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The creator of Cubitos is strongly associated with the AEG publishing house and is responsible, among others, for the very good Ecos (his review will also appear) and kickstarter hits such as Edge of Darkness or recently Dead Reckoning . I still hope that the latter title will also reach us in the Polish language version. This year, thanks to the Portal publishing house, Mystic Vale in the Big Box version by the same author has also appeared on the market . I didn’t play, but I heard mixed opinions – from complete boredom to delight. I do not rule out that I will pay attention to it someday, although the mechanics of “creating” cards is also in DR, which I would much more like to put on the table.
Laps
I must admit that I have never been a fan of watching racing on TV. I associate them with a rather static and long transmission, from which the most interesting moments could be easily stuffed into Teleexpress . Track and field races were much more interesting to watch, mainly by consolidating them into a short form. And it is to such a crazy cross-country race that I would compare this game. Passed through the curved mirror and in the world made up of cubes. Can anyone really afford to pass by this indifferently?
Strength lies in simplicity
The concept of racing games is as old as the world. Even those slightly despised by players, but still ultra-popular Chinese or Monopoly, boiled down to being the first in a certain place. What such games usually have in common is also a lot of randomness, and so is Cubitos . This is her real festival. Clair made something that usually bothers and discourages us to make his production the greatest asset. In fact, the gameplay here mainly consists of constantly throwing and rolling dice, which, however, was given in such a way that it is difficult to break away from it. A model example of the fact that even the simplest ideas given in the right way can give a lot of satisfaction.
The power of cubes
The box contains: a whole lot of colorful dice, 2 double-sided boards, player boards, 56 cards, player pieces and some tokens. An additional element are foldable dice feeders. It’s hard to stick to the performance; it is really solid and colorful. It is worth mentioning that the dice are custom with different symbols on the sides and quite small, because you can throw many at once.
What does it cube with?
The gameplay in Cubitos done by an unspecified number of turns in advance, until someone reaches the finish line on the board (you can also play more laps). The core of the game is throwing dice and the mechanics of push your luck .
On the sides there are:
– movement symbols,
– currency needed to buy new dice,
– skill symbols related to these cards (from a simple move of x fields, to more fancy things like collecting bonuses from adjacent fields),
– empty fields (from 3 to 5).
At the beginning of the turn, each player (it can and should be done simultaneously) rolls his dice and moves those with a value to the active zone on his board, the rest can be rerolled.
The key is that we can do it with impunity only as long as there are at most 2 cubes in our zone. Otherwise, if all discarded walls are empty, we deal with “busting” (I am curious about the Polish term – defeat? Blamaż?). Then we have to discard all our active dice, in addition, we can also do it with those we threw (it may be useful, because the initial ones are classic clogs). We will not move on the board this turn, but will move on the support track, which may result in an increased number of throwing dice if this happens multiple times.
Is it worth it?
It is played quickly and smoothly. A large number of skill cards and dice combined with four different tracks and a very large random factor result in virtually endless replayability. In my opinion, this is by far the best and most interesting racing game on the market. I give me what I was looking for and unfortunately I did not find in Rallyman – a large dose of emotions and satisfaction. Probably more than one review will say that it is a “hard drive” and it is indeed so. At the same time, it is a very well thought-out product with a lot of tactics, and I did not mention, for example, the bonuses for stopping on a certain field or the method of supporting players who are at the right distance behind the leader, similar to that of the Charlatans .
