Arcane WondersSpoils of War Game , Orange

Love how easy this game is to learn and play. It takes liars dice to the next level and breaths new life into it.

Fun game that adds a great twist to liars dice. New strategies to get extra gold to win the game! I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

We have a lot of games, but surprisingly we don't own only about 6 party games (5+ players, easy and quick to teach and "quick" to play).COMPONENTS:+ Nice small dice, that roll well, are easy to read, and not large+ Durable dice cups+ The player shield has helpful information and is angled to provide better cover for your dice+ coins and cards are good quality+ Nice artwork on the cardsSETUP:+ Pretty fast.1. Hand each player shield, a set number of dice depending on the number of players in the game, and starting coinage.2. Pick a Purseer (the bank) and the Viking Chief (1st player)3. Also, setup 9 piles (for 9 limited rounds) of looting; 3 piles of each stage of cards (1's, 2's, and 3's).GAMEPLAY:1. Treasure Setup - Viking Chief take the first 1's treasure pile and spreads it face up for all to see; except artifact cards are kept facedown2. Roll Dice - all players roll and keep results secret3. Bidding - Viking Chief picks who will start the bidding (e.g. If I'm Chief and I have four 6's I may want to start first myself with an opening bid of two 6's, hoping by the time it comes back around to me my four, plus what I guess others have, will be a reasonable guess/bluff for me). Betting continues till one person challenges another.4. Place Bets - All players bet a coin amount & a challenger/declarer chip who they think (challenger or declarer) is correct.5. Reveal Bets - All Vikings reveal what they bet.6. Reveal Dice - All dice are revealed and the bet is resolved. Example, if Challenger was correct and Declarer was incorrect there aren't eight 6's but only 5, then Challenger and those that showed Challenger chip win that round. Highest bet coins for the winners is the new Viking Chief.7. Divide the SpoilsSTRATEGY:This is a guessing and bluffing game. So strategy is high.One game I used the special ability of one of my artifacts on my daughter who had a choice to show me some dice (she did say there were six 1's) or pay me 5 gold. When she quickly paid me I thought she was bluffing, but in the end I lost the bid because she had five 1's herself and I had bid against that many.BALANCE / SCALABILITY / OTHER:-- You need max players I think to make this the best experience.Whenever we played a 3-player game it was too few players, in the sense that whenever someone guesses wrong for 2-3 rounds in a row, the winners can collect and leverage artifacts and couldn't be stopped...and some of those artifacts are overpowered for a 3-player game.> Consider the more players you play with to then play with less than 9 rounds. If you want to keep the game to an hour or less, then try variations of 5, 6, or 7 rounds only.-- Nobody liked the final scoring. Too much math and combos, especially since the same card could be used for multiple sets according to the instruction manual (unless we misread the instructions). You can see from one of my pictures we are having to write down all these possible point combinations and that added what FELT like a huge amount of extra, unnecessary time. Thus, maybe keep scoring to finding the best combination of sets versus mixing and matching...it gets too confusing otherwise for some players.OVERALL:Our family likes bluffing games a lot and the randomness of the dice creates a sense of replayability, as the combinations are different with each roll. This was a game we had a lot of fun with, but we'll want to tweak it with some house rules to make the final scoring easier and not give some players too much power to where others can never catch up and compete.

Spoils of war is a Viking themed variant of Liars dice, but with additional elements of set collection and scoring points.On each round, a set of treasure is revealed. Then each player rolls their dice and keeps them hidden under a cup. The starting player bids a quantity and face of dice (five 3s, for example) that they think all player's dice may show. The next player bids higher, or challenges the previous player if they think there are not that many dice rolled to the bid face.The two main adjustments to the core game of Liar's Dice in Spoils of War is that a bid of a bigger dice quantity is always considered higher a higher bid, so a bod can go from three 4s to five twos, for example. The second happens after the bidding player is challenged.Each other player decides which of the two other players (the bidder and the challenger) are correct, then all players take some of their gold and a disc showing their vote and set them secretly. The bidder and challenger must vote for themselves.Once done, everyone reveals their bet, and the dice, one player at a time, lifts their cup and the dice are counted. Based on winners and amount of gold bet, players get to choose treasure or have to pay their gold and choose nothing.Dice are revealed 1 set at a time because various artifacts, a type of treasure, may allow players to affect the dice in some way.At the end of the game, remaining gold, treasure values, and sets of treasures are scored, the highest score wins.I enjoyed this game a lot. It takes a classic dice game and adds a lot more to it in a way that I think makes a well-designed game. The extra parts of the game meld well with the original game.The art and components all are of good quality, with one minor exception. There are screens to hide your dice, and they fold and sit fine, but as they tilt down, they are a little hard to read. However, the info shouldn't need to be referenced often, so it's not a big deal.In a 3-player game at least many of the cards never even see play, so there is a lot of variety to be had in the game. I am looking forward to playing it many more times.

Such a fun game. More intense version of liars dice. Seller filled package with cardboard instead of plastic non biodegradable plastics 👍🏻