Kind of wish Axolotl Dice was actually about axolotl

Axolotl Dice comes down to an excuse to roll a big handful of dice. Sadly, it doesn’t have anything to do with the endangered species of amphibian, it’s just a pun on the phrase ‘a lot of dice’

OK, here’s the standard line: Axolotl Dice is a PnP R&W multiplayer solitaire. Any number of players can play at the same time since you were all doing your own thing on your own game sheet. With that said, the big roll that is the end of the game is statistically going to be different for everyone.

The main part of the play sheet is eighteen rows of boxes, marked 1-18. Each turn (there are twelve), three dice are rolled. Each player can add them up however they want and mark off the appropriate boxes. (So three ones could be 1-1-1 or 1-2 or 3) As you fill in rows, you earn dice multipliers and stars. As soon as you get a star, you use it to either get more dice or rerolls for the endgame.

After twelve rounds, everyone rolls all the dice they earn, applies any rerolls, and factor in the multipliers. Largest number wins.

Okay. Here’s the interesting bit: while the higher numbers are harder to fill in, their rows are shorter and have more stars. The rows for the numbers you can fill in with one die (1-6) are longer with fewer stars but are the only ones with two dice multipliers. You do have to fill in the entire row to get that so I think focusing on higher numbers when you can is better.

Honestly, I’ve probably made Axolotl Dice sound more complicated than it is. This is a really simple, intuitive game.

I went into Axolotl Dice with very low expectations and it did exceed them. It didn’t turn out to be a diamond in the rough but it isn’t horrible. I expected it to get repetitive but twelve rounds is short enough to keep it from getting boring. It does feel a bit like the start of a game and there should be a second part beyond rolling a mitt full of dice.

Really, it’s biggest issue is that there are a lot of cute little free Roll and Writes out there. Axolotl is decent but it doesn’t stand out that much. Now that I’ve tried it, it will come back out but I binge a lot of R&Ws.

I don’t see it as a game for the classroom or part of a casual game night. Axolotl Dice might have its best home as the warm up for session of beer and pretzel games. After all, you’ll probably already have a pile of dice out already.