Quarriors!

Quarriors!, designed by Mike Elliott and Eric M. Lang, took the then-fresh idea of deck-building and swapped the deck for a bag of dice. Each player is a Quarrior competing to collect the most glory. Instead of drawing cards, you draw dice; instead of playing cards, you roll them and see what fate offers. It’s a light, chaotic, quick-playing engine game for two or more.

The dice & how you roll

Every die in Quarriors is a custom die whose faces mix two kinds of result: Quiddity (the game’s magic resource, shown as a number of energy points) and creatures (with their attack and defence values). A single creature die might show Quiddity on some faces and the creature itself on others, so what a die gives you depends on the roll.

You begin with a starter bag of weak Basic dice (chiefly Quiddity-generators and the humble Quarry Apprentice). Over the game you cull the weak dice and add powerful new ones, so the bag — like a deck in a card game — grows sharper and more focused. Because you draw blind and roll for results, no two turns play the same, and the skill lies in shaping a bag whose likely rolls serve your plan more often than not.

How to play

A turn flows through a clear sequence:

• Score glory. Any creatures that survived in your “Ready” area from last turn earn you glory now — the reward for keeping monsters alive.
• Draw and roll. Pull a set number of dice blindly from your bag (typically six) and roll them all.
• Summon. Spend the Quiddity you rolled to summon creature faces into play. Summoned creatures move to your active area.
• Attack. Your creatures attack opponents’ creatures. Defenders can be destroyed if attack beats defence; some monsters must be dealt with before the players themselves.
• Buy (capture) new dice. Spend leftover Quiddity to buy creature or spell dice from the shared Wilds in the middle of the table, adding them to your used pile.
• Clean up. Move used and rolled dice to your discard; when the bag empties, refill it from the discard — exactly like reshuffling a deck.

Play continues until a player reaches the target glory total (varies with player count) or the glory supply runs out. Most glory wins.

Strategy

• Cull ruthlessly. A bag stuffed with weak Basic dice dilutes your good rolls. Trim the chaff so you draw your powerful dice more often.
• Balance Quiddity and creatures. All monsters and no magic means nothing to summon them; all magic and no monsters means no glory. Keep the mix healthy.
• Score, don’t just summon. Glory comes from creatures that survive to your next scoring step — defence and staying power can beat raw attack.
• Read the Wilds. The available dice change each game. Commit early to a synergy the current Wilds actually support rather than a plan they don’t.
• Manage the bag’s rhythm. Knowing roughly what’s left to draw helps you judge when a big-cost die is likely to appear.

Common mistakes

• Hoarding Basic dice. Never culling leaves your bag bloated and your best dice buried — the single most common beginner error.
• Summoning everything at once. Overspending on a big turn can leave you with no Quiddity to capture new dice or defend next turn.
• Chasing kills over survival. Attacking recklessly gets your own creatures destroyed before they can score glory.
• Ignoring opponents’ boards. A rival with strong defenders can blunt your attacks; scout the table before committing.
• Forgetting the roll is random. Buying a die doesn’t guarantee its creature face — account for the odds that a die shows Quiddity instead.

Because everything hinges on what the faces land on, it pays to feel the randomness. Roll a pool of dice in your browser and watch how a “handful” really spreads.

Keep reading: another dice-building duel, Marvel Dice Masters.