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Review. Cubitos
First Aid for Acute Dice Deficiency
Simple board games used to go like this: you roll a die and move to a space where something happens. Whoever reaches the goal first wins. John D. Clair turns this classic and basic idea into a versatile and addictive little game.
By MAREN HOFFMANN
The cover features a Swiss cheese man with hairy legs and leather pants. The components don‘t fit into the included storage boxes. The rules are unnecessarily complicated. From the be-
ginning, it‘s clear the team behind Cubitos decided to throw up a few hurdles to deter you before you can get to the fun of playing. Those who actually make it past these challenges will then be greeted by a series of sloppy jokes: “Cat Tastro- phy,“ “Ledercheesen,“ “Ba- hama Llama.“ When they were naming the dice, the
designers apparently went with whatever came to mind.
The truth is that the game is quite at- tractive, it just doesn‘t show it right away. This is a fine dice builder with a central push-your-luck element that works, even if you go in with reservations about games where you push your luck. It‘s also a good example of why it makes sense to
print author names prominently on boxes. Those who know John D. Clair as a mas- ter of the let‘s-play-one-more-time genre won‘t be put off by a nasty cheese man with leg hair. Clair penned, for example, the dice game Space Base, (rightly con- sidered the better Machi Koro), the tac- tile and mechanically sophisticated Ecos – The First Continent, and Mystic Vale, which, for the first time, used card sleeves as an innovative game mechanic, not as annoying nerdy accessories.
At its core, Cubitos is a simple race game. Up to four players try to get their figure from start to finish, as quickly as possible, on one of four race tracks. On the way, you can move to special loca- tions that offer advantages. How far you can move is determined by your own dice. At the beginning, they‘re pretty lame. Ev- eryone starts with just two dark and sev- en light gray dice that have many empty sides. To improve your own dice pool, you have to buy more attractive cubes – there are ten of each in eight colors. What they can do and what they cost is determined by cards (seven for each color), which specify the respective properties of that
die color for the game. After a long night of gaming with tactical decks of cards, anyone who suffers from acute dice roll- ing deficiency will be well served by Cu- bitos: there are many, many colorful dice with many, many abilities.
If you roll feet, you move ahead. If you roll money, you can buy new dice. The better ones have special abilities, which can be used to, for example, get rid of weaker dice, use more dice or activate ad- ditional movement. The game is modular, which increases the replayability. In one game, the lederhosen-wearing cheese man may be called „Cheese Boy“ and generate more movement. In another, he may ensure that you get to roll more dice. The tracks are also variable.
In each round, you roll the dice to see what you have and are allowed to do. If the dice show symbols, they go into the action area of your tableau. If the top face is blank, then you may roll again, but don‘t get cocky: if no dice roll a symbol,
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Photos: Becker, Hoffmann / Illustrations: Pegasus Spiele