With Asteroid Dice, Camden Games give a new meaning to the term 'dice chucker'. In this game, you'll quite literally be chucking dice at other players, trying to hit them but happily not to inflict injury!
Asteroid Dice comprises a set of chunky polyhedral dice (in our preview sample: a d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20) and hands of cards for up to five players. Each player has a card representing one of the dice plus an 'I can't decide' card, that lets the player pick any dice that's not been picked buy other players, and a 'Losteroid' card that lets you call out any number between 1 and 20 and, if that number is rolled, none of the cards in that round score.
If no-one else plays the same dice card as you, you add the card to your score pile and take the indicated dice. If two or more players play the same card, there's a mad scramble for the indicated die and the player who nabs it chucks it at the other player. They win if they hit them but if the other player successfully dodges, or if they catch the die, or if it bounces before hitting, then it can be thrown back to try to hit the person who originally threw it. This is referred to as a 'brawl'. That perhaps makes it sound more aggressive than intended: the intention is to play this 'snap' variant as a lively but good-natured dexterity game.
The card play and any 'brawl' phase resolved, players each take a die. These are then rolled, starting with the d20 and ending with the d6. Players are trying to roll their die so that it hits a previously rolled die to jog it to a lower number; highest number rolled wins.
You may well find the card game and dice rolling elements more 'complicated' than they need to be. In a sense that doesn't matter because most folk won't worry overly about the Asteroid Dice game, they'll want to buy Asteroid Dice for the chunky polyhedral dice themselves regardless of the accompanying card game. Camden Games describes the dice as squishy but that might suggest they are made of soft foam. They're not. They're firm so much more satisfying to roll, and we can see them becoming popular accoutrements for any D&D or other RPG players.
Shown here on Board's Eye View is a prototype of the Arcade Edition ahead of the game's upcoming launch on Kickstarter but Camden Games plan to offer a range of polyhedral Asteroid Dice to cover all RPG requirements (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 & centile d10) in several different colourways, including silver and gold. The numbers will stand out more on the Kickstarter editions. The Kickstarter is live now: click here to check it out.