Quarriors Overview
Designed by Mike Elliott and Eric Lang, and released in the US by WizKids Games, Quarriors is a fabulous dice rolling extravaganza. This 2011 Golden Geek Nominee, and 2013 Origins Awards Winner will make you wish you could travel back in time to experience it for the first time all over again.
In Quarriors 2 – 4 players will arm themselves with powerful magical spells, and summon legions of hexahedronal creatures to do battle against their opponents. Bravely cover yourself in Glory by protecting your creatures from your opponents, or wisely choose to summon increasingly more powerful creatures to dominate your enemies.
How to Set Up Quarriors
Quarriors is a dice building game based on the same premise as the original deck builder Dominion, released in 2008. A central tableau consisting of 3 basic cards, 7 creature cards, and 3 spell cards is arranged in the middle of the playing area, known as The Wilds. The 7 creature cards and 3 spell cards are drawn (and redrawn if necessary) at random until each stack is unique. Place the matching dice onto each card in reach of every player.
Finally, all players are given 8 quiddity dice and 4 assistant dice (low powered creatures), and the game can begin.
How to Play Quarriors
On a player’s turn they’ll pull a certain number of dice from their bag and roll them. Die faces displaying the mystic tear drop symbol for quiddity can be used to provide energy to existing creatures, or to recruit more powerful creatures and spells from the Wilds.
Die faces not showing quiddity will typically be either creatures which can be summoned to battle, or special abilities (spell dice). Players choosing to send their creatures into battle must have enough available quiddity to pay the creatures level cost, located in the top left corner of the die. Most die in the game will have at least one quiddity face, and a number of other faces, all of which are displayed at the bottom of the power card for that die.
Once the quiddity cost for any creatures have been paid then that player will send their creatures into battle. The attacking player will total the value of all of their offensive creatures (located in the top right corner of each creature die). Then in clockwise order each player offers up a defender who may or may not be able to defeat the attack total presented. If a creature is defeated (either the attacker’s or defender’s) it goes into the discard card pile for that player.
In the example below, the bottom player (with an attack value of 4) is attacking the top player.
Attacks continue until the attacking player’s creatures are all defeated, or until any remaining creatures have made it around the entire table. Those creatures will now act as defenders for that player while other player’s take their turns. Any creatures still remaining in front of a player at the beginning of their next turn will score Glory points equal to the number found on the top right corner of that creature’s Power card.
After the attacks have been resolved, players may use any remaining quiddity to capture new creatures from the Wilds. Players pay the quiddity cost found in the top left corner of the power card they wish to purchase. Players will then place all rolled dice into their discard pile, along with any captured creatures, and active status will pass to the next player. The game will continue like this until one player has reached the Glory Goal based on the number of players.
What I Like About Quarriors
Of course you have to mention the dice first. They’re awesome. Not full sized, but just a bit smaller. They come in all colors, and styles. Some are solid colors, some are frosted crystal, some are speckled with glitter, they’re just really cool. The art in the game is really nice, with just a tiny bit of cartoonish-ness to prevent it from being super-serious. The gameplay is simple to explain, and the game takes just a few minutes to get up and running.
What I Dislike About Quarriors
While the dice are cool, the printing on some of the dice are blurred. It’s not a big deal, but can make them hard to read. The game is entertaining, but perhaps doesn’t lend itself to many, many replays (if that’s what you’re looking for).
Final Thoughts on Quarriors
At it’s heart Quarriors is a simple game; you roll some dice, attack other players (if you like) and capture new creatures (if you like). The base game includes 130 dice, and 53 creature and spell cards which gives Quarriors a good amount of variety. Each set of dice are represented by more than one power card, and each power card has different options. This means that from game to game, each set of dice might do totally different things based on the setup. Quarriors doesn’t offer much strategy, but clever purchases earlier in the game can make a big difference towards the end.
Quarriors details
- Designer: Eric M. Lang, Mike Elliott
- Artists: Chris Raimo, J. Lonnee
- Publishers: Arclight, Arclight Games, Galápagos Jogos, Intrafin Games, NECA, Stratelibri, WizKids (I), Zvezda
- Release Date: 2011
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 14+
- Time range : 30 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Card Drafting, Deck / Pool Building, Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Dice Rolling, Open Drafting
- BGG Geek Rating: - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: .
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