I was bored yesterday and, after making a quick jibe about Hinterlands being the dice expansion, I decided to see if I could make a dice expansion that actually wouldn't feel out-of-place in a game of Dominion. It includes a mechanism that helps to mitigate bad dice rolls and encourage a strong ROI for those who invest.
The setup is as such: if a card that has one roll a die is in the kingdom, an additional supply pile of dice is added. You may purchase a die during your turn just as you would purchase any other card (priced at $4?). This is indeed a supply pile, and depleting the pile of dice counts toward ending the game (I'm thinking maybe 15 dice in a 2-player game). You can technically buy dice without ever buying the cards that use them, and you can buy dice cards without gaining a die at all (not that you'd want to). When you gain a die, it is placed next to your discard pile; it cannot be used until you reshuffle, whereupon the die is placed next to your draw pile.
So you play a dice card, roll a die, and do what the card says. Any die you roll is "in play", and discarded upon clean-up. Why would you buy more dice than you do cards? If you don't like the number you rolled, you can roll any number of additional dice, one at a time, and attempt to roll a better number. Only the number on the last die rolled is used.
On to the cards!
Gambling Hall
$3 Action
Roll a die.
If you do so, you may gain a card costing at most the number rolled. Otherwise, gain a die.
High Roller
$7 Treasure
Roll a die.
+coins for the number rolled
Lady Luck
$6 Action
Roll a die.
Choose, based on the number of the die rolled:
+1 card
+1 action
+1 coin
+1 buy
You may not choose more than two of any type.
Dealer
$4 Action
Roll a die.
+cards for the number rolled.
Card Counter
$5 Action
+1 Action
Roll a die.
Reveal a number of cards, equal to the number rolled, from the top of your deck. Choose one card and put it in your hand. You may discard all the remaining cards or place all the remaining cards back on your deck in any order.
Trick Dice
$4 Action - Attack
+1 card, +1 coin
Roll a die. Every other player, based on the number rolled:
if it is odd, discards down to three cards in hand
if it is even, gains a curse
if it is six, discards down to three cards in hand
Payout
$5 Victory
At the end of the game, roll from your deck a number of dice equal to the number of Payout cards in your deck. You may trash any number of the rolled dice and roll additional dice in their places. Add the total on all the dice to your VP total.
The prices are probably all wrong and the cards are probably unbalanced (as they are completely unplaytested
). Also, I couldn't think of the right wording on the cards to describe re-rolling in a concise way.
Thoughts?