Dungeon Dice Monsters

Dungeon Dice Monsters, or DDM for short, is a board game in the anime and manga series Yu-Gi-Oh!. It is seen in the manga and in the second series anime (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters).

Game Stats
In Dungeon Dice monsters, there is a tiled board on which play is conducted. On either end of the board sits a "Dungeon Master" representing either player. Each Dungeon Master has 3 "Heart Points", which are the equivalent of Life Points for Dungeon Dice Monsters. As with Life Points, the first player to loose all their Heart Points loses.

Terminology
Dungeon Master- Also called the Die Master, this is a representation of the player. Dungeon Masters cannot move, attack, or defend. Each has 3 Heart points. The Dungeon Master is not affected by items or abilities that effect monsters in the Dungeon. The only way to destroy the Dungeon Master is by attacking it.

Dice Pool- The 15 Dice a player uses. When a Dice is used for a Summon, it cannot be used again. Players are only allowed 10 Summons in a game, so they will always have 5 Dice left over for Crest rolling.

Crest Pool- The place where a player's Crests (Except Summon Crests) are stored. The Crests rolled are stored in the Crest Pool until a player uses them. A player cannot use Crests from the opponent's Pool.

Dungeon Path- Created when monsters are Summoned, it is needed so players can attack each other and move about the board.

Obstacles- Squares placed on a board, neither player can Summon a monster in such a way that their Dungeon Path would lie adjacent to the Obstacle. Strategic placing of Obstacles can cut off a player's main route of Summoning and make the game much more difficult. In the Gameboy game Dungeon Dice Monsters, later levels have Obstacles placed in such a way to only hinder the human player, giving them a large handicap.

History
In the manga and anime, Dungeon Dice Monsters is created by Ryuji Otogi (Duke Devlin in the English anime).

In the manga, Otogi creates the game under pressure from his father, Mr. Crown. Mr. Crown lost to a Shadow Game against Sugoroku Mutou (Solomon Muto in the English anime). Mr. Crown wants Otogi to avenge the defeat and harm Yugi Mutou, Sugoroku's grandson.

In the anime, he idolizes Maximillion Pegasus (Pegasus J. Crawford in the Japanese versions) and strives to create a game just as great as Duel Monsters. He emails the specifications to Pegasus, who challenged him to a match of the game at Duelist Kingdom. Using the Millennium Eye to read his mind and thus, easily master the game, Pegasus defeats the creator. However, he was impressed with the game and agreed to market it. This is shortly before Yugi Mutou arrives at Duelist Kingdom.

Upon being defeated, Pegasus goes into hiding, and the contract to market Dungeon Dice Monsters is never signed. Thus, the game does very poorly, and the only shop selling it is the one the creator himself owns. The creator blames his failure on Yugi. In the English anime, he believes that he cheated to beat Pegasus, crushing his spirit. In the Japanese versions, Otogi does not accuse Yugi of cheating to win.

In both the anime and the manga, he cons Yugi into a match by dueling his friend Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler in the English anime) and forcing him to wear a dog costume. Yugi challenges Otogi for Jonouchi's freedom, and thus the game begins.

Yugi does poorly early on, obviously having little clue on how to play the game. However, he makes a comeback and defeats Otogi. Otogi admits defeat. In the manga, his father's game shop burns down to the ground.

In the anime, shortly after the match, he receives another email from Industrial Illusions, telling him they will sign the contract to market Dungeon Dice Monsters worldwide. It is later mentioned that he travels briefly to the U.S. to market the product, but later returns to Japan.

Sets
Although they are not featured in any North American sets, two cards featured in the Yu-Gi-Oh! second series anime 'Dice Dungeon' and 'Dimension Dice' modify the normal Yu-Gi-Oh! card game to be similar to Dungeon Dice Monsters. The two cards combined use dice rolls and a board-like playing field to change the style of play to resemble Dungeon Dice Monsters. The two cards are played by Devlin himself.

Gameplay
The central part of Dungeon Dice monsters is obviously, the dice. Each player has 15 6-sided dice. There are 6 symbols on each die, called Crests. A player rolls 3 dice each turn, and from the Crests rolled, makes their move. Players alternate turns rolling dice until a player's Dungeon Master loses all its Heart Points. What makes the game a true challenge is that a monster cannot move except along Dungeon Path, which is created when a monster is summoned. So, careful placement of pathway can mean an easy path behind opposing lines. But sloppy dimensioning could spell defeat for a player.

