Mythic Dice

By Tom Kiehl (nosissies) A dice game for 2-10

Capture mythical creatures from various cultures to protect your dice and gain you favor (and points), release them to do your bidding or poach them for unique artifacts.

Components

-40 8 sided dice -18 double sided creature/artifact cards

Setup

• Deal dice to each player, remaining dice go to a pool
• 2 players: 10 dice each
• 3,4 players: 8 dice each
• 5,6 players: 6 dice each -7,8 players: 5 dice each -9,10 players: 4 dice each
• Everyone rolls their dice to get their starting "hand"
• Shuffle creature cards and spread them in the middle of the playing area, any visible artifacts should be turned to show the creature side of the card. Only creatures are ever available in this pool of cards.
• The player whose hand of dice is the lowest total is deemed the start player, if tied the person who is most likely to be a descendant of the gods goes first.

Playing the Game

Each turn in the game has three phases. These are repeated ad-nausium until someone meet the conditions for winning. - 1: Capture phase - 2: Turn phase, A player's turn - 3: Decay Phase

1: Capture Phase

While play progresses clockwise, this phase runs counter clockwise. Starting to the right of the active player and progressing counter clockwise, each player may choose to capture a free creature. A creature may be captured if the numbers showing on the creature match free dice in the player's hand. The player places the creature card in front of them and places the free dice used to capture that creature on top of that card. These dice are now "protected."

2: Turn Phase (one player's turn)

As the active player you may choose one of the following actions - ROLL: Roll half(rounded up) of their free dice. (ie if you have three free dice, you must roll two.) - RELEASE: Release one of your captured creatures back to the center of the table. - When you do this you can take the special ability of that creature. - You must roll any of the dice which were previously protected by that creature before adding them back to your hand. - If this is not a poachable creature, turn the card over when releasing back to the pool. - POACH/POACH ACTION: Some of the creatures will yield special items when poached. - You may choose to poach a creature which you have captured in order to use the unique action of the item. - When you poach a creature, one of the dice which that creature was protecting is returned to the dice pool. The other dice are returned to your hand. - Keep the poached item in front of you, you may use this action on future turns as long as you have it.

3: Decay Phase, After a player's turn

• Every player must choose one of their free dice and decrement it by 1.
• You may not decrement a die showing a 1.
• After the next capture phase, play progresses clockwise.

Do it again:

• New active player, progressing to the left (clockwise)
• Go back to capture phase. Previously active player will get to capture first. SIDEBAR: On your turn, everyone else captures, you capture, you take your turn, everyone decays, you capture, everyone else captures, next person takes their turn.

Winning the game

A player wins if she has accumulated enough victory points at the end of her turn (Turn Phase). Points scaled to generally require a winning player to end game with more dice than they started with. - 2 players: 36 points - 3,4 players: 28 points - 5,6 players: 20 points - 7,8 players: 18 points - 9,10 players: 14 points

Sample Cards

• Unicorn, capture with two 7's, worth 7 vp's. Release: co-opt an action taken by another player. Poach: for its horn (player may decrease or increase during decline phase). (7 creatures are set up like this, occupying 7 of 18 cards)
• Kraken, capture with 6 & 8, worth 7 vp's. Release: force every player to return a free die to the pool. (Not poachable, double-sided creature card)
• Cerberus, requires three dice, 4, 5 and anything. Worth vp's equivalent to the third die. Release: Convert an opponent's free dice to 1's. (6 three die creatures)
• Phoenix, two 1's and anything. Vp's = third die. Release: boost the value of the protected dice. Poach: feather allows you to change the value of a single die during the capture phase.