Cubitos Review - Push-Your-Luck Perfection

ah snap ha beat you again i'm getting so good at this a nine of spades gambit leading into a classic long staff defense a fine move oh gee cute boy i'm so glad that i found a real friend to play games with in this pandora tom i know we've known each other for a long time now weeks and you're my closest truest friend nice but there's something i need to tell you i'm not who i say i am i am in fact an alien and it's high time i revealed my true form space the final frontier this is who i am cool do you want to play another game of snap 2. sure uh maybe later um but i did bring this game from my home planet of quebec 5. it's it's a real storm and i can review it for the people at home yeah i mean do i get paid an appearance fee or too late for questions we're already filming slap bang in the middle of sheldon sit down's first ever fun month we've got a game that is pure fun do you want to roll some dice do you want to get more dice and roll them too and lastly do the words a quacks of quedlenberg push your luck combined with a quest for eldorado deck builder excite you if yes i am so sorry but also welcome to the club cubitos is a race game where the objective is simply to get your little animal all the way around this track and each turn of qubitos will essentially involve the same two phases rolling and moving perhaps the two terms that when combined rey's boardgamers collective hackles is the most but don't worry because through the magic of rules and components those two phases are bubbling with tactility decisions and hubris let's start by talking about the roll phase which has you taking a ladle full of dice nine to start with and rolling them into your active zone oh god these are awful how do you do it cute boy me i just roll with the punches go with the flow oh right yeah cool are these nice rigged broken no they're just a tiny little bit cursed only one side out of the six has results on them and the dark grey dice have only two sides with results on them the rest of the faces are completely blank which means after your first roll you are statistically and psychologically speaking likely to be dissatisfied but qubitos has a trick up its sleeve because yahtzee's style after every single role you can roll again pushing your luck to take another fistful and scatter them across the table fill your boots with these nasty nasty cubes but beware because if you roll nothing but blanks on a turn oh baby you are busted your roll phase is over pack up your copy of kubitos and get in the car please it's time for probability jail before entering your cell you must first discard all of those positive results you've been gathering over the round and slop them into the dumpster it's what you deserve for crimes against trying so busting is pretty bad a waste of an entire turn but the temptations of more more more will constantly get you onto its crumbling precipice but let's say for a moment that you were an upstanding citizen and you chose to actually play by qubitos pathetic worthless rules let's say that instead of pushing you chose to pass keeping the results that you've got so far and putting all that risk back where it belongs so you've rolled your dice you've done your pushing you haven't busted and you've made it to the run phase so what do you do with these dice why is your luck being pushed in the first place these two symbols appear often at the start movement and money movement is movement each dice showing a foot gives you one square of movement on the board and if you pass the finish line then you win nice and simple your movement might also cause you to end up landing on one of these bonus spaces but we'll talk about that a little bit later but what about the money well money is where things start to get exciting money is the path to getting yourself some more lovely lovely dice once everyone has finished moving their little meeple they get the chance to spend any circular money symbols on their dice to get new better dice that you can look forward to rolling in the near future but what do these exciting new dice do well for starters they've probably got more results on their little faces meaning that you're more likely to get a positive hit when you roll them meaning you're less likely to bust but also they've all got little special abilities as listed on their little dinky id cards over here on the cheap end a rock on will move back into your roll zone to shield the rest of your dice from busting with its 50 chance of a good result or maybe you'll be swayed by this rich dog he'll give you a hearty three money on this side and on this side he'll give you three of his stash of persistent money as well which can be spent at any time rather than during the round unfortunately once the dog has imparted this gift it will be incinerated but don't be sad because that persistent money might give you access to some of the more expensive stuff that's lurking at the bottom of cubito's briny blue box the dugout lets you roll extra dice not only giving you more positive results if they hit but also adding more dice to your pool hiking the chances of a successful roll rollersaurus is distressingly expensive but will give you massive amounts of movement if you hit that big dino face but it's only a one in six chance and reckless cheese hungers for push every single time you push without busting you get a movement hurtling you round the track his insatiable hunger for risk grows with every passing second anything anything to fill the void in his lactose-filled soul and last but not least we have cube boy and whenever you roll his face it means you have to give your opponent five british pounds if they win the game cute boy are you sure this is real chill out it's just from an expansion it looks kind of taped on it's just study production i think is that your third cereal bar i've got to keep my energy levels up all this reviewing is tiring oh of course you're gearing yourself up for the big performance uh yeah okay cool yeah you keep doing that so soon you're gathering a glittering lineup of these all-star dice they're all filling your hand and doing well but you've still got these gray ones coming up the works of their pathetic one in six chance of success and that's where all these spaces around the edge of the board come in to play peppered around the board are a smattering of spaces that'll net you a variety of spicy bonuses for money to spend on some big fancy dice or spaces that let you gain or lose dice giving you more tools to manipulate your hand into something that'll boost you towards the finish line and so that is the basic loop of cubitos rolling running and buying over and over and over again until someone wins and you'll probably then reset and play again because qubitos is a game that is frighteningly fun and in a worryingly direct way it's a game that is heaving with fun verbs roll push buy bust grab chuck and move everything here is so immediate that once that core loop is understood by everyone play is effectively simultaneous and it whips around the table worryingly quickly but there are a couple of neat tricks inside qubito's box that prevent a player that really understands the game from completely steamrolling everyone else firstly if you are lagging behind every one of these red lines is an extra dice that you can roll that is more luck to push as well as this and maybe more importantly if you do make a habit of busting it's not all that bad each failure puts you one up on a fan track each time you do it giving you monetary rewards and these permanent increases to your hand size as compensation but even with those safety buffers