Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge – Season III is an expansion for Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge by James Ernest, Mark MacKinnon and Robert McLarney, published by Dyskami Publishing Company. It is for 2-8 players. This expansion adds 12 new character cards and 4 new challenge cards, along with lots of dice and tokens.
For more information on Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge and how to play the game, please check out the link below.
https://jlnelson73.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/sailor-moon-crystal-dice-challenge-review/
Setting up the game with this expansion, is exactly the same. All that needs to be done is to follow the same basic setup rules from the main game’s rulebook.
So what does this new expansion bring to the table as far as content goes? Well, as I mentioned earlier, there are 12 new playable characters. Those characters are Sailor Uranus, Sailor Neptune, Sailor Pluto, Sailor Saturn and Luna P. There’s also Kaolinite, Eudial, Mimete, Viluy, Tellu, Cyprine & Ptilol and Mistress 9. These new characters have special abilities, some of which are shared by certain characters. For instance, Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto all share the Talisman Power which allows them to lock one of their opponent’s dice through their next turn after rolling or rerolling their dice for an attack. Another new special ability is shared by Eudial, Mimete, Viluy and Tellu. It’s called Summon Daimon. This ability allows them to summon a powerful Daimon to aid them in battle. This ability can only be used if the player has at least two or more dice in play. Before attacking the player converts their die with the highest value showing into a Reserve die. This die is then placed in the player’s pile of Reserve dice. Any remaining combat dice are temporarily set aside and one of the large Daimon tokens is placed in front of them from the supply, along with it’s 3 combat dice. The player then rolls it’s combat dice as if it were a normal character under their control. As a matter of fact, this Daimon will now battle just like a normal character in place of their character. Once the Daimon is defeated, the player returns their character and the exact same dice and values as when the Daimon was summoned to the battle. However if the Daimon captures the opponent’s final die, the round is over. For more information on how scoring works with the Daimon, please check the rulebook. There are several other new special abilities, all of which are explained in more detail in the rulebook as well. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot of new material that this expansion introduces to the basic game.
COMPONENTS
The game comes with plenty of great looking pieces. To begin with, there are 3 new sets of beautiful looking dice. The colors are bright and fun. There’s a pink, a purple and a dark gray set. I’m partial to the gray and purple dice. Each die has large numbers on it and the finish is marbleized. As I mentioned earlier, there are also 12 new character cards. These are the same size and quality as those of the core game. Each card has a large picture of the character along with all the pertinent information to be able to play them. The artwork on these is really cool and looks like it was taken right from the show. The game also comes with a punchboard full of various tokens. There are tokens for each of the new special abilities, a couple of coins and 2 large summoned Daimon tokens. These are rather creepy looking. Each token is made of thick cardboard and contains all the pertinent iconography. The Daimon tokens have a bit of a rules explanation on how they are used on the back of them, which I found to be quite useful. Finally the last pieces are the challenge cards and the lanyard. The challenge cards have a chibi style character on them with a cute word balloon for challenging other players at conventions with. These are really cute and kind of fun. The lanyard has all the new hero characters introduced in this game on it, once again in chibi style. The lanyard has a plastic card holder that you can place one of those challenge cards in, which I thought was pretty neat. Needless to say, my daughter liked the look of each piece in this game quite a lot, except for those summoned Daimon tokens. Overall, I like how everything looks and feels. It fits in really well with the look and feel of the original game. Once complaint that I’d had with the base game was that there weren’t enough dice, thankfully this expansion rectifies that. Good job!
9 out of 10
RULEBOOK
The rulebook for this game isn’t all that long. It only consists of 4 pages. Three of those pages explain the new special abilities and how each one works. Of course the Summon Daimon ability takes up a whole page by itself. The back page of the book is an example of play with a picture of 2 of the character cards. That’s the only example and the only pictures in the whole 4 pages worth of rules. There is no mention of the original rules or anything of that nature. It’s assumed that the players of this expansion have a copy of the main game. As a matter of fact, the box even states that it requires the base game to play this. Personally, I’m a little put off by the rulebook for this one. Almost no pictures, only one example and no rules reference. While I realize that this is intended for use with the base game, I personally feel that it could be used by itself to play with 2 players. That may not have been the intended way to use this expansion, but I feel it could have increased the appeal of it overall by simply adding another page or two of rules. As it is, I’m a bit disappointed with the rulebook. Opportunity missed.
6 out of 10
GAMEPLAY
Just like the base game, the expansion is all about rolling dice and battling each other. All of the normal and special rules and variants can be used with this expansion without any problems. As I mentioned earlier, this expansion comes with a host of new characters that players can choose from, each with a new ability. Granted, some characters share the same ability but the fact that each character uses different dice makes each one feel unique. The new abilities are really cool. However I do feel like the Summon Daimon ability is a bit overpowered. Being able to basically throw another character into the mix to keep your main character safe can be a bit daunting for your opponents. Still I do like the ability, even though it’s tough to play against. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot new that this introduces to the game. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with that, having new characters to play with new abilities is always fun. However I will say, it would have been nice to maybe add a few new variants, possibly even a solo one to play around with. That’s just my thoughts anyway. As it is, fans of the original Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge should really enjoy this expansion. I would dare say that fans of any of the Button Men games would enjoy it too, as the whole game’s concept is taken from them. This is one that I would recommend, especially if you already have the base game or enjoy dice rolling games.
8 out of 10
OVERALL
Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge – Season III is an expansion for Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge. The expansion doesn’t really add much in the way of extra play time. Most game sessions last around 10-15 minutes. The cards and dice are really great looking. The rulebook could have used some more pictures, examples and at least a brief summary of the rules. The expansion is pretty nice and adds plenty of new characters and some fun new Daimons to challenge the heroes with. It’s pretty fun and is a nice addition to the basic game. Fans of the original Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge should enjoy this one. I also think players that enjoy dice games would like this as well. Just be aware that you’d need the base game or at least some rules from the basic game to be able to play. This is one that I’d recommend, especially if you have the base game.
8 out of 10
For more information about this and other great games, please check out Dyskami Publishing Company at their site.
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