How To Play Rallyman Dirt

Rallyman Dirt is a rally racing game. What you need to know about that is that it’s not like Nascar or F1 where you have all the cars on the track at the same time. This is still about going the fastest, but blocking people and passing isn’t a part of what you’re doing.

Plan Your Route

On your turn you plan out your route. This means that you lay out your dice from gears 1 through 6 and two for coasting. You decide how many you want to use to create your route. You probably won’t use all of them because you need to hit certain speeds at certain corners otherwise you go out of control. And you still might go out of control because once you plan out your route you have a choice on how to roll your dice.

Rolling Your Dice

You either roll all out or you can roll a bit more safely and strategically. Why might you not want to do the safer option? Well, because you get a bonus if you go all out. When you go all out you grab all the dice from your route and roll them all at once. If you get three (or more) hazard symbols you’re going to lose control. So you plan back out your route, figure out where you lose control and draw negative things, which might be using fewer dice. But you get negative seconds for going all out.

Or you can roll more safely. That involves rolling one die at a time. So you decide when you want to stop and that means that you can stop before it goes out of control, but if you get two hazards early, you might still choose to push yourself further so that you can get a higher speed, because of your time, which I’ll talk about next.

Your Time

After you roll your dice, you get your time. This time card is going to give you a time that you add together at the end of the race. As well as it lets you know what gear you finished in. The faster you go, the shorter the time. In fact, if you’re in sixth gear, at the end, and you go all out with five dice, you get a 10 second card, for sixth gear, and negative five seconds for going all out.

Each gear is going to give you a different amount of time. But if you lose control, they are all (kind of) the same. If you lose control you flip over the card, from the gear you were in, and you get one minute added to your time. And then you draw out some tokens that might have negative effects.

Game Structure

The structure of the game is pretty unique. If you are the first player, you go twice in a row. That means that you should be far enough down the track that other people won’t catch you. Then the second player goes, but they go once. If you play with more than two people, turn order then goes back to the first player and then the second player before the third player. This is so everyone stays evenly spaced on the track.

You also can play a single race. But that generally puts the leader at a disadvantage. They go first to set the track, basically, and that means that their coasting dice are riskier than other players. So often you play a rally in several stages. Whomever has the fastest overall time at the end of a stage is the leader for the next stage and gets the riskier dice. This helps balance a couple of things. First it means you are less likely to get a runaway leader. But it also is meant to simulate how the first driver on a course won’t know it as well.

What Doesn’t Work

So, I think there are a couple of elements that might be a bit tricky for some players. First off the turn order is weird. It’s not a massive negative, but it’s an interesting thing to explain. I feel like it works best when I explain what rally racing is. Otherwise people thing racing, everyone is on the track at once. Nope, that’s not how this is going to work, and players need to understand that to some extent. It also means in a higher player count game, someone might be about finishing a leg of the rally by the time the last player is starting.

The dice are also a bit tricky to teach. Not too bad once you get into it, but there is a bit that needs to make sense about plotting out your path and seeing how far you go and how much you want to push your luck. And also the difference between the dice, or how you want to calculate the odds that you’ll crash or not.

What Works

Firstly, the push your luck works really well. I love to grab that handful of dice, probably five or six, and roll it and push my luck to get those negative seconds. Does it workout all the time, most certainly not. But I really like that element of the game because that’s where you get that high speed feel to the game.

I also really like how you need to plan out your movement. You know what the whole course looks like, and you know the speeds you want to hit. You want to go as fast as you can and as far as you can. But sometimes you need to think about how you can slam it into the corner, do you use the brakes to slow down faster? Of course, slamming on your brakes gives you more of a chance to lose control. It is important to figure out that rhythm for the track that is built.

The timing is another area that I like. I like how if you go out of control on a lower gear, it’s less bad. Sure it’s more time, but you draw out fewer potentially bad tokens. But even if you go far, ending in first gear as compared to even third gear is a difference of twenty seconds. So you need to play around with what gear you want to end up in, how far you want to go, and how it sets you up for future corners.