against runaway leaders the beating heart of kibitos is still a push or luck game which is the ultimate defense against a player who is getting a bit too cocky and what's more because when you're in the lead you don't get any bonus dice from these red little lines in between segments that means that you're gonna be pushing more than anyone else because even the most expensive of dice isn't gonna land on its best face every single turn which means that you're pushing more to try and stay in the lead leading to the greatest falls from grace this game has to offer you're also tacitly encouraged to push because of a rule i didn't explain when you choose to be done for a round anything you don't push with will kick around in your roll pile meaning that sometimes you're pushing for your current and next turn to be potentially better and if you fail or bust well everything gets to go into the bin so your next hand can be basically made out of whatever you want you can compose a hand of whatever dice that you've got kicking around and that's a word i kept using when describing this game to people composing or making a little lineup a roster of dice that you can then roll later on you're mixing up a cocktail of dice you're holding a fistful of chance but because positive results get zooped out of your pile the chance of busting on successive successes gets ever higher so the perfection that you're chasing might be a little too risky if you shoot for it and as such each turn you'll probably find yourself making these off-the-cuff probability calculations okay cube boy it is great having you here and all but can you do some actual reviewing seeing as i've done the appearance fee and all sure i don't want to cover well you could you could talk about the big thing i'm kind of tired honestly from all this reviewing but you had the cereal bars okay fine uh the big thing in kibito's is that there's loads more content in the box and that's pretty cool i was hoping we'd do that with with more more pizzas we put in a slow-motion component drop i think another channel already does that and then you can edit that in post so here is the late review turn around computers has a massive trick up its sleeve in the form of these four separate boards that you can play on and a practically infinite number of combinations of powers that you can imbue these little dice with there are seven different variants for eight types of dice shifting their powers into newer weirder more comboable forms but never in a way that's massively confusing between repeat plays the dice largely will have similar themes these shieldy boys will always protect you from busting in some way for example and rather than talk about the specific ins and outs of how all of these cards affect their respective dice i will give you the skinny in the manual there are a set number of different courses that you can try out and every single one lends the game a distinct flavor particular in my mind was the one where there was a mad scramble for fans at the start with deliberately risky roles because fans in this game were the key to victory so everyone stockpiled masses of them while staying completely stationary only to jet off at the last minute as the one player who chose not to pursue that tactic ambled towards the finish line and each one of these variants can snap the game in two like dry spaghetti each one keeping the experience nice and fresh one of my favorite things about playing this a few times in a row with the same group was watching this pre and post-game analysis of the combos on offer scanning through the possibilities and making assessments on what might work and then rambling about how it all shook out afterwards this however is also where my opinions on kibito start wobbling around a little bit i think this way of expanding the game's scope is fantastic it's adaptable and joyous but also some of these variants can make the game a little more sluggish and crunchy to play as players pick through the individual results of all of their dice especially true when you have the comparing combat mechanic that can appear quite often and alongside that i think that when you open the box and play that first scenario everything seems quite peppy and fresh and playing it a few times in a row and seeing these new variants can sometimes get players thinking that it's not quite the experience they signed up for personally i love this amount of content and i love the way that it was presented to me as dozens of variants of a theme all under the same roof in the same box but i can see how it's overwhelming when you've got a group that's maybe more attuned to the lower complexity end of the qubitos spectrum but here is where i stand i have played nine games of qubitos at the time of writing this review and i really want to play another one right now i look at all those different ways of playing and see something that's versatile as opposed to confused a box of magic nonsense that shifts its identity each time whilst maintaining a welcoming ridiculous core but the real question is should you buy this game when for a bit of luck and a dash more money you can get the two games that this shares its dna with instead the quest for el dorado is a race game with a deck building core and quacks of credlenburg is a push your luck extravaganza we've got reviews for both of those games and they are absolute classics in both my book and the collective shut up and sit down recommends book two is qubitos a freaky hybrid going to be a better box than these similar experiences so here is where i land if you want something that is replayable and consistent and solid then get el dorado if you want something more bombastic and ridiculous and party like then go for quacks of quedlenberg if you want something that sits in the middle that's potentially infinitely replayable really strange and a little bit fruity then qubitos is the box for you but it does cost considerably more than each of those games at least as far as i could find with my limited research don't get me wrong that might have made qubitos sound lesser to those games but i think it utterly stands shoulder to shoulder with them in its out of the box immediacy and fun but your group has got to be prepared for things to get a little more crunchy a little more difficult as the game goes on as compared to those other games where the core loop changes less but the solid molten hot core these dice incubators it may be less elegant but it is by no means less exciting i should also mention the last minor problem i have with this game which is that the little boxes you keep these dice in kind of cheap and a little nasty so i might get one of those cool fishing tackle boxes to replace them because i'm a nerd but why does that matter if all of this is a bit squiffy when you get to roll massive handfuls of these lovely chunky whoa cute boy have you been using these never seen those before in my life look are you done with the review yeah i was just wrapping it up now and shalom sit down recommends it yeah sure i'll put the badge up here and post ah at last okay thanks for watching this video uh you can like and you can subscribe and do all that stuff over here you probably don't care about that because you're probably thinking about how good cubitos is and you can reserve a copy by calling the number below right anyway uh i'm off back to my hometown of cubeville oh i thought you lived on quebec five sure whatever um look i'm gonna take this call is that all right yeah sure hi yeah yeah you gave it the recommended badge yeah let's say anything these days yeah yeah he'll say anything champagne crack it what a cool guy

