Game: Airships
Game: Airships

A dice game played by most gamblers anywhere where only a small flat area is needed. It uses four white dice and one black die, which have the following symbols: one spot, two spots, three spots, four spots, V, and X. On the black die, the one spot is replaced with a star and anchor. The object is reach 1000 points over a succession of rounds, each of which is a single 'airship trip'.

Points are scored as follows:

a single V =5 points
two Vs =10 points
three Vs =25 points
four Vs =50 points
five Vs =500 points
a single X =10 points
two Xs =20 points
three Xs =50 points
four Xs =100 points
five Xs =1000 points
three 1-spots =1 points
four 1-spots =2 points
five 1-spots =5 points
three 2-spots =2 points
four 2-spots =4 points
five 2-spots =10 points
three 3-spots =3 points
four 3-spots =6 points
five 3-spots =15 points
three 4-spots =4 points
four 4-spots =8 points
five 4-spots =20 points

The black Star-and-Anchor is a "wild card" and can be changed to any value, i.e. if a player rolls two 3-spots, a 1-spot, a 2-spot, and a Star-and-Anchor, then they can change the Star-and-Anchor to a 3-spot and score 3 points.

In one round, a player in turn rolls all five dice. If no combination of dice have any scoring value, he has lost that round. If any dice score, he has the option of either keeping his score, or taking all non-scoring dice and rolling again with those (setting aside those dice that scored). He can keep doing this as long as he turns up some scoring dice each time, but if he ever rolls no scoring dice, then he loses the entire value accumulated for the round. If he has scored with all five dice, then he must reroll all five again.

For the first round, all players must score a minimum of 30 points or be dropped from the game. This represents the initial investment and loan that must be repaid on a first airship trip.

Betting is by initial ante and "buying" new rounds: if a player rolls no scoring dice and would thus lose some accumulated value, they may pay a fixed amount per die to reroll. Gamblers often also bet on the chances that someone will reach a certain amount in a round. Airships is a highly random game.

Back to Section 3.5