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Santa and Krampus give the gift of brawling this Christmas with Dice Throne

The fight before Christmas.

Santa Klaus and Krampus, two festive icons, are going head-to-head in a battle for Christmas with a new Dice Throne board game.

An upcoming board game, Dice Throne: Santas vs Krampus has players taking control of the holiday rivals in a battle of dice-rolling. A standalone title – meaning that players won’t need to have any of the core releases for Dice Throne to play – Santa vs Krampus pits the hero of the holidays against its nightmarish counterpart in a head-to-head fight.

Whilst Santa Klaus, also known as Father Christmas, uses traditionally festive activities – such as trimming the tree, sitting by the fire, reindeer games and drinking egg nogg – to bring the pain, the more sinister Krampus specialises in tricks and punishment to get ahead. As with other entries in the Dice Throne series, Santa vs Krampus sees players utilising various abilities and actions that their respective characters have in order to defeat their opponent. Santa’s board is predictably themed around the joys of the festive season, whereas Krampus’s board focuses on all the terrible things he likes to do around Christmas.

Cover image for YouTube video
A trailer for Dice Throne: Santa vs Krampus.

During the two-player game, players take turns to roll their hero’s pool of dice – with the option to roll them up to three times – before assigning the results to the abilities they trigger. Rolling certain combinations of dice icons will result in more powerful versions of those abilities occurring. For example, rolling more axe icons for Santa’s Trimming the Tree ability will deal more damage to the player’s opponent.

As players progress through the fight, they’ll be able to upgrade their abilities through the deck of cards for their hero, replacing or boosting certain abilities on their board. Besides upgrade cards, each hero’s deck also contains actions cards that can help players to change their roll results or gain the upper hand on their opponent. Whichever player manages to reduce their opponent’s health total to zero first is the winner.

Dice Throne: Santa vs Krampus was co-created by Gavan Brown – co-designer on Brass: Birmingham - Nate Chatellier and Manny Trembley, who have all previously worked together on other entries in the Dice Throne franchise such as a co-op spin-off game called Dice Throne Adventures and Marvel Dice Throne.

An image of the game board for Krampus in Dice Throne: Santa vs Krampus.

Roxley is the studio behind Dice Throne: Santa vs Krampus, with the company releasing previous entries in the series and other tabletop titles such as the aforementioned Brass: Birmingham and its sibling game Brass: Lancashire.

The Kickstarter campaign for Dice Throne: Santa vs Krampus is live until July 18, with a pledge of $35 (£30) getting backers a copy of the game in December.

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Dice Throne: Santa vs Krampus

Tabletop Game

About the Author
Alex Meehan avatar

Alex Meehan

Senior Staff Writer

After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.

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