Who is Rallyman Dirt For?

Firstly, I think that people who like racing games will enjoy this game. But along with that, you can’t just like racing games, you need to enjoy push your luck. Yes, you might just be able to play it safe and get around without crashing. But if someone is pushing their luck and does that, they will have destroyed you with their negative seconds. So you need to be at least somewhat comfortable with that.

My Final Thoughts on Rallyman Dirt

I really enjoy this game. I want to quick talk about the BGA implementation of this. It’s great, with the caveat of it’s great on the computer. On a phone selecting which late you want to be in or if you want to be drifting when you can versus just driving hard into the corner, that’s hard to get clicked. But that’s only an issue with the game online and only on your phone.

In person the game is great as well. I do think that there are elements of it that are maybe slightly better online. Especially in a higher player count game, you might be sitting there for a little bit. But to race a whole rally, let’s say three games in a night, and determine the champion, that is a ton of fun. And Rallyman Dirt, while it gives you a lot of fun challenge with dealing with corners and other hazards, is really a beer and pretzels game. By that I mean you want to push your luck, you want to roll a big handful of dice and you want to see what happens.

My Grade: A
Strategy Grade: C
Lucky Grade: A

So I switched up my grading just a little bit. I am going from gamer and casual. While I like those metrics, not all people steeped in the hobby love heavy strategy games. Likewise, people who are more casually in the hobby might like strategy a lot. So I think that strategy and luck scores are better to let you know if it’s a game for you.

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100 through 91
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50 through 41

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 40 through 31

40. Cthulhu: Death May Die

• Published by CMON in 2019
• Defeat a scenario and an Elder God before you are driven insane

Cthulhu: Death May Die is one of those great beer and pretzels games. Meaning that it’s pretty straightforward but mainly just a fun time. Who doesn’t like sitting around chucking a handful of dice, hoping you don’t go insane, and probably dying to whatever great old one shows up. The game gives you some story as well, but the biggest story elements are when you get that amazing roll right before you go insane, or when you can’t quite make it.

Buy Cthulhu: Death May Die

39. burncycle

• Published by Chip Theory Games in 2022
• The robots are on the run, can you sneak around and infiltrate the evil human corporations?

I love the theme on burncycle. There are games out there were the robots or something is taking over and the humans have to stop them. Here it’s the robots who are sneaking around and having to infiltrate. And I really enjoy how the system works. I like how you program out your actions and that chain of actions you can take degrades over time. So you need to balance changing it up to just wiping it. But if you wipe it, that pushes it closer to the corporation winning.

Buy burncyle

38. Sonora

• Published by Pandasaurus Games in 2020
• Flick your disk and score in combo-tastic ways

This is a roll and write game where instead of rolling you are flicking disks around. That is a fun little twist on a standard roll and write. And then your sheet where you are filling things in, it’s combo city. You work in one area and you almost always are getting a bonus for another area. And as you get further into the game the more you can stack those bonuses and chain into more bonuses. Yes, this game has luck with the flicking and you might be knocked out of where you want to be, but it’s good chaos and combo fun.

Out Of Stock

37. Comic Hunters

• Published by Spin Master ltd, Arcane Wonders, and Bucaneiros Jogos in 2020 and 2024
• Can you build out the most interesting and influential comic collection

Comic Hunters is a unique game in that it gives you a number of things to do, but it manages to use so many different ways of drafting. That is one of the coolest parts of the game, along with the fact that it’s all Marvel comic covers and characters. But you score for collecting different characters, a lot of a character, first appearances, first issues, epic fights or even more. And it’s a good game to teach as well because you teach how you get comics into your collection and then when each draft comes up you teach it then and only then.

