Tria Talis

Tria Talis is 2-player tactics dice game about strategically swapping and rolling dice to be the first player to get all three of their dice to the opposite side.

What You’ll Need:

Two players and three sets of three dice. That’s it! (I like to have my sets of dice be differentiated by color, for example three red dice, three blue dice, and three yellow dice, but you can have any sets of dice you want as long as you can easily differentiate them)

Setup:

Each player chooses one set of 3 dice. These dice will be yours for the entire game. The unchosen set will be neutral and no player will control them.

Roll all dice and set them in a 3×3 grid like so, having the middle set of dice being the neutral set:

A 3x3 grid of dice. The top three dice are red, the middle three dice are blue, and the bottom three dice are yellow. The numbers on them were chosen randomly.

Count up the value of all of your dice. The player with the lowest total value goes first! (In the case of a tie, choose randomly)

Your Goal:

Get all of your dice to the opposite side of where you started. Whoever gets all three of their dice (in any order) to where their opponent’s dice started, wins!

But how do you do this?

Each turn you can do one of two actions:

Swap – Swap one of your dice with any nearby die with lesser value. A swap can be either orthogonal or diagonal (even backwards!) but can be between dice directly next to each other. The die you swap with may be of any type, but the starting die must be yours (and of higher value).

Reroll – Reroll any die (This can be yours, your opponent’s, or a neutral die)

Turns continue until one player wins

Alternate Rules Variation:

If you want to play a slightly different game, modify the rules to where you are not allowed to reroll a die that was rolled on your opponent’s last turn. This makes each die roll feel more impactful, but also lead to shorter games.

Try both and let me know which variation you like more!