Monsters
Monster in Dungeon Dice monsters have 3 main stats: Attack, Defense, and Health. The Attack and Defense are in multiples of 10. All monsters have at least 1 Health point. When a monster loses all of its Health points, it is destroyed. Damage to health points is determined by attacking and defending. (see Attack Crest and Defense Crest for more details). Some monsters are Tunnelers, meaning they can move past other monsters (normally, monsters cannot move over each other.). There are also Flyers, who can not only move over other monsters, but can only be attacked by other Flyers or by monsters with Special Abilities saying they can attack Flyers. Also, there are many monsters with Special Abilities, although many require Trap or Magic Crests to use. (See Trap Crest and Movement Crest for more details)

Summon Crest
These crests allow a player to summon monsters. There are 4 Levels of summoning, based on how many Summon Crests are on a die. A Level 1 Summon die has 4 Crests, and a Level 4 has only 1. So a Level 4 monster, while hard to summon, is very strong. By contrast, the easy to summon Level 1 monsters are pitifully weak. A player must roll 2 Summon Crests of the same Level to summon a monster. If a player rolls a Level 2 Crest and a Level 4 Crest, they do not summon because the Crests are different Levels.

Most Summon Crests are rolled for monsters, but there are also items that can be summoned using Summoned Crests. Items cannot move, and are usually activated when a monster lands on the item, although some items, like the Warp Vortex, activate upon being played. In the Gameboy game Dungeon Dice Monsters, the opposing player cannot see an item played by the player. So they must be careful, because some items destroy Crests in the Crest Pool, some damage monsters, and some even destroy all monsters in play!

Attack Crests
Attack Crests let monsters attack. An attack by a monster requires 1 Attack Crest, and a monster can only attack once per turn. Attacking does damage based on the attacked monster's Defense, and the attacking monsters' Attack. For example, if a monster with an Attack of 30 attacks a monster with 2 Health points, and the monster does not defend, the monster loses 3 Health points and is destroyed. Attacking Dungeon Master only does 1 point of damage, regardless of Attack power.

Defense Crests
When a monster is attacked, its controller may use a Defense Crest. Take the recent example above under Attack Crests. Say the monster has a Defense of 20. When it is attacked, its owner can use a Defense Crest. The Defense stat is subtracted from the Attack stat to determine the damage done. Therefore, 30 Attack minus 20 Defense does only 1 point of damage, and the monster will survive with 1 Health point intact. It is very easy to destroy monsters without Defense Crests, and they should be considered as important as Attack Crests, if not more so.

Trap Crests
Some monster abilities can only be used when attacked. Thus, Trap Crests are often used for these powers, much like Trap cards can be played during an opponent's turn in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.

Magic Crests
Magic Crests are used to activate monsters abilities, just like Trap Crests.

Movement Crests
Monsters must be able to move about the board. Otherwise, the game will be very difficult! Movement Crests allow monsters to move. A monster can move any number of times in a turn, so a monster can move, attack, and move again. For each square passed, 1 Movement Crest is used. A Flyer monster uses 2 Crests for each square.

Strategy
One strategy for the game is to used Level 1 monsters to quickly dimension many monsters. Then, the swarming player quickly 'boxes' in the opponent. Because new dimensions must touch the player's Dungeon Path, boxing in the opponent will effectively stop them from summoning any more monsters. Duke Devlin used a similar play when he played Yugi in the anime. The only problem with this strategy is that boxing in an opponent can become difficult. If an opponent catches on the strategy, they can deliberately alter their dimensions to widen their path, forcing the swarming player to spend more time stopping the growing opposing path. Also, Level 1 monsters tend to be weak, so a single powerful monster could stop the swarming player cold.

Much like the TCG, Exodia the Forbidden One is a strategy in DDM. However, it is much harder to use than in the TCG. All the Exodia parts must be summoned for the automatic victory. The limbs are Level 3 monsters, and Exodia's head is a Level 4 monster. Summoning them is very difficult.

As mentioned, there are 6 Crests. A player must be sure to have a wide variety of dice so they can easily access the different Crests. Not all dice have all the different Crest types on them. For example, since a Level 1 die has 4 Summon Crests, there are only two other Crests. So using a Dice Pool of Level 1 monsters would make rolling Crests difficult. Also, if a Dice Pool contains dice with Movement and Attack Crests, the player will not have any Defense Crests to defend with. A player must have a balance of Summon, Movement, Attack and Defense Crests. Trap and Magic Crests are only needed in any of a player's monsters have Special Abilities.