I finally did more playtesting on Siegebeast with some friends. I’m finally ready to unveil mechanics and such!

SiegeBeast is a strategy game that uses dice for units. The key mechanic of the game is using the dice sides to keep track of life totals for each unit. There is no dice rolling at all in the game, except for choosing who goes first, or who gets a color of dice/ specific faction if multiple people want them. I’ve checked all over, and I haven’t been able to find any other games that use dice as units like this, I’m pretty proud of it. (I could be wrong. If you know of any other game that does this, let me know!)

The game currently has seven factions. Elven Nomads (lots of ranged attacks), Nordenheim Dwarves (High armor scores), The Skive Horde (goblins, essentially, who deal area damage when they die), the Reman Legions (The Roman Empire if it were founded by Remus instead of Romulus, lots of bonuses for keeping your units clustered together), the Tihuacan Empire (derived largely from pop-culture views of Aztec culture, lots of abilities that require you to sacrifice your units), Svalgarth Raiders (Viking analogue, high damage and abilities that let you push enemy units), and the Kiakan Shamans (Based off of a weird blend of Native American and Celtic culture, lots of terrain related abilities and bonuses for being separated from your other units.) Each faction has a champion, which operates slightly different from a normal unit, and is the only unit allowed to be at level 6. There is a “blueprint” for each faction, which you can see in the photo. You shuffle up your ability cards, draw six, and choose four of those to place on the empty ability slots on the blueprint each game, ensuring that each faction plays slightly differently every game. A unit only has access to the abilities at or below the level equal to its health.

The game box finds a secondary use.

From left to right: Joseph playing the Svalgarth Raiders (Green), Mira playing the Kiakan Shamans (Blue), Fiona playing the Skive Horde (Yellow), and Sean playing the Nordenheim Dwarves (White). This specific match is a Capture the Flag match, essentially, with an “Artifact” (the stone die) playing the role as the flag.

The final turn before Joseph’s victory, using the Svalgarth push ability to knock Sean’s last unit into lava. The terrain types you see on the map include lava (red), rough terrain (green lines), water (purple outlined hexes with w’s in them), and boulders/ obstructions (solid purple). The final game will use cardboard hex tiles on a large cardboard gameboard, rather than an erasable hex grid. Also, that red wink (the bingo chip) beneath the dwarven unit? That’s a break counter, which is used to keep track of damage dealt against armor. Regular armor just makes the dice sides tick down.

Let me know what you think, and tell me if you’d like to participate in further beta testing!