Our three college boys were home this past weekend. With the weather turning suddenly frigid, with lows around 10 degrees, they came home on Saturday afternoon for some cold weather gear. They left Sunday afternoon, but not before we had an early dinner and a round of Dungeon Derby. (picture below)

Have I mentioned we love board games?

Dungeon Derby is an interesting game. It is a betting game. There are six characters in a race. There are two dice. One has a character on each side and the other has one through six. When the dice are rolled, the character which comes up on the first die move the number of spaces shown on the second die. First character to the finish line wins. Sounds simple, right?

Each player has a character and then the other characters just play automatically. If your character places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd you collect the purse. But you also bet on the characters. You can bet on your own or on somebody else’s. If that character wins, you collect money from the bookie.

But to complicate matters you have treasure cards. These can be used to set traps to slow characters down. Or they can be armor, which can help or hinder. Or they can be enchantments, which can switch characters on the board, move characters back to start, and more. So the game is a mixture of luck, strategy, and cooperation.

I like this game because there is some strategy but there is also a luck element which evens things out if you make some poor bets. And if your money runs low, there are some very silly ways to get more.

So it was nice having the three boys home and getting to play a game and chat about how things were going at school.