Quarriors!

Last week, I bought a new game called Quarriors!. It labels itself as a "dice building game". This is a take on the genre of games called deck building games, where each player starts with the same basic deck of cards. Players collect new cards over the course of the game to improve their decks, working toward some ultimate goal. Quarriors is similar except that you acquire a pool of dice instead of a deck of cards.

This change from cards to dice gives Quarriors several advantages over the deck building games. With the deck building games, you are typically shuffling your deck every 2-3 turns, which takes time and can get in the way of game play. In Quarriors, this down time doesn't exist. You just shake the dice in your dicebag a bit and you are good to go. This leads to a faster pace of gameplay.

There is another significant difference between Quarriors and other games of its genre. Each die in Quarriors has multiple faces so they can function differently each time you use them. This leads to a slightly higher level of variance in the game. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, because you are rolling several dice and it balances out in the end. Also, the variance can also be mitigated in selecting the appropriate dice to acquire throughout the game.

I have played several games of Quarriors today, and I am still discovering new strategies and depth with every play through. The game has certainly moved up pretty high on my list of favorite games, already. I am now going to start exploring the expansions available for the game and will post about them once they are acquired.

-Eddie