Game Spotlight – Ninja Dice – U-Con Gaming Convention

I can’t believe it’s been 8 years since I randomly happened on Ninja Dice while tooling around the dealer’s room at Origins Game Fair. Greenbriar Games was a small company back then with just 2 games under their belt – Ninja Dice and their first game Zpocalypse. Honestly, I can’t even tell you what Zpocalypse looks like because when I glanced over to their table, this delightfully grumpy ninja box scowled back at me. I had to figure out what that tiny, angry square of ninja was about.

Once you unzip the top of Disgruntle-san you will find some coins, 3 sets of dice, and a set of rules. Every player is a ninja taking turns breaking into houses to steal treasure. When one isn’t doing the breaking in (the Active Ninja), there are dice to roll to hinder the Active Ninja. After 3 rounds with increasingly tougher houses to defeat, the ninja who has the most money wins.

Skill dice on top, House dice in the middle, Threat dice on the bottom

The set up is pretty easy: dole out some starting coins, then determine the start player and give them the set of 5 white “Skill dice”. All other players take one of the colored “Threat dice” and the player to the right of the first player takes up 4 of the 6 black “House dice” (subsequent rounds will add a House die until in round 3 you will be rolling 6 House dice).

Play begins when the House dice are rolled and arranged in the center-ish of the playing area. Then the Active Ninja declares that they are rolling the Skill dice to try and defeat the house. The Non-active Ninjas get to roll Threat dice whenever the Active Ninja rolls or rerolls their Skill dice. If a Non-active Ninjas roll an hourglass it locks up that Threat die and they are done rolling it for this turn. The Active Ninja can reroll any dice they want to until they get a roll that defeats the house, all Threat dice have come up with an hourglass, or the Active Ninja gives up and slinks away passing play to the next player.

Once the House is rolled, Sharkie dictates when the Ninjas get to roll. Sharkie rolls a Sneak, a Grab, a Fight, a Wild and a Fortune which is modifying all the dice on the other side of the line.

Meanwhile, Toothless and I have rolled our Threat dice: Grab for Toothless and Arrow for me with Sharkie in the threat range.

How does the Active Ninja beat the house though? Each House die (the faces are Lock, Resident, Guard, or multiples of Residents or Guards) is neutralized by one or more Skill dice (the faces are Pick, Fight, Sneak, Wild, Catch, or Fortune). The Active Ninja will assign their dice to the house threats until all the threats are overcome if possible. If the Active Ninja can’t defeat all the House dice they at least get a coin for every die they are able to defeat before their turn is over.

Left: An Arrow die and Right: the “imaginary” line that determines what dice the Arrow will affect.

The interesting dynamic to Ninja Dice is the directionality of the Fortune and Arrow dice. These dice have what looks like a line with back facing barbs on it that indicates a field of threat for that die. Draw an imaginary line across the field of play and anything (ninjas or dice) that is on the threat side of that line is affected. The Fortune die face on the Skill dice affects the other skill dice the Active Ninja is rolling while the Arrow die face on the Threat dice affects the ninja they are pointing at.

We resolved the Non-active Ninja dice from above: My Threat die affected only Sharkie but Sharkie rolled a Grab so I do not get to sneak over and steal his treasure.

Sharkie rolled well and is using his wild as a Pick and his Fortune to modify that die to be able to affect all the locks. He also chooses to sneak past the Guard rather than fight. He defeats the house and gets one coin for each die he neutralized plus one extra for defeating the house.

Things I liked:

That cranky ninja “box” cracks me up Every Single Time. It’s always judging me from wherever it ends up – I look over at a pile of games and there it is, knowing what I did. Haul a game box out of storage? There it is looking out of the sides still knowing what I did. It also is surprisingly easy to lose…I mean I *know* it looks like a ninja but it’s also just a padded fabric square full of dice and coins and I shouldn’t lose it as often as I do.
The dice are nice to roll and the sets (save the blue Threat die) are different enough to easily figure out which set they belong to. Also? That directional dynamic is pretty fun, I love it when you come up golden on one of those dice.

The First Player determination. Heh. I watch a *lot* of Ninja movies so I’d go first quite often if I didn’t play this with people who also watch a lot of Ninja movies.

Things I didn’t like:

The directional dynamic is hard to get used to. I like the dynamic quite a lot but the impulse to pick up dice and arrange them after they are rolled is strong. You don’t realize how many games this is the norm for until you come across a game where you have to let the dice lie to figure out the next step. Also, it super sucks when the directional dice are facing absolutely nowhere helpful. It takes a bit to remember to roll them just so in order to get the max effect.

Wow the blue Threat die is hard to distinguish from a Skill die if you don’t have the arrow or hourglass face in sight. Ida gone with a brighter blue or maybe lavender as the colors don’t particularly matter except that they aren’t black and white.
I wish the directions were a booklet or maybe a little sturdier. Sure it’s been 8 years but Ninja Dice doesn’t get a whole lot of play really (4 times out for Games Library Days, 4 times checked out at U-Con, a handful of times when I’ve been doing whatever with it plus being parts counted 8 times). The rules are really ratty for being handled less than 30 times.