Nine Colour Dice Games You Can Play Tonight

Colour dice strip away the arithmetic of pips and leave pure pattern, which makes them ideal for young players, big groups and anything you want readable on camera. Here are nine rulesets that need nothing except this page.

Colour Call. Everyone names a colour, then roll six dice. Score one point per die showing your colour. First to fifteen wins. Trivially simple, and a good way to demonstrate that the expected score is exactly one per round no matter which colour you pick.

Rainbow Race. Roll five dice a turn. You are collecting one of each of the six colours; keep any new colour, reroll the rest. Fewest turns to a full rainbow wins. This is the coupon collector problem in party form, and it usually takes about three turns.

Push Six. Roll one die repeatedly and bank a point for each roll, but if you repeat the colour you just rolled you lose everything unbanked. Stop whenever you like. The optimal stopping point is further out than instinct suggests, which is what makes it fun.

Match Two. Roll four dice. Score three points for a pair, eight for a triple, twenty for four of a kind. With four dice a pair or better shows up about 72% of the time, so scores climb steadily and nobody feels frozen out.

Traffic Lights. Only red, yellow and green count. Roll three dice; red loses a point, yellow does nothing, green gains one. Play ten rounds. A gentle introduction to expected value for kids, because the answer is exactly zero.

Colour Bidding. Before the roll, each player secretly bids how many dice out of ten will show their chosen colour. Closest without going over takes the round. The correct bid is one or two, and watching people talk themselves into four is the entertainment.

Elimination. Everyone picks a distinct colour. Roll one die per round; whoever owns that colour is out. Last player standing wins. Brutal, fast, and perfect for choosing who does the washing up.

Streak Hunt. Roll one die at a time and count how long you can keep any colour repeating. Longest run in ten minutes wins. The stats panel on the roller tracks your longest streak automatically.

Palette. Roll twelve dice and score by the shape of the result: five points if all six colours appear, ten if exactly three colours appear, fifteen if two colours split the roll evenly. Rewarding the unlikely shapes rather than the common ones keeps every roll interesting.

All nine work with the counter under the dice, which is why it is there: pick a rule, roll, tap plus or minus, keep playing.