Jurassic Wars (2009)

They fought tooth and claw for 160 million years... let the battles begin again.

Jurassic Wars is a dinosaur combat game with computer-generated images and an unusual game mechanism.

During the game players must carefully play Dinocards from their hand and must judge when to play a Combat card, which can alter the outcome of the combat. Timeline cards can also affect combat. There are two types of dice - green and red - and they vary in their effectiveness in scoring a hit. Green dice are used by herbivores and red by carnivores.

Play consists of combats between pairs of players. During combat players take the appropriate number of combat dice, which vary according to a few simple conditions, and start rolling. The aim is to score hits against the opposing dinosaur. Jurassic Wars features an interesting game mechanism where the combat dice also serve as the number of hit points that each dinosaur can sustain in combat. After a series of rolls, one player will be left with no dice to throw and his or her dinosaur is defeated. With every combat, another dinosaur is removed from play. As the game progresses some players will lose all their dinocards and be eliminated until only one player is left standing and is the winner.

The simple, probability-based game mechanism is flexible allowing for basic game parameters to be changed and also lending itself to many different variations, such as Jurassic Wars Whist, a points scoring game that involves greater skill and judgement, and Jurassic Wars Casino, a Craps-style gambling game. Details are available from the publisher’s website. Expansion sets are in development.

Jurassic Wars is the second game from Dice Maestro, which not only refuses on ethical grounds to outsource manufacture of any components to low-wage economies (everything is made in the UK) but also gives 5% of profits to a worthy cause. Since dinosaurs fascinate all children, the selected charities for Jurassic Wars are children's charities.

Jurassic Wars won Game Of The Year 2009 in the annual Toy Talk Awards (Board Game Category).