Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Easier to teach
High replayability
Low interaction
Scales well
Light strategy
Luck-sensitive
How it plays
How does it play?
Race through a carnival, replace ordinary die faces with strange powers, and build the best scoring dice before Rattlebones arrives.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Deck / Bag Building
Add new pieces during play to improve the cards, tokens, or dice drawn later.
Dice Rolling
Roll dice to introduce uncertainty into actions, production, movement, or resolution.
Modular Board
Build the play area from interchangeable sections that vary between games.
Catch the Leader
Use Catch the Leader as a recurring structure for player decisions and resolution.
Roll-and-Move
Roll dice or spin a dial to determine how far a piece moves.
Read the full game description
Rattlebones is a family-weight dice-building game set inside a mischievous carnival. Each player starts with ordinary dice and pawns moving around a modular ring of attractions. Landing on a space lets you replace one face of the die you just rolled with a custom face: gold, stars, points, trains, extra movement, or other powers that alter later turns. Every upgrade makes the dice less predictable in one sense and more personally useful in another. Rattlebones himself advances down the score track whenever his symbol appears, turning the game into a shared timer. Players balance immediate points against stronger future dice, use the monkey to copy lucrative faces, and race to score before the ringmaster reaches the end. The physical act of rebuilding dice gives the game a tactile identity without adding heavy rules.