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 114,086

Rating: 4.9404931 out of 5

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Tom Brewster, AEG, Alderac Entertainment Group, Cubitos

Id: jgbuqPn04Dk

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/UNO_LegacyTM]

There is something very off putting about this game for me, and I can't peg it down. Might just be the weird cheese man on the box cover.

[u/Master_of_Fail]

Once again, Tom is becoming more and more unhinged and I could not be happier about it.

[u/Asbestos101]

This was a very well concieved and put together video. Bravo.

I don't think the game is for me but I sure enjoyed learning about it anyway.

[u/sven8705]

Tom's ongoing descent into madness (outpacing Matt and Quinn's own descents) is a work of fractured genius.

[u/ODaly]

Surprised there was no mention of AEGs earlier game Automobiles. Buying up different colored cubes with additional and alternate effects to speed your progress around a track seems like a very closely related experience.

[u/davaca]

Tom is a treasure.

[u/jjremy]

It's interesting to me that he says Quacks is cheaper.

Here in Canada the price of Quacks has skyrocketed for some reason. Its ~$60. Cubitos is about $52.

I've been interested in Quacks, but the price was putting me off. I think I might grab this. I do love me some dice.

[u/Heifurbdjdjrnrbfke]

Wow, Quacks is my favourite game and I also love rolling dice. Looks right up my alley but the price is definitely a bit high. Would that be because of the dice?

[u/qwertytarr]

This might be the fastest I've bought a game off a SUSD recommendation. Once he said it was a combination of El Dorado and Quacks I looked it up on Amazon but waited for a mid-review turnaround. Once he said there was variable dice powers and boards I clicked buy.

Can't wait to try it out.