Greenbrier Games: Ninja Dice

We’re still rolling out posts about amazing game companies at Origins who, out of the generosity of their awesomeness, chipped in a game or two (or lots) to the U-Con Games Library. Today I want to point you towards a small game company named Greenbrier Games and their impossibly cute (and fun) new game Ninja Dice

With the purchase of a “head?” of Ninja Dice you get a game with dice, coins, directions and a ninja head holder to keep it all in. I will admit up front that the ninja head holder stopped me dead in the dealer’s room because… Ninja Head Holder! However it was late afternoon on Sunday and my poor tiny brain had just enough energy to either wheel and deal for a copy of the game or sit down and play a demo. So wheel and deal it was, but I did ask for a quick brain-dead explanation while I was at the booth. Julie Ahern (Creative Writer, Game designer and Dark Duchess of Discipline…it says that right on her business card!) not only gave me a really short and great overview but she tossed in a copy of the game for free if I wrote her up on our blog. Both Julie and Greenbrier Games are really very cool.

Later, after my brain had time to recover, my husband and I took the game for a spin. Here we are playing a 4 player game of Ninja Dice with our hats. The play is really pretty simple: one player rolls the “house” (the black dice in the pic) and sets up the dice for the next player. House dice have locks, guards, or residents on them which you have to pick, kill, or sneak your way past. The ninja in play (play rotates) rolls the white dice which have lock picks, shuriken, or invisible ninja icons to get past the house obstacles. There are also wild dice, multiplier dice, and block dice (keeps other ninjas from stealing your treasure). The other ninjas at the table have white dice with colored icons they can roll at the same time as the ninja in play to try and foil his or her attempts to steal the treasure from the house. The other ninjas’ dice have a timer (the current ninja has until 4 timers are rolled, at which point they have been captured and get no goodies), a block die or an attack die.

Three residents, four guards. The current ninja is going to have to do a lot of sneaking or killing to get past this house.

On the other hand, here is Ninja Fort Knox around guard shift o’clock. They are super confident in their security system at this house.

However, their security system was no match for the amazing ninja locksmith (the character die under the one set of lock picks is the fortune die and makes whatever it augments worth four of that die). I’m pretty positive this was my hat’s turn; my hat was very lucky and wound up winning the game.

I’ll be bringing Ninja Dice to July’s Games Library Day for anyone who wants to take it for a spin. We had a great time, even if the hats came in first and second.