Play Roll For It Online

What Is Roll For It?

Roll For It is a light, fast dice game in which players race to match combinations printed on cards. Everyone gets six dice in their own color. Three cards sit face up in the middle of the table, and each card shows a set of dice faces, such as a pair of 4s or the run 3-4-5-6, together with a point value. On your turn you roll all the dice you are still holding and place any that match onto the cards. Dice you place stay there, turn after turn, until you have covered every face on a card with your own dice. Then you claim the card, score its points, and take your dice back to roll again. The first player to 40 points wins.

The charm of the game is the tug between speed and greed. Cheap cards can often be finished in a single roll, while expensive ones, like six of a kind, may hold your dice hostage for many turns while opponents rack up points. Several players can chase the same card at once, and the rule that lets you take all your dice back, but only instead of rolling, gives every stuck player a way out at a price.

Roll For It sits comfortably next to Qwixx as a modern family dice game, shares its match-the-symbol DNA with Elder Sign and King of Tokyo, and is a good step up from pure luck games like Left Center Right.

A Short History of Roll For It

Roll For It was designed by Chris Leder and is published by Calliope Games, the company behind the tile-laying game Tsuro. Leder has said the design began as a more complicated dog-matching game until his wife told him his games were always too complex, so he stripped it back to dice and cards. He self-published an early version through the print-on-demand service The Game Crafter, which is why hobby databases date the game to 2011, and pitched it to Calliope’s Ray Wehrs at Gen Con in 2012.

Calliope funded its edition on Kickstarter in the spring of 2013. The campaign drew 329 backers and $11,220 against a $10,000 goal, and backers voted on the card artwork, choosing a bright, classic look. The retail game arrived in late 2013 in two independent sets, a Red Edition and a Purple Edition, each for two to four players with 30 cards and 24 dice. In November 2014 Calliope released Roll For It! Deluxe Edition, combining both decks into 60 cards with 48 dice, a velvet dice bag and a hinged tin that doubles as a dice tray, and supporting up to eight players. The game carries an American Mensa recommendation and was featured on the web series TableTop. Leder later joined Calliope as its “Director of Fun.”

Roll For It Rules

These are the rules of the standard game as published by Calliope, in our own words.

Components

• Cards: 30 per set, each showing two, three, four or six dice faces and a point value from 2 to 15, color-coded by difficulty.
• Dice: 24 standard six-sided dice in four colors, six per player.
• Players: two to four with one set; up to eight when two sets or the Deluxe edition are combined.

Object

Be the first player to score 40 or more points by claiming cards. The game ends the moment a player reaches the target.

Setup

Shuffle the cards and deal three face up in the middle of the table (four if there are five or more players). Give each player six dice of one color. In the official rules everyone rolls two dice and the highest total goes first; on Dice.now you always start.

How a Turn Works

1. Choose: roll or take back. Before rolling you may instead take back all your dice from every card. If you do, your turn is over as far as placing goes, and you roll all six dice next turn. You cannot take dice back from only one card, and you cannot roll and then take dice back.
2. Roll every die you are holding, once. There are no re-rolls.
3. Place any dice whose faces match faces on the cards that you have not matched yet, setting them next to the card. You may place dice on one card or split them across several, and you may place none at all. Each die matches exactly one face on one card. Other players’ dice never stop you: everyone races to match the whole card with their own dice. Once placed, a die stays with that card and cannot be moved to another card or picked up to roll.
4. Claim any card whose every face you have now matched. Score the number printed on it, take those dice back into your hand, and deal a new card to replace it. Any dice other players had next to that card go back to their owners, and they can roll them on their next turn.
5. If you have reached 40 points the game ends immediately. Otherwise play passes to the left.

Scoring

Points come only from claimed cards; there are no bonuses or penalties. The table shows the card families in the Dice.now deck, which follows the official 2-to-15 point range.

Worked Examples

Example 1: a quick claim. The cards on the table are 4-6 (2 points), 3-3-3 (5 points) and 1-2-3-4-5 (8 points). You roll 4, 6, 3, 3, 1, 5. You match the 4 and the 6 and claim the 2-point card at once, taking those dice back. You also place two 3s on the three-of-a-kind card. You end the turn holding four free dice: the two you got back and the 1 and 5 you did not place.

Example 2: splitting versus focusing. You hold six free dice and roll 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6. The cards show 2-2-2-2 (8 points) and 5-5-6-6 (6 points). Placing three 2s leaves one face on the 8-point card, and placing 5, 5, 6 leaves one face on the 6-point card. Doing both leaves you a single free die and two cards each needing one exact face: a 16.7% chance per turn on each. Placing only the three 2s keeps three free dice, and the chance that at least one shows a 2 next turn is 42.1%. Focusing is stronger here.

Example 3: the race you cannot win. Your opponent has five dice next to the six-of-a-kind card worth 15 and needs one more 6. You roll a 6. Placing it there does nothing to slow them down, since each player matches the card independently, and you would need five more 6s before they find one. Your die is better spent elsewhere; if they do finish the card, any dice you had there simply come back to you.

Example 4: the take-back. You have one free die, two dice next to a full-house card that still needs two 4s, and three dice next to a straight that needs a 2. Your single die has a one-in-six chance of helping either card. Instead of rolling, take everything back: next turn you roll six dice at three fresh cards.

Roll For It Probabilities

Two questions drive every decision: how likely is a card to be finished from scratch, and how likely is one needed face to show up on the dice you still hold.

Finishing a card in one roll

We enumerated every possible roll (6⁶ = 46,656 outcomes for six dice) to find the chance that a fresh roll covers a whole card at once.

