How To Play 12 Dice of Christmas

The holiday season is all about coming together with friends and family and what better way of doing that than playing games like 12 Dice of Christmas? We love playing dice at this time of year as games are often quick to play so we can still play even though we are busy. You can see our love a dice games as this one joins games like Santa’s Sleigh, Grinch Dice, Whacky Putt Christmas and our 12 Days of Christmas (very different from this one).

The 12 Dice of Christmas is a fast and easy but engaging and players of all ages will love it. Let’s get into how to play, the rules, what you need and how to win.

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What you Need for 12 Dice of Christmas

First, this is a game that you can buy. It comes with holiday red dice and a pad of scoresheets. You can get your copy here; Canadians here.

With that said, I think you can play without the commercial one. (I don’t really have the room for one more dice collection. Plus the Canadian cost that is more than 5 times the price of the American one plus shipping! That’s just out of my budget.) So, we crated our own scoresheet that you can get in the free Fun Library (see the black box to get your password).

So what do you need? You need 12 dice and a score sheet with a pen.

Playing 12 Dice of Christmas

To start, you need to know that the object of the game is to deliver all 12 of your presents. Now that you know that, the youngest player rolls all of the dice. She then gets to pick one of them to take. She can now score that dice and cross off that number on her scoresheet or she can keep it to use later.

Next, the player to her left gets to pick a dice. He can either score with it or keep it for later. You can only score when it is your turn. Any dice that are used to score with are set aside for later. The player to his left now chooses a dice. When the last player choose a dice, the first player gets to choose again.

With her second dice she can choose to either score that dice’s number or add it to any of the dice she has in her pile. For example, if she has a 6 in her pile and picks up a 5, she could either cross off the 6, he 5 or the 11. You can add as many dice together as you have to reach number. For example if you have a 1, 2, 3 and 4 you could add them together and cross off your 10.

When all the dice have been collected, the round is over. All the dice are gathered and the player with the highest un-crossed off number gets to roll and choose first. If there are more than one player with the highest number un-crossed, it’s a tie. Look at the second highest until someone has the highest. For example, if two players still have their 12 open, then look at the 11, if they both still have 11 open, look at 10.

Rounds continue like this until someone crosses off all their numbers.

Making it Harder

To make the game a little bit more challenging, have the players have to use the dice that they pick up to score with. For example, if a player has a 2 and 4 saved and they pick up a 3, they can only cross off the 3 or 5 or 7 or 2. They cannot cross off either the 2, 4 or 6.

Winning 12 Dice of Christmas

The first player to cross off all their numbers, or is the first to deliver all of their presents, is the winner.

All Wrapped Up

The 12 Dice of Christmas game is a fast and easy. It’s a great game when you want a relaxing game that is engaging and fun.

Don’t forget to get your free score sheet in the Fun Library. Or you can buy your copy of 12 Dice of Christmas here; Canadians, here.

For more holiday fun check out our Big List of holiday game here that includes our Whacky Putt Christmas, Christmas Shenanigans card game and Christmas Crazy 8s. Be sure to visit our Family Game Shelf shop for tons of fun with games like Christmas 5 Seconds, Christmas Word Hunter and so many more!