find out what we thought. For this review we’ll focus on box one and the first four heroes available.

Gameplay

If you’ve never played Dice Throne before, you can find a brief explainer in our original Dice Throne review. Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men doesn’t alter this formula in any significant ways, though of course each character has their own powers. We’ll include a short writeup of each of them:

Iceman

Complexity: 4

Dice Throne‘s take on Iceman centers on the time-displaced teenage version of the character (at least from an art perspective). Iceman is witty and clever, and that comes out in his pun-tastic power names.

From a gameplay perspective, I found Iceman incredibly fun to play. I love the flexible characters, dating back to The Tactician in Season Two. Bobby “Iceman” Drake has two key abilities that add to his flexibility: Ice Shards and The Freezer. (He has another ability called Dice Cube which, while cleverly named, is a nothing-burger).

The Freezer is an off-board bucket for tokens. These tokens don’t contribute to Stack limits and can be pulled onto the main board with some abilities (most notably the base attack that all characters have). This allows Iceman to build up a deep power reserve that he can tap into for truly devastating attacks.

Ice Shards are easy-to-gather tokens that Iceman can use to deal damage, or can collect. Once he has five Ice Shards the player can convert them into a Glide token.

Many of Iceman’s attacks have a Glide Path into a second attack. After a player’s attack phase they can spend a Glide token to follow the path from their initial attack to a second attack, creating a second attack phase. This can deal immense damage in a single turn!

Iceman feels very thematically arranged and his flexibility makes him genuinely interesting to play. His puns warm my dad heart, even amongst the ice.

Psylocke

Complexity: 3

Psylocke’s telekinesis is on display in Dice Throne‘s take on this dark hero. (Here, she is the more ninja-themed Kwannon version of Psylocke). Consistent with her telekinesis, Psylocke’s best skills involve manipulation of the other players’ abilities.

Psylocke’s Paralyze status effect prevents another player from gaining or using any status tokens during their next roll phase, which is devastating in a game where plainly doing direct damage is the most reductive form of attacking.

Her Infiltration ability allows Psylocke to mess with a player’s defensive rolls, forcing rerolls and potentially ruining an effective defensive play.

Finally, Psylocke has a Manifest die – This is a sixth die that the player rolls with the first offensive roll only. The Manifest die can either be subbed in to replace another one of the offensive dice or spent to increase damage slightly.

Psylocke’s ability set makes her seem to be an extremely flexible character that, thematically, fits well. She manipulates her opponents and scrambles their abilities while supplementing her physical attacks with telekinetic weapons. I love the idea of the Manifest die as well. But the only way Psylocke can mitigate damage is through Agility tokens that (sometimes) cut damage in half. And so we always found her taking a beating.

Ultimately we felt a little disappointed with this character, because it always felt like the next, best attack was just out of reach. Despite Psylocke’s telekinetic abilities, we couldn’t use them to grasp victory.

Storm

Complexity: 4

What a character Storm is. Ororo Munroe is one of the leaders of the X-Men and her powerful presence is felt in spades in this game. Half of Storm’s abilities also grant her Lightning tokens, which players place on most of her abilities. These Lightning tokens charge her abilities, making them even more powerful when she does execute them, adding various effects (or more damage!)

Storm’s Tornado ability allow her to pull opponents’ dice to herself, adding them to her offensive roll. Obviously the icons won’t help, but this allows Storm to do something no other character can: complete a six-number straight. This deals incredible damage, distributes four Lightning tokens, and potentially also gains CP and a card (if charged).

Finally, Storm’s Wind Shear ability allows her to chop down and redirect attack damage to another player.

A master of the elements, playing as Storm always provides opportunities to make decisions. Even during attacking, players have the opportunity to use a Charged attack or not. Her abilities are heavy on the wind icon which is present for half the die faces, which give her lots of flexibility and increases the frequency that she will hit on the right combination.

Storm has always been one of the most powerful Omega-class mutants. Her ability to control everything around her places her at the epicenter of the maelstrom around her; an attribute echoed excellently in her Dice Throne implementation.

Wolverine

Complexity: 2

Easily one of the most famous X-Men, I was super excited to sit down with Wolverine and experience the Canadian whirling dervish that is Logan. Playing as Wolverine centers around two main abilities: Alpha and Rage. Of course, he also has passive healing powers associated with half of his abilities.

When Wolverine inflicts Alpha on an opponent, he is effectively terrifying them. If it hits, the player skips their income phase in the next turn.

Rage is a little more flexible of an effect. With Rage tokens, Wolverine can draw extra cards or discard cards to add damage his attack.

And that’s it. Yes, Wolverine has healing abilities as previously mentioned, but ultimately I felt like a lot more could have been done with his character without adding too much to his complexity.

Wolverine’s defense roll, for example, doesn’t prevent damage, nor does it provide immediate healing after damage is dealt. This nuance could have made for a unique passive ability without adding additional complexity to the character.

Further, I would have loved to see Wolverine’s attacks be a little more thematic. His hits aren’t typically super hard in the comics, but he just keeps coming. Nothing about the theming of Wolverine in Dice Throne: X-Men shows this aspect of Logan’s character. If Iceman can Glide Path into another ability, why can’t Wolverine attack for, say, three damage, but do it two or three times in a row?

Ultimately, I felt like the team put more work into the other three characters in this box, perhaps because they felt Wolverine was so well-known that plumbing the depths of his character just wasn’t necessary. As much as I love Wolverine, I didn’t love this implementation.

Impressions

Dice Throne remains, at its core, the same game it has always been. We call it, affectionately, Battle Yahtzee. Although the different characters change the game in subtle ways, and affect the way different baseline rules work, the same solid gameplay is here again.

And, as usual, the art is top notch. Manny Trembley has a unique ability of capturing his subjects beautifully, with his distinct art style, while also allowing their character to show forth. He did the same here.

In this box we were a little disappointed by the implementations of Wolverine and Psylocke, while we loved what was done with Storm and Iceman. Nonetheless, the whole package remains excellent, with fans of Dice Throne and fans of the X-Men both getting something out of this box.

It’s notable to point out that every Dice Throne character is compatible with one another, and fights cross-box are encouraged. So, if these heroes are of interest to you, add them to your growing roster of options and throw down with family and friends, to see who takes their seat at the Dice Throne!

You can get Dice Throne directly from Roxley Games, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Op provided The Family Gamers with a complimentary copy of Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men Box 1 for this review

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