Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men – Two Boxes, Eight Heroes – Box 2

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, 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. We’ve already reviewed the first box, so for this review we’ll focus on box two and the second set of 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 significant ways, though of course each character has their own powers:

Cyclops

Complexity: 4

As the leader of the X-Men, Scott Summers has always had the team’s success in the forefront of his mind. Cyclops has three status tokens he can apply: Battle Plan, Support, and Focus Fire. Cyclops can use Support to help players on his team (in a 2v2 battle). Battle Plan uses tokens in various ways; looking at an opponent’s hand, the top of his own deck, or inflicting Focus Fire. Focus Fire deals extra damage during every attack.

In addition, Cyclops’s Leadership Cards offer stacking abilities with other Leadership Cards or some of his abilities.

I expected high damage attacks with not a lot of other assorted offensive abilities from Cyclops. After all, that’s what he does with his energy blasts in the comics. And that’s mostly what Roxley delivered here. Cyclops’s differentiation comes from the support tokens listed above, and Focus Fire to add cumulative damage to his attacks.

Cyclops has a high complexity listing, and I think that’s mostly because of the multi-use Battle Plan and Support tokens. While Leadership cards stack with one another (and some abilities), it rarely felt like any kind of leadership. Instead, most of the Leadership card stacking abilities were personal buffs. There’s one card in the deck that allows Cyclops to take damage in place of another character, but that is a single one-time-use event in the entire game. I would have liked a little more servant in his leadership.

Gambit

Complexity: 6

I should open this by saying Remy LeBeau was one of my favorite X-Men before opening this box, so you could accuse me of some bias before even analyzing the character. That said, Gambit is my favorite character in either of the Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men boxes. The main reason for this is Gambit’s Molecular Acceleration ability. Undoubtedly this ability is what ratchets up the perceived complexity of the character, but I found it delightful.

Canonically, Gambit has the ability to charge items with energy and throw them to create small explosions. In the comics, he chooses to do this with cards. So, too, here. Gambit’s setup is a little different. In addition to the board, deck, and CP and health counters, Gambit has four Ace cards: one for each suit.

First, during the Upkeep Phase, Gambit rolls dice and either ads or removes Accelerate tokens depending on the result. Six of his eight other abilities generate Accelerate tokens, too. Players put these tokens on the Ace cards and, once they’re full, can Explode them for an attack modifier. All the tokens are discarded and the card is flipped over until an ability flips it back over and it can be used again.

Gambit’s other tokens either heal himself or deal direct damage (or cause CP loss) to other players. Outside of the Ace Cards, Gambit is fairly standard with a mix of attacks, but those cards stack the deck in his favor.

Rogue

Complexity: 3

The southern belle of the X-Men family, Ms Anna Marie’s best known mutation is her ability to suck energy out of anything she touches. Roxley tackled this head on with Rogue’s abilities. Any time Rogue is successfully attacked she gains Ionic energy tokens, used to increase damage on future attacks. This is a passive ability in addition to everything else Rogue can do.

And she can do a lot. Rogue can Leach health away from her opponents, and has two token types she can gain: Influence and Skyward.

Influence limits the number of dice Rogue’s opponents can roll during their attack phase, while Skyward works like a supercharged defense roll. It prevents significant damage and deals a hefty amount of retributive damage at the same time.

Rogue is listed as the easiest character to play in this box, and her opponents will find fighting her draining.

Jean Grey

Complexity: 6

Another highly complex character, Jean Grey’s most noticeable characteristic is that every turn she switches between Jean and Dark Phoenix. This means players have to keep two very different play styles in mind.

Jean Grey’s attacks aren’t quite as powerful as Dark Phoenix’s and are actually a little weaker than most of the other X-Men. She makes this up, however, with a huge variation in the kinds of tokens she can acquire through her abilities:

• Force Field allows Jean or Dark Phoenix to cut incoming damage in half
• Acuity can be spent for various benefits: Reroll, gain CP, or inflict Phoenix Burn
• Flame Blast can only be used by Dark Phoenix but is used to increase damage on attacks
• Phoenix Burn deals damage during the Upkeep phase and require a specific die roll to be removed.

Dark Phoenix, on the other hand, has multiple opportunities to add damage to any successful attack roll. But she gives up her income phase in exchange for power.

That means Jean Grey only gets half the income every other character does. That’s less CP and fewer drawn cards, which can be incredibly difficult to handle for an inexperienced player.

Playing Jean Grey requires highly tactical thought and planning even further in advance than a typical Dice Throne character; which marks a difficult juxtaposition with the random chance of die rolling. As such, players of this character can experience more dramatic highs and lows, with gambles paying off or bad luck frustrating the best of plans. It’s a wild ride with Jean Grey, and truly one that is sometimes mind-boggling.

Impressions

Dice Throne remains, at its core, the same game it has always been. We affectionately call it 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 Tremblay has a unique ability of capturing his subjects beautifully, with his distinct art style, while also allowing their character to show forth.

I ended up a little disappointed by the implementation of Jean Grey in this box. In order to plan across multiple turns as was needed with a character that switched so much, I would have appreciated more dice manipulation abilities or other ways to mitigate luck.

However, I loved what was done with Gambit and Rogue, and Cyclops was fine. We could call this the Tortured Lovers box I suppose, with the comic couples of Cyclops/Jean Grey, and Gambit/Rogue. In all, the Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men package is a good one. Fans of Dice Throne and fans of the X-Men will both bet getting something out of this box.

I challenged myself to choose one of the two Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men boxes to be my favorite, and it’s a really difficult decision. Across both boxes (see the review for box one) my favorite characters are Gambit, Rogue, Iceman, and Storm. I’m going to have to lean towards choosing box two, but only because of my affinity for the characters. Your character preference could be the X-factor on your decision, too, unless you decide to get them both, or pick up the Battle Chest.

I also need to point out that every Dice Throne character is compatible with one another. I encourage cross-box fights! 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 Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men 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 2 for this review.

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