Buy Comic Hunters

36. Sushi Go Party!

• Published by Gamewright in 2016
• Draft the tastiest collection of sushi and other yummy foods to score points

Another drafting game, but Sushi Go Party just does standard drafting. And I like how it works in this one. The variety in the game isn’t from the drafting but how everything scores. Some things like dumplings want you to get as many as you can, or then there is tofu where you want two, no more. And in Sushi Go Party you can really change up the different combinations of foods so that the drafting experience is different each round.

Buy Sushi Go Party!

35. Trek 12: Himalaya

• Published by Pandasaurus in 2020
• Climb mountains as you create sets and runs of numbers in different ways

This game might feel like a pretty standard roll and write game. The idea of creating a set or a run based off of what is rolled, that isn’t that odd. But how you get to your numbers is where the fun puzzle of the game comes in. You might add the numbers together on both dice, you might pick the lower number, etc. But you only pick each of those ways to get the number a limited number of times. So you need to be smart how you manipulate the dice and build out your mountain.

Buy Trek 12.

34. Marvel Zombies: A Zombicide Game

• Published by CMON in 2023
• Fight as zombies and take a bite of Marvels biggest heroes.

Based on a comic run, Marvel Zombies has you play as the zombie heroes who have been turned. You try and complete objectives before SHIELD and the other heroes can take you out. Or you can flip the table and play as heroes against zombies, the choice is yours. This is another great beer and pretzels game. You ride that edge of trying to push your hunger up so you can roll more dice, but not get too hungry so that you become a mindless zombie for a little bit just caring about getting brains.

Buy Marvel Zombies.

33. The Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw

• Published by City of Games in 2022
• Can you rescue the most cats and score the most points in this roll and write style game?

This is the better version of Isle of Cats. I enjoy Isle of Cats and I know there is a duel version coming out which might make it better again. But the Explore and draw version is just so much fun. I especially enjoy the method in which you fill out your boat. There are columns of cards, some with more cats and some with more scoring objectives. You decide which column to use, but if you take too many cats, sure you get some points, but you miss on the scoring bonuses. If you just grab scoring, well, not enough cats and you won’t score enough points. It’s an easy roll and write to learn with fun complexity.

Buy The Isle of Cats Explore and Draw

32. Sleeping Gods

• Published by Red Raven Games in 2021
• Explore a mysterious new lands, find totems and try and wake the gods.

This is an amazing sandbox game of exploring a huge world, finding out the mysteries of the world, all while trying to find totems and get back to your own world. I love how this game gives you a whole crew to play with, but each crew member is part of the ship moving around. So there are unique things people can do, but you decide and build out so much of that. And the artwork and story are just great for this game. I want to play the sequel and the small version soon as well.

Sleeping Gods is sold out, but you can get Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies here.

31. The Great Split

• Published by Horrible Guild in 2022
• Divide up riches and try and end the game with the best collection

I Split – You Choose is a mechanism I didn’t know that I’d love so much as I do. And The Great Split is just an I Split – You Choose game. You get a hand of cards that have different things like books, artwork, money, and you need to decide how to split them up. You split them into two and then you pass it to the person on your left. They pick one of the two sides and you get the other. You do the same thing with the cards you just got passed. Then you just collect, try and get contracts, and push up the tracks the best that you can. It’s a simple but very fun.

Buy The Great Split.

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule. It’s not just all my Top 100 Games (of all time).

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again. And generally the streams do start between 8 and 8:30 PM central time.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition for another six weeks. After that expect this to be when I play my small games. Only 5 more weeks left of my Top 100 Games, then likely this will switch to smaller solo games and video games.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. Join us for the adventure of Nina and Kaerok and see what choices we make.

The best way to know when we go live, though is to subscribe and click that notification bell. I can’t promise, and in fact it’s pretty unlikely, that I’ll have events to click on ahead of time. Though I do want to get better at it. I hope that you can join a stream and hop into the chat. And let me know what games in this list are your favorite or that you want to try.

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