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Quartz: The Dice Game

Quartz: The Dice Game from Lucky Duck and Grok is a light set collection game played over six rounds where the 3-6 players are drawing crystals from a bag with the aim of building sets of matching colour gems while avoiding 'unstable' (black) crystals which are worth negative points in the end-game scoring. Two unstable crystals are added to the bag at the start of each round.



Based on the 2015 push-your-luck card game Quartz (Passport Game Studios), this game by Sergio Halaban and Luis Francisco substitutes dice for cards. Each turn you draw a crystal from the bag and you roll the five custom six-sided dice to determine which further actions to take. You get to re-roll any or all dice twice, and you can spend a re-roll token for additional re-rolls. The tokens are awarded as a consolation whenever you draw an unstable crystal.


Aside from the pickaxe symbol, other rolls require at least a pair to have any effect. The jackhammer lets you draw crystals from the bag and return half. The minecart symbol lets you transfer a crystal to another player (two minecarts let you transfer one crystal but if you roll more than two minecarts you transfer one less than the number of minecarts rolled). This obviously is a good way of getting rid of black crystals. Similarly, two steal symbols lets you snatch a crystal from another player. You can protect a crystal from being stolen by an opponent by rolling two chest symbols to move one of your crystals to your treasure chest. Finally, you can treat two helmet symbols as wild (ie: as any one die).



There's obviously a lot of luck over what you draw from the bag and what you roll but Quartz: The Dice Game makes for a fun filler. It's at its chaotic best at higher player counts as much of the fun of the game comes through the 'take that' minecart and steal actions and players seek to load their black crystals onto other players while hoarding the scarcer higher-scoring crystals for themselves.


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