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In Mythical Dice, the Minotaur isn’t chasing anyone through a maze. Instead, he’s at the table, rolling dice with you and a few friends. It’s a strange image, but a fitting one for a game that takes the familiar idea of trick-taking and gives it a mythical, somewhat chaotic spin.
Rather than playing cards, you’re drawing dice from a bag and rolling them to win tricks. There are creatures involved, a few clever rules, and a fair amount of luck. It’s light, quick to learn, and sometimes completely unpredictable. Whether that’s a good thing depends a bit on what you’re looking for.
👥 3-6 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designer: Manfred Reindl
🎨 Artwork: Wanjin Gill
🏢 Publisher: IELLO Games (review copy provided)
Gameplay Overview
The core of the game is quite straightforward. Each round, you draw a number of dice from a shared bag, hide them behind your screen, and then make a secret bet on how many tricks you think you’ll win that round. Then you roll your dice one by one, playing tricks until all the dice are used. If your prediction was correct, you score points. If not, you lose points. That’s the game, in essence.
The dice come in two types. There are standard number dice, and there are special dice representing mythical creatures: the Minotaur, the Griffin, and the Mermaid. These special dice don’t show numbers but symbols, and they can override regular results. They also interact in a rock-paper-scissors-style system, where Minotaur beats Griffin, Griffin beats Mermaid, and Mermaid beats Minotaur. If your special die beats another player’s in the right way, and you made a correct bet that round, you score bonus points.
Each round gets slightly longer, with more dice being drawn and more turns being played. The number of rounds depends on the number of players. With more players, the game is slightly shorter to keep the overall playtime down.
There’s a simplified variant included as well, which removes both the penalties for incorrect bets and the bonus points from creature battles. It’s a good option for quicker games or for playing with younger players.
What You Get in the Box
The most noticeable thing when opening the box is, of course, the dice. There are 36 of them in total, and they come in bright, clear colours. The number dice have large, readable pips, and the special dice feature bold icons for each creature. There’s also a white flag symbol on some faces that simply means the die does nothing. Always a bit of a disappointment when it shows up.
Each player gets a folding screen to hide their dice. These are nicely illustrated with different mythical or seasonal characters. Some fit the theme more than others, to be honest, but they’re charming in their own way. On the inside of each screen is a quick reference chart showing the dice values and the special dice interactions. It’s a helpful touch and means you don’t need to check the rulebook too often during play.
The cloth bag used for drawing dice is functional, though on the small side. If you have larger hands, it can be a bit fiddly. The scorepad is cleanly laid out and includes a reminder of how scoring works, which is useful when you haven’t played in a while.
Nothing in the component list is particularly flashy, but everything is functional and visually consistent. The design clearly prioritises readability and ease of use over anything overly decorative, which suits the game’s quick and accessible nature.
Our Experience
We played Mythical Dice across a few different sessions, and it left us with mixed but mostly positive impressions. It’s a game that can produce some very funny, memorable moments, but also a few frustrating ones.
The betting phase, where everyone declares how many tricks they think they’ll win by saying “MIN-O-TAUR!” and showing the number with their fingers, was fun at first but quickly became more of a ritual than anything dramatic. That said, it did give us a few good laughs, especially when someone made an ambitious bet and completely missed it.
The gameplay itself felt fast and accessible. The rules are easy to explain, and the flow of turns is straightforward. You roll a die, follow the colour if you can, or throw in a special die to try and shake things up. It doesn’t take long before players start trying to bluff or mislead each other, or at least pretend they have a plan.
We found that the creature dice added some nice unpredictability to the game, especially when someone managed to land a bonus by beating another special die at the right moment. Those moments usually got a good reaction around the table. But they also brought in a level of randomness that made it difficult to feel like you were ever fully in control.
The more the game went on, the more it felt like we were reacting to the dice rather than playing around them. Some players were fine with that, leaning into the chaos and enjoying it for what it was. Others felt that the randomness undermined the decision-making a bit too much, especially in later rounds when a single trick could swing the game.
There was one die in particular, a grey number die, that became a bit of a joke in our group. It always seemed to show up at the worst possible time and ruin someone’s perfectly timed bet. We started blaming the die for everything, which probably says a lot about how things were going.
The zero-trick bets brought some of the tensest moments. Trying to avoid winning anything while everyone else is trying to push you into a trick is oddly stressful, especially in the later rounds when the stakes are higher. Those moments were often the highlight of the game.
What We Think
Mythical Dice is an interesting mix of ideas. It’s clearly designed to be quick, playful, and social, and in those aspects it mostly succeeds. It’s a light trick-taking game with a strong luck element, wrapped in a friendly theme with some well-considered components.
That said, it won’t be for everyone. If you’re looking for something with strategic depth or clever mechanics to explore over multiple plays, this probably won’t hold your interest for very long. The gameplay is quite repetitive, and while the dice keep things varied, they also limit how much control you have over what happens.
The balance between bluffing and planning is there, but it can feel a bit thin once you realise how much of your success depends on dice draws and rolls. The bonus point system adds some incentive for clever plays, but it only pays off if you also get your prediction right, which can sometimes feel like two layers of luck at once.
Still, in the right context, as a filler game, a casual option for mixed-experience groups, or something to bring out at a family gathering, it works well. The rules are simple, the games are short, and there’s enough interaction to keep people engaged. It reminded us of Skull King, but with dice and less control. Whether that sounds appealing or frustrating probably tells you everything you need to know.
📝 We received a review copy of Mythical Dice from IELLO.
