Guns and Swords and Uniforms (Futurewolfie’s Top 6 Combat Mechanisms)

2. Space Cadets: Dice Duels

There aren’t a whole lot of real time combat games out there, but I’ve certainly never seen one better than Dice Duels.

Rather than a timer keeping things frantic, you’ve got the other team racing to kill you first, and speed is the essence of victory. You know what else is the essence of victory, though? Teamwork. And that’s what makes Dice Duels such a great experience.

See, you’ve got the engineer frantically rolling dice so he can route power to the necessary systems. Once he rolls the right numbers, he passes those dice to the appropriate player, who must then start frantically rolling their OWN system dice in order to get things set up correctly. Once they roll the right thing and lock it in, they can pass the engineer his dice back so he can roll it to power even more systems. If you play with the full compliment of players, you’ll also have a captain standing over your shoulder shouting at you to roll faster and no, I said forward-right-forward NOT right-right-forward!

Dice Duels is frantic and chaotic, but it’s chaotic teamwork, and it strikes just the right balance between chaos and the ability to take action. It gives you the systems to work with and really makes you feel like the crew of a ship, working together in a glorious battle against your mortal enemy.