Everyone knows the excitement of gathering with family and friends to play a board game. Most times it’s a designed night dedicated to playing some of your favorite staples. Other times, dinner ended and someone challenges another to a game of their choosing. The competitive juices start flowing…nothing better.
As everyone comes to the table, they have a choice to make. A more complex game like Catan? Or a simpler game like Codenames, Sequence, or Ticket to Ride. So many different options. If it was up to my family, Yahtzee would be the choice 9 times out of 10. A dice game that is fun for the whole family and simple enough for everyone to play. While it wasn't the most advanced of games, it brought us together and allowed us to have some fun at the same time.
The thrill of rolling 5-dice…the excitement of seeing 5 of a kind on the table and screaming out Yahtzee!! You see, this thrill is something I loved for a long time because I thought that is the best it could get. You could say rolling dice is a part of my heritage.
As much fun as we were having, we didn’t know that rolling dice could get any better than Yahtzee. In the spring of 2020, I transferred to a new school to play football. I moved in with my sister and her husband as I made my transition. What was planned as a short stay, turned into a year of living with them...and yes we played a lot of board games and a lot of Yahtzee.
The issue we were running into was that Yahtzee wasn’t competitive. Sure, you were attempting to score more points than your competitor, but there was NO engagement. If it wasn’t your turn, you were on your phone, petting the dog, quite unaware of what anyone else was rolling. Mostly just watching, and waiting for your next turn. The other issue is how limiting it makes dice rolling. Rolled four 4’s on your first roll? Too bad, you need to roll 2’s to make the bonus up top. Rolled a large straight in one roll?! Too bad, you already scored a large and small straight…useless!
Once the game ended, someone tallied scores up, but most times the winner was obvious. If someone rolled a few Yahtzees, they probably won. We were stuck in the monotony of the same game and achieved the same disappointing result.
The thrill was gone. So, one night, My brother-in-law and I decided there had to be more. Dice were too powerful and too much fun to be limited to a game like this. We knew we could indeed come up with something better. So we started from scratch. Attempting any idea we could to create a different game for the three of us to play. It didn’t take long until ideas started to click and the magic started to happen.
What started as a need for more, exploded into a brand-new game.
Introducing DiceWar. A savage, high-speed card and dice-playing game that is the ultimate battle for the best roll. We’ve combined familiar combinations of three-of-a-kind, large straight, and full house with brand new, never before seen action cards that will make you rethink everything you know about dice. To have any chance at winning, you must test your skill and luck of dice rolling, with your strategic card-playing skills to figure out who is the Dice War Champion.
Was this the plan when we set out for more? Not even close. At the time, I was a Division 1 College quarterback and my brother-in-law was the lead singer in a band. The goal was never to be board game creators, but our creation felt like destiny. It felt like we had a responsibility to this world to deliver this idea to everyone. We had to bring it to life so each and every person on this earth could experience DiceWar in its entirety. So we went to work.
With the addition of cards, to dice rolling, rules had to be created, boundaries needed to be set and many kinks had to be worked out. While playing the game, we created it at the same time. With the idea of other people paying, we needed strict rules and couldn’t just make it up as we went. It was amazing to see the product that we were creating. What started as writing on pieces of cut paper, became real when we ordered our first set of cards from a printing service.
With some artwork and some themes, we had what felt like the first piece of DiceWar in our grasp. It was beautiful, but it needed work. We played and played and played, coming up with new action cards, and new rules, and attempting to encounter any situation that could occur. We wanted to make sure that this game was as flawless as possible before we ordered our first prototype.
After months of designing, playing, and creating, we ordered our first box. This was a big moment. The first official DiceWar was produced. We started to become confident that this game could become real. That it could become the next best game in the industry.
We then created a plan to get further testing done. We first started by designing a website and creating a video that would show our customers just exactly what they were playing. The video turned out great and the website was up. The next order of business was to order 100 full prototype games to give out for feedback. For 2 months we allowed these 100 people to gather with friends and family to play Dice War. The feedback we got was amazing. People loved the game, the box design, and the creativity that went into making it. It felt great to hear those opinions from the public. The plan worked out great and we got proper feedback from new customers that would aid us in putting out the best first game possible.
We took all the feedback, carefully made changes, and we were ready to put in the first mass order of DiceWar!….but we had one little problem. I was a college student, playing football and my brother-in-law was a musician, also working a full-time job. But that didn’t stop us from creating the game, so it wasn’t going to stop us now.
After adding my other brother, Pat, to the team, we were ready to start producing this game. After numerous meetings, phone calls, and texts, we decided that Kickstarter was the best route to take.
That puts us at the current time. After months and months of researching, designing, and creating, we launched our Kickstarter in March of 2022, and ‘launched’ was the perfect word to describe it. After just 3 days, we were over our initial goal of $10,000! For the next 27 days, we were able to DOUBLE our goal and finish the campaign with over $23,000 to create DiceWar. WOW.
We will spare the details of the next months of manufacturing and managing the supply chain. We will take care of that boring stuff. On September 26th, 2022 we had all of our Kickstarter orders put together and we shipped them out to over 420 backers all over the world. Since then, we have been shipping out games daily all over the United States. There are over 800 games of DiceWar in the universe currently!!!
Dice War is the answer to dice making a comeback to game night. It combines energy, passion, and desire, all in one to make for an unforgettable night. Begin to imagine the possibilities of a brand new board game entering your house and becoming a staple in your family for years to come.
Happy Rolling,
Chris Ferguson