I’m continuing my slow walk through the alphabet, this time looking at a few favorite games that start with the letter C.
Cubitos
Cubitos is a race game where players are building up a pool of dice with special abilities. It is very similar to a deck-building game, but with dice. Each round, players will get a selection of dice and roll them. With each roll, they set aside the ones showing a symbol into their active area, and then decide wether or not to roll again. The dice have several blank sides, so there’s a risk that a subsequent reroll won’t have any active symbols. Once the player has three active dice on their active area, if they choose to reroll and come up with all blanks, they’ll bust. In turn order, players activate their dice to run around a track and purchase new dice. Whoever can cross the finish first will win.
Cubitos is just a fun dice-chucking and push-your-luck style game. I love rolling the handful of tiny dice each round, hoping that they don’t all come up blank. And once I have a number of great symbols ready to use but still several dice that I could keep rolling, I love making that agonizing decision about whether to roll again or do the smart thing and stop. It’s usually a toss-up which one I’ll choose! I also like that you can play this game so that you putz around for a little while on the racecourse, building up your dice pool and collecting rewards while other players pull ahead, but you can still pull out a win if you know the right moment to change strategy to get all the movement you can.
Circadians: First Light
Circadians: First Light is a dice worker placement game where players are building up an outpost on a distant planet. Each turn they’ll roll a pool of dice and plan where they’d like to use them. Then in turn order, players activate their dice to add capacity to their garage or farms, explore the surface for resources, build artifacts, or make inroads with local alien representatives. Whoever can balance all of these to gain the most points will win.
I really enjoy how all of the mechanisms come together in Circadians. Each round you have up to five dice that you roll, and then you plan out where you want to use those dice on your home board in secret. Often you’ll want to keep some dice back to use in your farms to get resources, but you also have to try to guess what your opponents will do and in what order so you can get to the spaces you want to claim first. However, even if someone takes the spot you wanted, there are often enough other choices that you can make something work.
Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure (and all of the Clank! family)
Clank! is a family of games where you use deck-building to move around a board to explore a dungeon, collect treasures and claim an artifact before getting out. Throughout the game your character makes clank as they clatter around the dungeon, which can make you vulnerable to the dragon’s attack. Whoever can get an artifact and get above ground with the best loot will win.
I love the press-your-luck aspect of Clank, coupled with the deck-building, which is one of my favorite game mechanisms. I don’t usually go into each game with much of a strategy, but always look to add fun-looking cards to my deck. Sometimes I go for the “clank strategy” where I get cards that generate a lot of clank, but then I need to find ways to mitigate that extra clank … and if I don’t, I regret it. But even when my character doesn’t make it out of the dungeon, I’m guaranteed to have fun.
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What are your favorite games that start with the letter “C”? Or is there one from my list that you love or are hoping to try? Let me know in the comments!