Our friend Trevor introduced this game to us a while back and we started playing again this weekend. It’s super simple and lots of fun. There are instructions on Wikipedia, however, they don’t seem as much fun as these.

Things You Need

• 6 – 6 sided dice
• Pencil
• Paper

Instructions

Basics

Basically what you are trying to do is score as many  points in your turn as you can while reducing the amount of Free dice that you hand to the next person. Free dice are any die that are not a 1, 5 or create a 3,4 or 5-of-a-kind, 5-die-straight or 6-die-straight. Every time you roll the dice you cannot get all free dice or your turn is over and you lose all points that have accumulated up to that roll. That is if you roll 2 dice you have to get at least one 1 or five. If you roll 3 dice you have to either make a 3-of-a-kind or get a 1 or a 5 on one of the dice and so on. Every time you roll the dice you have to select at least one scoring dice or set of dice. So if you roll 6 dice and you get a 1,3,5,2,2,3 you will have to set aside either the 1 and/or the 5 and then roll or pass the remaining dice that you don’t set aside. So if you elect to roll again(which you probably should) then you will be rolling 5 dice and will have to set aside at least 1 of the non-free dice. Lets say you kept the 1 from the initial 6 die roll and rolled the 5 dice and you rolled 5,5,5,2,3. If you want to roll again you will have to set aside the three 5’s with the original 1 and roll 2 dice or you could take the points and give the next player 2 dice.

Passing

After any roll that you have rolled at least one non-free dice or set you can pass the remaining dice to the next player. So if you roll 6 dice and get 1,2,3,4,5,2 you have a scoring set with the straight and there is 1 remaining dice. You can then take the points for the straight and give the 1 dice to the next person who can either elect to roll the single dice and try to get a 1 or a 5 and build on the points for the straight or they can roll all 6 dice and start from scratch.

Scoring

• 1’s are worth 100 points
• 5’s are worth 50 points
• 3-of-a-kind’s are worth the value of one of the dice * 100, except 1’s which are worth * 1000(Three 6’s are worth 600, Three 2’s are worth 200, Three 1’s are worth 1000)
• Small straight(1,2,3,4,5 or 2,3,4,5,6) is worth 1000
• Large straight is worth 2000
• 4-of-a-kind’s are worth double what a 3-of-a-kind is(Four 6’s are worth 1200, Four 2’s are worth 400, Four 1’s are worth 2000)
• 5-of-a-kind’s are worth double of what a 4-of-a-kind is
• 6-of-a-kind’s are worth double of what a 5-of-a-kind is
• You cannot add onto any dice that were rolled in a different roll
• In order to record points you need to have at least 500 points(The first time somebody records a score it has to be 500 or more points. Every time after that they can score on however many points they want)

Example

If you roll 6 dice and get three 2’s in the first roll and then roll the remaining three dice and get a 2,5,3 you can only score the 5(you don’t have 4-of-a-kind)

Example 2 person game

Lets go over an example game with 2 players. We will do a short game to 2000 points. The players are Dianna and William.

They decide who goes first however they want(maybe both rolling 1 dice and highest dice goes first). Dianna wins and rolls the dice and gets 1,3,2,5,2,1. She keeps the two 1’s and rolls the remaining four dice and gets. 3,3,3,2. She now has five hundred points and decides to pass the remaining one dice and take the points.

Dianna – 500, William – 0

William now has the option of rolling one dice and trying to build on 500 or he can start from scratch with 6 dice. He decides to go for it and rolls a 2. His turn is now over

Dianna – 500, William – 0

Dianna now has to roll all 6 dice as the previous roll was a scratch and gets 1,3,3,2,2,5. She decides to keep the 1 and roll five dice and gets 1,2,3,4,5. She has completed all six dice and has accumulated 1100 points(100 from the first roll, and 1000 from the second roll). Since she has made points with all six dice she gets to keep going by rolling all six dice. This time she gets 5,2,2,4,6,5. She keeps one 5 and rolls the remaining five dice and gets 1,1,3,4,3. She decides to pass and take 1350 points.

Dianna – 1850, William – 0

Dianna is about to win the game so William decides that rolling the remaining three dice and trying to build on 1350 points sounds like a good idea. He rolls and gets 5,5,5. Now he has added 500 points to the existing 1350 and has 1850 points as well and has completed the dice again. He rolls all six dice and gets 1,2,3,4,5,3. He decides his luck is going to well and passes the dice and takes 2850 points.

Dianna – 1850, William – 2850

Dianna now only has 1 chance to tie or beat William’s score. There are actually enough points for her to beat him but she has to roll. This is a big decision as she can chance it and roll only the one dice or she can roll all six and try to build over 1000 points from scratch. She decides to chance it and rolls a 3 and scratches. William wins.

Winning

At the beginning of the game everybody decides how high they want to go. A good number for 3-5 people is 20,000. For 2 people 10,000 or 15,000 is probably enough. When the first person records a score over the amount chosen the remaining players then only get 1 chance to tie or beat the score.