Invincible: The Dice Game - A Push-Your-Luck Superhero Showdown

Players are vying for a spot on a superhero team, as each turn they face challenges and events, trying to build up their reputation.

Published by Mantic Games and Skybound Tabletop, Invincible: The Dice Game is a push-your-luck game for 2 or more players, ages 10 and up.

Gameplay

The challenge deck is shuffled and placed in the center of the table. On a player’s turn, he takes all twelve attack dice. These come in a range of how powerful they are, from the six yellow dice that are the least powerful to the single black die which is the most powerful. The active player also takes the blue special die and the three energy cubes.

A player starts his turn by drawing the top card of the challenge deck. If it is an event, he resolves the text. If it’s a challenge card, he must battle. Each challenge card lists how many reputation points it is worth when defeated, its challenge value, how many energy cubes are lost if the player fails to defeat it, and any special effects it has.

Next, the player chooses how many of his dice he wishes to roll against the challenge and which ones. He then rolls his chosen dice along with the special die. The special die may force the player to discard an energy cube, add to his attack, protect him from losing energy, or allow him to reroll a die. He then adds up the value of all the dice he rolled. If the value is less than the card’s challenge value, he places the rolled attack die on the card to keep track of how much it has already been attacked for (but not the special die, it will be rerolled and any attack value added in the first roll is ignored). The player then discards the listed amount of energy cubes for failing to defeat it, and if he still has any energy cubes left, he must attack again, selecting from his remaining dice, and also rerolling the special die. The values of his next roll will be added to the dice already on the card.

If the player manages to meet or exceed the challenge value of the card, he has defeated the challenge and takes the card. Any dice he rolled or that were on the card, with the exception of the special die, are then passed to the player whose turn will be next. The active player then chooses whether to draw a new challenge card or to end his turn.

When a player chooses to end his turn, he counts up the reputation points of all the cards he defeated, his score is written down, and then the cards are discarded. If a player runs out of energy cubes or has no more dice to roll but still has an active card he is attacking, he is defeated, discards all cards gained that round, and scores no points.

After a player reaches 15 points, every other player gets one final turn, and then the player with the most points wins.

Review

Invincible: The Dice Game has a fun approach to push-your-luck. Choosing how many dice to use for each roll and which ones, gives a feeling of some control over results while still having that tension that comes from hoping the dice roll favorably.

The uncertainty of what the next card will be also adds to the push-your-luck element, as does the fact that once a card is drawn the player is locked into battling it. All of these elements lead to a solid push-your-luck experience.

There are, however, a few flaws. The first is probably the biggest: the downtime between turns isn’t great at the higher player counts. The box says the game is playable with two or more players, giving no maximum player count, and while this is technically true, we wouldn’t recommend it for over three players.

Also, the fact that players do have to keep track of scores feels clunky, and not including any kind of score tracker is a bit annoying. Keeping the challenge deck small and not including any score tokens probably keeps the game smaller and less expensive, but it still feels a little inelegant.

Finally, players do not have an equal number of turns and this does feel a little unbalanced. Everyone else gets one final turn once a player hits 15 points, regardless of where that player came in turn order. There can be some strategy here. We found ourselves ending our turns early if we were low on dice but close to that 15-point threshold, so that we could build up as much of a lead as possible when we went over it. Still, it would feel fairer if you simply ensured everyone had had an equal number of turns once a player triggered the end game.

This was also the first time we’d heard of the comic series Invincible, so the theme and the artwork didn’t really suck us in that much. Without knowing the source material, you could still enjoy the game and get a fun superhero vibe from it, but it felt as if we were missing context in the card’s artwork.

Despite the flaws, we still had a lot of fun with Invincible: The Dice Game. With the right player count, it does implement push-your-luck well, with interesting choices and easy-to-learn gameplay.

Pros: Dice selection feels like a great counterbalance to the luck of the roll

Cons: Downtime at higher player counts, no score trackers, unequal number of turns

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.