How to play Mafia Dice

Mafia Dice is played with five dice per player and works best for three to five players. No pen, no score sheet: all you need is enough dice and a table. The goal is to be the first to get rid of all your dice.

On your turn you roll all the dice in front of you in one throw. Then you tidy up:

• Sixes are passed on to the player on your left.
• Ones go to the middle of the table and are out of the game.
• The rest you keep until your next turn.

Then it is the next player's turn. The dice wander around the table: what you pass on with a six may come back to you later.

The first player to get rid of their last die wins, and the game ends on the spot. Note that you only shed dice on your own rolls, so you hope for ones and sixes, and hope not to inherit too much from the neighbour on your right.

Mafia Dice has few fixed rules beyond the core, and some common house rules:

• Play several rounds and give one point per win, turning it into a small tournament.
• Flip the game: the last player holding dice loses and has to clear the table, for example.
• Start with three dice each for faster rounds.

If you like games where dice move around the table, try Aces to the Centre, a close relative with twists of its own.

No, the game is pure luck, and that is exactly why it works so well as a filler. Anyone can win, nobody has to think, and a round rarely takes more than fifteen minutes. For a quick game with a bit more to calculate, Fifty is a good alternative.