Dirt & Dust is a rally car racing game where you use actions on cards, activated by your dice, to maneuver your car on the track to gain points. You can add cards to your deck and eventually play them out to perform their actions. Dirt & Dust is published by Albi, who also recently published Garden Lake and Severton. Dirt & Dust is designed by Petr Čáslava, plays in 60-90 minutes, and is for 1-4 players. The game is more mechanics driven and requires some energy to learn and understand the rules of the game.

What’s in the Box?

• 1 Stage Board
• 10 red Boost dice
• 1 popularity die
• 20 passive Effect tokens
• 5 decks of Stage cards
• 1 deck of trial stage cards (5 cards)
• 9 base game racing team decks (each containing 8 cards)
• 9 Extended game racing team decks ( each containing 8 cards)
• 1 Ghost Driver card for solo game mode
• 4 Racing Team boards
• 4 Sets of 3 Player dice
• 4 Player boards
• 4 Sets of 3 black Hazard dice
• 4 Sets of 7 Permanent Damage tokens
• 4 Car figures
• 4 Speed point markers
• 4 Popularity point markers
• 4 Damage markers
• 4 Sets of 10 Navigator tokens
• 4 Decks of Driver cards (each containing 5 cards)
• 4 Starter Racing Team decks (each containing 5 cards)
• 4 Player Aids cards

How’s it Play?

This is a deck building rally racing card game where you place out cards on your player board that slowly move from left to right, and your dice you roll activates those cards. Players perform their turns at the same time over a game that is 10 rounds long on one of 5 different stages. 

Overall this is NOT like other deck building games, so you will be doing some steps that are not like other games as far as your own deck goes. Each player has 10 cards to start the game with. This consists of 5 unique cards according to who you choose as your driver and 5 standard cards that everyone has. You shuffle these, and start with 5 cards in your hand.

You have a player board that tracks your position on the track, your resources which are mainly wrenches and traction, and damage, which is tracked by a marker and by flipping over damage tokens. You also have access to damage dice to gain more traction, but the damage dice are combined with your other dice and might cause you problems later on in the game. Traction can be used to manipulate your location on the track so you can gain speed, which are points. 

You will be able to buy and gain new cards that are more powerful than your starting cards. They can give or take away points depending on the card, but also give you powerful actions.

At the beginning of your turn you roll your 3 dice and assign them to the matching locations on slots on your player board. Wrenches can be used to adjust the value of your dice or used to help purchase cards. The player with the most popularity gains an extra die to use to roll as well.

Next, players choose out of the following 5 actions to perform in any order. 

1. Play a card.

Place a card from your hand onto a slot on your player board. These cards will be activated with another action if you have a die above it. Cards move round to round sliding to the right, so cards may be activated again next round as they move right on the conveyor belt.

2. Resolve an active card.

You move a die from above the card down below it and perform the action on the card. These actions might give you resources, manipulate your location on the track, or other special actions to eventually help you gain points.

3. Purchase a new racing team card.

You can use your wrenches to pay for a card laid out, and the new card goes into your discard pile. Whenever your draw deck is empty, you shuffle your discard deck and use them again with a hand of 5 cards. 

4. Map out a stage.

There are stages placed out, and you spend traction shown on the top left to place a navigator token onto any card. Cards score one at the time at the end of each round with whoever has a navigator token on it. When placing your navigator token on a card, you also immediately take the action shown, which moves your car on your player board. 

5. Perform a special action.

You can spend traction if you are decelerating to adjust your position on the track. You can spend wrenches to adjust your dice values to activate different cards. Passive effects in the game can be activated, they are indicated by the yellow helmet icon. You can take a hazard die to gain 2 traction. 

Stage Evaluation Phase – At the end of a round, you perform the stage evaluation where you score for whoever has a navigator token on the current stage card. Your score is determined by your location on your player board. 

Preparation phase – Everyone moves the cards on their player board one step to the right. You may discard any number of cards in your hand or keep any you would like to keep. Then draw back up to 5 cards. 

After 10 rounds, the player with the most cards wins the game.

The Verdict

Overall Dirt & Dust is a very awesome racing game, separate from all other racing games out there. 

You roll dice to assign them to your player board, and this is done simultaneously with all players doing this at the same time to help minimize long play time. You play cards from your hand to expand your tableau actions. Your cards are active from your dice, so the location does matter. Actions consists of gaining resources, moving your car on the track to place yourself in a better spot for points, and other abilities. 

You have access to buy new cards, you can gain extra dice, or spend resources to change values on your dice. At the end of each round, cards shift to the right making planning and timing important. You gain points for using traction to complete cards and gaining points for where you are on the track. 

Dirt & Dust is different for each player, because you have 5 cards that are different from all others. Certain drivers focus on something special over others like popularity, cycling through your cards faster, or moving your car on the track easier. Turns are fast, and players do their actions all at the same time. This makes a 3 hour game into a 1 hour game. The rules are explained well, although there is some complexity in the game and rules. 

There is a great mix of mechanics with adding in new cards to do different actions. You need to balance scoring points with short term goals versus long term deck building to make it difficult to choose between different good choices. You also need to optimize the way you want to score points and understand the multiple ways you can do that.

We have enjoyed the spin of mechanics to play a racing game, which is different from all others. Time will tell if the replayability and short time to play a game continues to dazzle.

Images via Albi

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