Originally published on Board Game Geek.

The core of Fill or Bust is pushing your luck with 6 dice. The active player rolls the dice, sets aside at least one die that scores points and decides whether to roll the remaining dice. If the player ever rolls dice that don’t score points, they Bust. If they score all 6 dice, they Fill. As long as the player doesn’t bust, they score their dice thusly:

• Each 1 is worth 100.
• Each 5 is worth 50.
• Three 1s (rolled at once) are worth 1000.
• Three of any other number (rolled at the same time) are worth 100 times the number on the die.
• A run of 1-6 in the first roll is worth 1500.

You might be familiar with this system from Farkle or (less likely) Bupkis. Honestly, those games are boring after a few rounds. It’s clear there is a breakeven point around 2 remaining dice. If you have 3 dice scored, there’s a good chance you won’t bust if you roll again. If you are down to your last die, there’s no reason to risk a 1 in 3 chance of going bust for a measly 50 or 100 points. Most variations (and there are so, so many) don’t really help because they just add more ways to score, such as 4- and 5-of-a-kind, that come earlier in a turn.

Fill or Bust partially solves the problem by adding a deck of cards. Most of the cards give a bonus (300, 400 or 500) for filling. That way there is a bigger reward for taking a risk to roll 1-2 dice. Other cards change the game by requiring the player to keep going until they fill or bust, but offer a bigger reward for success. Arguably the best card in the game (slightly confusingly called “Must Bust”) allows players to keep their score even after busting. (Indeed, they cannot stop rolling until they bust, according to the name of the card.) Another card gives the player an option to attempt “Vengeance”, which means the player with the highest score will lose 2500 if the active player fills.

Cards also give the game texture. Bonus cards give players a fairly mundane push-your-luck game. When a Double Trouble card, which doubles the score if a player fills twice, comes up, the mood changes. How far will they get? Often Double Trouble ends in a quick bust. Sometimes it goes down to a single die for the second fill. And very occasionally, it results in a monster score. We still talk about the time my brother scored two Double Troubles in the same game. It’s even fun (for everyone else) when the person who is about to win draws No Dice, which means they lose their turn which gives everyone else a chance to catch up.

At its best, Fill or Bust creates stories out of the random roll of the dice. Someone down on their luck makes good by plugging away turn after turn. A point leader who survives one vengeance attempt after another. The gambler who puts thousands of points on the line to draw another card, gets a good card and goes bust on the very next roll. It’s a game my family has gone back to again and again.

Now Fill or Bust is not without flaws. The Bonus cards are not enough to entice people to risk banked points when there’s only one or two dice left. Vengeance cards make the game drag on. Double Trouble is almost always a lot of rolling to end up with nothing. There are probably too many No Dice cards in the mix. Most of the card types take all the push-your-luck decisions away from players. While there is no hard limit to the number of players, the time between turns gets longer and longer with more players. Playing to the 10k target often takes longer than people are interested in playing.

And yet, Fill or Bust remains a family favorite because it’s a lightweight, easy-going and accessible way to spend time with each other.