The three cheapest families are finished in one roll roughly a quarter to two-fifths of the time, which is why games are usually won on small cards.

Hitting one specific face

Once you have committed dice, what matters is the chance that at least one of your remaining free dice shows the face you need:

The last face on any card is the expensive one. With one free die it takes six turns on average to roll a given face; with three free dice it takes about two and a half. Each die you commit early makes every later face slower to fill.

Game length

In 20,000 simulated two-player games between two copies of the computer opponent on this page, the game lasted 50 turns on average, about 25 per player, and roughly ten cards were claimed in total, so the average claimed card was worth around 6 points and the loser typically finished with about 26. The player who rolled first won about 52% of the time, a small edge that the official roll-for-first-player rule hands out at random.

Roll For It Strategy

1. Win the game on cheap cards

Forty points is six to ten cards. The 2- and 3-point cards finish in one roll 24% to 42% of the time with six dice, while a 15-point card needs dozens of rolls from scratch. Points per turn, not points per card, wins.

2. Never hold fewer free dice than a card still needs

If a card needs two more faces and you have one free die, you cannot finish it this turn no matter what you roll. The computer opponent on this page never makes a placement that leaves it short, and that rule, with the two below, gives it a 95% win rate against a naive greedy player in our simulations.

3. Chase at most two cards at once

Splitting six dice across three cards leaves too few free dice for any of them. Two unfinished cards is the practical maximum; one is often better.

4. Value cards by what is left, not by what is printed

A 10-point full house that still needs one 4 is a better target than a 3-point card that needs three specific faces. Count the remaining faces, look up the odds in the tables above, and go where the next point is cheapest.

5. Stay out of races you are losing

If an opponent needs one more face on a card and you would need three, your dice will almost certainly come back unrewarded when they claim it, and meanwhile they are not being rolled. Join a shared card only when you are at least as close as the other player, or can finish it this turn.

6. Take back all your dice when your free dice cannot finish anything

Taking back costs a turn but resets you to six dice, which finishes a cheap card 25% to 40% of the time on the very next roll. If you are holding one or two free dice and every card you are on needs more than that, the take-back is usually correct, especially when an opponent is about to claim the card you were counting on.

7. Count to 40 in the endgame

At 34 points a 6-point card wins outright and a 2-point card does not. Late in the game, direct your dice at the cheapest card that ends it rather than the biggest one on the table, and watch what your opponent needs so you can race them for the card that would finish them.

8. Do not forget the replacement card

Every claim deals a new card, and sometimes it is a 2-pointer your leftover dice already match. Check the table again before you end your turn.

Common Mistakes

• Moving a placed die to another card. Once a die is on a card it stays until the card is claimed or you take all your dice back.
• Taking back dice from a single card. The take-back is all or nothing, and it replaces your roll for the turn.
• Rolling first, then taking back. The decision comes before the roll.
• Thinking your dice block an opponent. They do not; each player matches the card with their own dice, and only the first to finish scores it.
• Placing every matching die on reflex. A die on a hopeless 15-point card is a die you will not roll for many turns.
• Ignoring the cheap cards. Players who chase only 10-plus-point cards routinely lose to players who claim eight small ones.

Variants and House Rules

• Red and Purple Editions. Two stand-alone sets with different card mixes and dice colors. Either plays two to four.
• Two sets combined. Shuffle both decks together, deal four cards instead of three, and seat up to eight players.
• Roll For It! Deluxe Edition (2014). Both decks with new artwork, 48 dice in eight colors, a dice bag and a tin that doubles as a dice tray. Two to eight players.
• Going BIG! editions. Oversized cards and dice for the Red and Purple sets.
• Solo play. Calliope publishes a solo variant on its website, and a promotional “Express” card offers a one-card solo challenge.
• House rules. A lower target of 25 or 30 points for young children; playing a fixed number of rounds; letting a stuck player retrieve dice from a single card.

Glossary

• Free dice: Dice in your hand that you roll on your turn.
• Committed dice: Dice sitting on a card. They are not rolled until the card is claimed or you take everything back.
• Face: One printed die image on a card, matched by exactly one of your dice.
• Claim: Matching every face on a card with your own dice; you score the card and recover the dice.
• Take back: The option, instead of rolling, to retrieve all of your committed dice at once.
• Race: Two or more players committing dice to the same card; only the first to finish scores it.
• Target: The winning score, 40 points in the standard rules.

Play Roll For It Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is a free fan re-creation of Roll For It with our own card set, artwork and wording. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Calliope Games or Chris Leder; the official Red, Purple and Deluxe editions are sold at calliopegames.com, and if you enjoy the game here we encourage you to buy a copy.

Here is exactly what our version does. You play against one computer opponent, each with six dice, and three cards from our own 30-card deck lie face up, each worth 2 to 15 points as listed in the scoring table above. On your turn you either press Roll Free Dice or Take Back All Dice. Each card shows two rows of faces, one tracking your matches in green and one tracking the computer’s in red, because both players can race for the same card. After a roll, every face you can match lights up; tap it to commit a die, tap that die again during the same turn to change your mind, and press End Turn when you are done or to keep all your dice free. When you match every face on a card it is scored instantly, your dice return, any computer dice on that card go back to it, and a new card is dealt. The computer’s moves appear one at a time in the log: it completes any card it can, otherwise commits to the card closest to completion with the highest value, never leaves itself fewer free dice than a card needs, stays out of races you are already winning, and takes all its dice back when it is stuck. The first player to 40 points wins immediately, and your wins, games played and best finishing score are stored on your device only. Dice rolls use your browser’s cryptographic random number generator. Ready? Roll the dice.