Come on! Let's fight. Using dice is one way to solving conflict in tabletop gaming. Dice has been around for ages in board gaming. I remember growing up on Dungeon & Dragons rolling a variety of dice depending on the weapon I was using against mythical foes with high Armor Class. 20 sided dice, 8-sided dice, 10-sided dice, 4-sided dice and the iconic and commonly using 6-sided dice. Most board games uses the 6-sided dice because it is very common and thus cost the least to produce. 

There are many games with conflict and combat. Whether you are fighting one character against another opponent or an army against another army, there are many ways to resole who wins and who loses. The most popular is throwing dice to see who wins. Here are some games that uses dice in combat in different ways.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

X-wing Miniatures

X-Wing Miniatures is a tactical game where you fly squads of miniatures from the Star Wars universe. Originally they covered ships from the original movies, but eventually included ships from the what was originally the Expanded Universe that later became known as Legends. And are including ships from the prequels and the recent movies.

In this game, you plan out your flying maneuvers without knowing what your opponent or opponents are planning. You hope to get in range and position to shoot at their ships. You resolve the combat with custom made 8-sided red attack dice and green defense dice. As with dice, combat is luck based but can be mitigated by using a focus token that can turn eyeball results into hits or target lock to reroll some dice. Some pilots and additional weapons, crew, systems, etc can also help with modifying some dice roll. But as usual, you are still under the thumb of the might dice gods that can day you the hit or proper defense rolls.

Fallout: The Board Game

Fallout is a post-apocalyptic game where your character travels over irradiated and desolate hexagon shaped lands. You have to do a series of quests, fight bad monsters and mutants, buy or scavenge loot. When you complete quests help advance a faction you are a part of, you get victory points.

Now combat is very interesting. You have custom made 6-sided dice. Monsters or mutants or what not have hit points and requires a damaged body part (arms, head, torso, legs) roll. So when you roll your dice, you need to have enough bursts to match the hit points or more and have at least one of the highlighted body part on your rolls to defeat them. The Deathclaw requires 3 bursts and the arms rolls.

Axis & Allies

An oldie but a goodie, Axis and Allies recreates World War II over a map of the world. You can be part of the Allies - USA, United Kingdom, USSR though not France because then the player would just surrender at the beginning of the game. Or you can be part of the Axis - Germany and Japan but not Italy (in the original game) as a player can't be that incompetent. But in the relatively recent Anniversary version, you have the chance to give Italy a go at being a player on the world stage. France still surrendered.

You are not fighting individual characters or ships of a squad, but armies, navies, and air forces against one another in territory around the map. When units have a go at each other on a territory, they are taken to a combat playmate. You use regular 6 sided dice, but depending on the unit attacking or defending, you have to roll the max roll of a unit or less to succeed. Like powerful bombers need to roll 4 or less to attack while soldiers need a roll of 1 to succeed. But the bomber needs a 1 to defend though soldiers still need a 1 to defend. There are fighters, cruisers, battleships, armor and more.

One Deck Dungeon

One Deck Dungeon and its other stand-alone expansion: One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows are a rogue-like dungeon crawl using a deck of cards to reveal traps and encounters as well as keeping track of progress of each dungeon level. When you reveal or discard all the cards in the deck, you move to the next dungeon level. You play different archetypes of dungeon crawls (Paladin, fighter, cleric, etc) and you gain abilities and skills of the traps and encounters you defeat.

You fight encounters and defeat trap by using pool building where you have a pool of 6-sided colorful dice to cover boxes with roll requirements of certain colors. The colors represent skills of the character. Gold for strength, blue for magic, pink for agility, and black dice are called Hero dice which can be used for any skill. The Fighter will have more gold dice for strength while mage will have more blue dice. Any box you fail to cover by a dice may damage you or make you discard cards from the deck making you finish the dungeon level faster than you can gain new skills or abilities.

Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game

Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game has probably the most simplest use of dice in combat. This is a game that uses modular boards and standees to create different scenarios or campaigns where you play survivors that try to reach a goal depending on the scenario you use and fight off the zombies.

You can find ranged weapons like pistols or rifles and shoot at zombies a few spaces away. Depending on the range weapon, you usually roll on 6 sided die. The card will tell you what roll is required to kill a zombie.

When you fight a zombie in hand-to-hand combat, the player rolls 2 dice and the zombie rolls one. The player choose the higher roll of the 2 dice and if it is higher than the zombie's roll, he just survives the fight. If the zombie has the higher roll or a tie, the player receives a wound. However, if the player rolls double, then the zombie receive a wound and is killed. You can help with dice rolls with the various weapons and abilities and using the ability as stated on the card.

Fortune and Glory

Fortune and Glory is a miniatures board game where your Heroes travel around the world trying to find powerful artifacts with special powers.  You are in competition with Nazis who are also trying to find the artifact as well. When finding artifacts, you have to complete a series of tests to get them. As you play, combat is usually unavoidable with these Nazi baddies.

If you have any other favorites games that uses dice in combat, please share in the comments. There are plenty more I know.