Four Twenty-One is a simple dice game which is very popular in Europe. The game is played with three six-sided dice and objective is to score most points after 10 rounds.
No Of Players: 2 or more players
Setup:
3 six-sided dice and a scoresheet
First Turn:
Roll one die to decide. Player rolling highest number goes first. In case of a tie re-roll.
Four Twenty-One Dice Game Play:
The first player rolls all 3 dice and tries to make highest ranked combination with it. First player has up to 3 rolls to make a desired combination. After each roll, player can set aside one or more dice and roll remaining dice. Player is also allowed to bring dice back for rolling which were set aside in previous roll(s). The combinations are ranked as per following sequence from highest to lowest
- The highest ranked combination is 4-2-1.
- Triples – All three dice with same number; 6-6-6 is ranked highest and 1-1-1 is lowest.
- Doubles – Two dice with same number. Third dice is also used in ranking of the combinations. Combinations are ranked in descending order from 6-6-5, 6-6-4… to ….1-1-3, 1-1-2.
- Unmatched – All dice numbers are different. 6-5-4 is ranked highest and 3-2-1 is lowest.
Subsequent players take turn clockwise to roll their dice and make a combination ranked higher than the first player. Subsequent players can only roll up to as many times as the first player rolled. For ex, if the first player rolled only once to get his/her desired combination, then all subsequent players can only roll one time.
The player who scores highest at the end of the round gets one point for the round. If a player rolls 4-2-1 in the very first roll, then he/she gets 2 additional points.
The game continues for 10 rounds and the player with highest overall score at the end of the last round wins the game.