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The Physical Thing

These 39mm wide 10.5 gram chips are of the same quality as what you would expect to find in a casino or higher priced poker set. Coming in three colors, white, red, and blue, each chip represents a different number of Style Points in the Ubiquity system. These points are prominently displayed on one side of the ship, while the reverse sports the Exile Studios logo.

While that’s all very straightforward, what’s interesting about these chips is that the point value and color correspond to the same Ubiquity Dice value. So, white chips are 1 Style Point and correspond to white Ubiquity Dice which each roll as 1d2. Blue chips are 3 Style Points and correspond to blue Ubiquity Dice which each roll as 3d2. This became very useful as a game aid in play when I realized it, as it allowed folk relatively inexperienced with Ubiquity to quickly figure out what combinations of dice they want to roll.

My Take

I’ve had the opportunity to play with these chips in a few different games and would like to discuss how well they worked.

Hollow Earth Expedition: While playing in a Hollow Earth Expedition game at Gen Con I was initially skeptical about the worth of these chips, considering them to be little more than a simple promotional gimmick. I was very surprised, then, when they worked very well in play. The GM dumped a bunch of Ubiquity Dice and Style Chips on the table to use during the game and the two, together, did a few interesting things. First, the Style Chips served as an immediate visual reference for remembering which colors of Ubiquity Dice to roll which eliminated questions about which dice were which value and allowed players to take full advantage of the Ubiquity Dice.

Another interesting thing that occurred in play was players eyeing one another’s chip pools by the color of the chips. To an extent it reflected who was currently kicking butt and who was prepared to really take down a scene by dropping lots of Style Points. While the same could be said for whatever cheap poker chips you might otherwise use, I think the casino quality of these chips resulted in players physically using them and displaying them a little bit differently. They were used a bit more like chips would be in a casino than the casual way my group throws around our cheap chips.

Primetime Adventures and FATE: I also had the opportunity to use the chips in other games, just to see if I found them useful. The weight and feel of the chips was nice, and the game participants did treat them a little differently than the cheap plastic chips I normally use. However, there was little other benefit to be had. The different values could be a hindrance at times because a player would need to cash in a higher chip for lower ones. While in HEX multiple Style points might be spent back to back, this was rare in other games and so resulted in a bit of slow down. Nevertheless, while I bought these to play with HEX (I purchased some and received some for a review) they were still perfectly useful as just normal points in my other games and I enjoyed the extra heft they had.

The final word on these is that if you enjoy the other high quality game supplements Exile has been putting out for Hollow Earth Expedition and other Ubiquity games then pick these up. While they’re a little expensive at $5 for 6 chips, in play with an Ubiquity system game I found them to be a lot of fun as they perfectly complimented the Ubiquity dice. Experienced groups won’t get as much use, common red/blue/white poker chips are available in large quantities for a few dollars, but at the end of the day those Ubiquity fans who are willing to spend the extra cash will enjoy these in play.