House rules not included...

[codswallop]

Hi folks,

I learned this game as Zilch back in the 1980s in London and the group I learned from often played a good house rule, names after the guy whose house it was always played in, for the sake of privacy I'll just use his initials - JP. JP felt that, with 2 dice in hand, a little more encouragement to keep rolling would be good, so JP's rule is that if you roll an otherwise non-scoring pair, say 2 3's for example, this doesn't score but allows you to pick up all 6 dice and keep rolling. My experience is that this really adds to the excitement and completely encourages more risky play, which is where the fun of this game is for me, otherwise people will usually stick with only 2 dice left, especially if they aren't feeling lucky that turn, and conservative play with this game is pretty boring, let's be honest. Fundamentally, it also 'rewards' the good roll of all dice being of the same value, it feels to me that doing so 'deserves' something.

I have since added my own house rule in the same vein, which is that if you roll 2 non-scoring pairs with 4 dice, you also pick up all 6 dice without adding to your score and carry on. This follows and adds to the original JP rule and, for my money, is even more valid and 'deserving' of some kind of reward, as 2 pairs with 4 dice looks to me like a quality roll. And again, anything to encourage rolling more dice more frequently adds to the game and is very much in the spirit of risk and reward.

Any thoughts on this or any other house rules that anyone else plays with?

Cheers,

Alex

[fw_slim]

I like the JP rule. Not so much the 2-non-scoring pairs rule. How frequently did these events occur when using these house rules?

[codswallop]

The original JP rule happens every game, a few times, so it feels worth taking a gamble on rolling 2 dice a lot of the time. I think this is partly because it also gives more to consider earlier in your turn, e.g. when you have all but one scoring dice in your roll, but with an average score so far. The standard, and pretty boring, thing to do in this situation would be just take the average score and bank it as rolling a single die is very risky. However, with the JP rule you have a decision to make as to whether you pick up the last 2 and give it a shot, so there's more complexity and risk to consider. This results in 2 dice being rolled more frequently than otherwise, so there's immediately a higher chance of seeing it.

The 2 pairs thing doesn't come up that often, I think because it feels very unlikely and certainly isn't something you would aim for with 4 dice in hand, you still hope for 3 of a kind in that situation. I guess this rule is something of a backup, but I still like it as I feel that 2 pairs with 4 dice deserves more than zilch! But the original JP rule is very much something you can specifically aim for (I do anyway ).

[ufm]

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=152507

[twtook727]

This site has expansions for some games, it would be epic if they could add house rules on/off sliders.

That is the exact same reason we made ours, well one of the two we use in my house.

3 of a kind ("50/50" rule) : Any time a player scores 3 of a kind, that die is now also considered a scoring die worth 50 points, for the remainder of that 6 die run. So if you rolled 3 4's then going forward you would now score on a 1, 5, or 4. Giving the dice 50%/50% odds for the remaining 3 dice. Once all 6 dice have scored and a player rerolls all 6 this bonus is lost. It is only applied while the 3 matching dice are held. This keeps players rolling all the way to the last die as the odds are now 50/50 this makes for much much more exciting runs and an over all more exciting eventful game. You could say it would work for 1's and 5's too but it wouldn't change the dice odds and who would score a 1 for 50 points? Or you could say they were already special and thus get nothing extra.

3 Pair : This one has nothing to do with game balance, its just a cool rare role that is fun to reward. We score it as 500 and reroll all six. So a player rolling 2 2s, 2 3s and 2 4s, who would normally have made an impressive wipe out, would now score 500 and keep rolling. If this would still apply if a player rolled a pair of either 1s or 5s as well, though the player would have the option of scoring just a single 1 or 5 or all 4 as 300 points as normal (thought it would be a dumb choice)

I like the JP rule but since it addressed the same issue, I'm not sure I could ever adopt it now being tainted by my own house... lol

PS. My grandparents taught it to me under the name "6000", but if they ever learned of my house rule they would role in their graves.