Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Dinosaur Table Battles is a game about dinosaurs fighting each other for some reason.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
Dinosaur Table Battles is a game about dinosaurs fighting each other for some reason. As in the original Table Battles game — which apparently is going to be called "Human Table Battles" from now on — players roll dice, then assign them to cards representing their fighting forces. Removing the dice triggers an attack, but that attack might be reacted to — whether absorbed, blocked, or countered — if the opposing player removes dice from a card with a reaction. The trick is that if you can react, you must react, and if you do react, you don't get to attack on your next turn. Mastering tempo is key to your success. The thing about this game, though, is that it has dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are pretty big guys and gals — so big, in fact, that each dino spans two or three cards, giving them an assortment of attacks, reactions, and rule-breaking special abilities. During set-up, players draft a team of dinosaurs, creating unique synergies to be exploited and disadvantages to be mitigated. There are over 900,000 different matches possible, and while that might not be enough to keep you occupied for 200 million years, it's probably close enough.