Six Cubes (1989)

"Six Cubes- A Board Game Of Dice Strollegy. This is the most exciting combination dice board game ever. If you like to shake 'em up you'll love Six Cubes. Family fun for two or more players ages 10 to adult. Careful strollegy (the science of rolling dice into the most advantageous combinations) can lead you to be the winner."

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Some comments From:
Michael Keller
World Game Review
Baltimore
Wgreview@aol.com,
http://members.aol.com/wgreview/

The French dice game called Dix Mille (Ten Thousand), is so named because 10,000 points is the goal of play (in the English- speaking world this has usually become Five Thousand, or occasionally Zilch or other names). At least in English, this is a folk game, spreading mostly by word of mouth, with many slight variations. In looking in over a dozen sources, I could find only a few printed accounts : Gil Jacobs' "World's Best Dice Games" (Hansen, 1981, pages 73-82), Peter Arnold's "The Book of Games" (Exeter, 1985, pages 79-80), Merilyn Simonds Mohr's "The Games Treasury" (Chapters, 1993, pages 103-104 as "Farkle"), and an article, "Spots Before the Ice", in Games & Puzzles 54 (November 1976, pp.14-15).

Five Thousand or Ten Thousand is an extremely popular game in commercial adaptations; the most popular of these is Cosmic Wimpout (1984, Cosmic Wimpout), unusual in that it uses only five dice instead of six. A search on "Cosmic Wimpout" will turn up a couple of web pages, and there is a Usenet newsgroup alt.games.cosmic-wimpout. Sid Sackson's 1969 edition of "A Gamut of Games" lists a commercial version of Five Thousand by Parker Brothers being in print at that time. Before and since Cosmic Wimpout (1984), there have been quite a few other commercial versions : $Greed (1980, currently published by Avalon Hill), Zilch (1980, Twinson), Bupkis (1981, Milco), Fill or Bust (1981, Bowman, currently available in Germany as Volle Lotte), High Rollers (1992, El Rancho Escondido Ents.), Six Cubes (1994, Fun and Games), and Gold Train (Strunk, 1995). Some of these games are gimmicked up in various ways, such as using wild cards or giving bonuses or penalties for reaching various totals.

Here is a very brief description of the most basic form of the game: Players in turn roll six dice, trying to throw ones (worth 100 points each), fives (worth 50 points each), and/or threes of a kind (worth 100 times the number rolled, 2-2-2 = 200, etc., except that 1-1-1 = 1000). A throw of 1-2-3-4-5-6 is a special throw worth 1500 points. A player, after scoring points, may either stop and add all of the points from that turn to her permanent score, or throw again using any unused dice, trying to score additional points. A throw with no scoring combinations ends the player's turn with nothing added to his permanent score. If a player scores points with all of the remaining dice, he may stop, or continue again throwing all six dice again. The first player to reach 5000 points (or 10,000 in some versions) wins. Look in any of the sources listed above for more details and variations (most libraries should carry one or more of these books).