Dustbiters Is a Quick-Paced Card Game That Mashes Card Placement and Mad Max-Style Car Combat

The new card game Dustbiters is a remarkably quick-paced game that successfully captures the frantic energy of battling a rival car gang while also trying to survive a dust storm. Last month, several popular game developers launched the Kickstarter for Dustbiters, a new card game that values simplicity and style over complexity. The Kickstarter already reached its initial $25,000 goal and still has about two weeks remaining on the campaign. The developers of Dustbiters were kind enough to send over an early copy over to ComicBook.com for review, giving us a first taste of the furious and fast action of battling it out as a dust storm wipes out your convoy.

The rules of Dustbiters are simple. At the start of the game, players create a convoy made up of eight cards, each of which features one of 21 unique vehicles. Four of these cars face one player and four face their opponent, and the direction that the convoy is traveling is determined by which player is going first. Players also have a hand of four additional cards. During each turn, players can take up to three actions, which include “building” a car from their hand and placing it at the front of the convoy, driving one of their vehicles forward or backwards and swapping it with it another adjacent car, drawing a card from the deck, or using a vehicle’s power. At the end of a player’s turn, the raging dust storm wipes out the car at the back of the convoy.

Some vehicles benefit from being at the front or back of the convoy, while other vehicles can use their powers to destroy opponent vehicles. For instance, the Crusher’s power allows it to destroy any other vehicle between it and one of your other cars. Hypothetically, this means that you can wipe out your opponent’s entire fleet, but only if you can get your Crusher to the very back of the convoy without getting smashed. Some cards (like the Horse) have passive powers that activate in certain scenarios, meaning that you occasionally want to let your vehicles get destroyed in order to trigger a more advantageous benefit. The game moves very fast, with an entire game taking fifteen minutes or less, and a lot of the game seems to function around trying to stack enough actions on your opponent to wipe them out before they can counter.

What I liked about Dustbiters is that there are very few “wasted” cards. Since the game only consists of 21 cards, there isn’t any room for “dud” vehicles and it seems like just about every card can contribute to a potential victory. I also liked that the card abilities synergized together in multiple ways. You won’t need to have two specific cards on the battlefield to trigger a specific chain of events. In fact, a lot of the gameplay centers around making use of what you have immediately at your disposal.

The only real downsize is that the game’s base set only comes with 21 cards. I think that players will get a lot of enjoyment out of this game, but the same two players playing it over and over might get burnt out after a hot minute. Getting more of your friends to play will be the key to getting the most out of Dustbiters, which shouldn’t be too hard to do given how easy the game is to set up and play.

You can check out the full Kickstarter for Dustbiters here. The Kickstarter runs through September 13th.