Downforce

Plays: 6Px1.

The Game

Downforce is a light game with a car-racing setting, but it is more than just a race game. You will find that you need to make bets, you need to make predictions and evaluations based on limited information. There will be some cooperation. You are not just racing to be number 1. You are manipulating the whole outcome to be beneficial to you.

There will always be six race cars in play, regardless of the number of players. If there are fewer than 6 players, some players will control more than one car.

This scoring sheet lists all the ways you gain (and lose) points. Before the game starts, you bid for the car you want. The amount you spend for your car will be paid in victory points at the end of the game. Competition starts even before you rev up your engines. The car positions are randomly assigned, the deck of cards are dealt out to everyone. Cards are used for movement. Before bidding, you get to see your cards. You know which cars your cards will be good at moving. The starting positions of the cars, and your cards, are two of the three factors affecting your decision in bidding for cars. The third factor is the special ability card on the right. Whenever a car is randomly picked to be auctioned off, a random special ability card is drawn to be paired with it.

After the race starts, there are three points in time when any car passes specific milestones when all players will make bets on which cars will be in the top 3. Refer to the Betting Payouts section in the photo above. At each bet, you pick just one car. If at the end of the game the car is among the top 3, you get a payout. You don't necessarily have to bet on your own car.

After the race ends, you score points for your final position in the race. Refer to the Racing Payouts section at the bottom. If your car wins the race, you get 12VP.

Car movement is determined by these cards. Each card shows one or more colours, each with a number. When you play a card, you must move the cars in the specified colours as far as possible, in the specified sequence and taking the specified number of steps. Sometimes if a car is blocked, you will not be able to move it. White is the wild colour. You may treat it as any colour not already on the card. If you have two whites, they must be treated as two different colours. Cards are all single-use. If your car finishes the race while you have cards remaining, they are all discarded. You wait till everyone else finishes.

This was the map we played. It is a little unusual due to the two loops. The junctions at those two loops easily cause blocking. The blue car is now being blocked by the red and the green cars. The race only lasts one lap. This is a quick game.

The Play

We did a 6-player game, so everyone had exactly one car. During bidding, since I had many black numbers in my hand, I decided I would get the black car. I bid quite high for it. In hindsight I should not have done so. If I had many black numbers, it meant others would have few, and thus it was less likely they would compete with me for the black car.

The car in the pole position was the red one, and Ivan won the bid for it. Being in the pole position had its advantages. He quickly sprinted ahead of the rest of us and created a gap. Only the green car was able to keep up somewhat. There was much blocking among the cars left behind. It was quite tough being blocked. It could really bog one down. In our game, we had blocking mostly in the early game. From mid game onwards, there was much less of it. It seemed the cars, especially those in the leading positions, moved very swiftly and smoothly.

Red had a huge lead at this point. Those yellow lines were the milestones for betting. The leading car had passed the first yellow line and was approaching the second one.

We had one funny moment around this time. If you look at the photo above, red and green were coming out of the second loop. One player played a card which had a green number, so he had to move the green car. He made a mistake, and instead of moving the car across the yellow line, he sent the car around the loop again. All of us pointed at that and started laughing - what are you doing are you trying to pull a fast one?! We all said that was certainly an unexpected strategy, and would have been super effective had he not been caught red handed.

In the second half of the race, many people rooted for green, and it eventually overtook red to win the race. My black car managed to break out from the lagging group, and gradually caught up to take second place. The hot red car ended in third place. I had a dilemma. At both first and second bets, I betted on red. At the second bet, green was doing better than red, but I gambled that Ivan would be able to regain the top position. I betted against the general consensus. By the third bet, it was obvious that red would not be able to catch up, so I knew I had to bet on green. My dilemma was between supporting red or my own black. This made me feel uncomfortable. I had bet on red, so I had the incentive to help it earn a good position. However, if my own black gained a good position, I would earn more points too. Helping one meant sacrificing the other. There was no win-win. In hindsight, I should have supported red. It came down to whether red or black would earn 2nd place. If red were 2nd and black 3rd, I would earn 5VP more. If black were 2nd and red 3rd, I would earn 3VP more. There was a 2VP difference so I should help red. Unfortunately during the game I did not make this proper analysis. Out of instinct I supported my own black. So I did not score as much as I could have.

The final positions - green was 1st, black 2nd and red 3rd. This by no means reflected the actual positions of the players. The green player did win the game, but I (black car owner) did poorly.

My final score was 12, and that was below average. The 5VP I spent on bidding for the black car was expensive. In our game we had an unusual situation. One of the players won his car without having spent any VP. That meant even before the race started, I was already 5VP behind him.

The eventual winner was the green car owner, because his car came first, and also he had bet heavily on himself. This was an unstoppable combo.

The Thoughts

Something about Downforce makes me uncomfortable. It is not a pure race game. Three things affect your final score - (1) how much you pay for your car (or cars), (2) whether you bet correctly during the race, and (3) how well your car(s) does at game end. In the first aspect, you exercise your evaluation skills. You decide which car (or cars) you want to invest in, and you try to win it at the lowest price possible. In the second aspect, you try to predict the result by assessing the current situation on the board, and also by guessing your opponents' intentions. A car which many people are supporting will likely do well. There is some groupthink here. Only the third aspect is purely about racing and coming first. However it is only part of your score, and sometimes not even a big part.

What makes me uncomfortable is the situation I experienced. By mid game green was far ahead and it felt impossible to compete. Not only had he bet on himself heavily, he also had many supporters because they too had bet on him. So it was no longer a racing game where everyone was trying to come first. The trailing players were only competing among themselves. This might be a groupthink problem. Perhaps the players should have ganged up on the leader, instead of supporting him.

Downforce is about predicting a final result and then working towards making it come true. It is not just purely trying to be first. It is about creating an end condition where you maximise your score and minimise your opponents' scores. This is quite a different mindset from a more conventional race game where you are immersed in the racing tactics.

One possible problem is people may tend to bet on the same car. After all, the board situation is open information. If most people bet on the same car, then all these people will be supporting that car, and that car will do well. However, to stand out from the crowd, you can't be doing the same thing as everyone else. You need to do something different. Yet if you bet on a dark horse, that might not be a good idea because few or no other players would be helping you. Again, this may be a problem only in our game. In closer races, it is harder to determine which car is doing better, and players may be betting on more different cars.

I may be making the game sound more complicated than it is, with all that talk of evaluation, groupthink, reading others' intentions, I-help-you-you-help-me, and manipulating the board situation to your desired end condition. In the end, this is still a light game that you can easily teach to casual players and non-gamers. The game is engaging because even on other people's turns they may be moving your car. They may also be blocking your car. There is certainly plenty of interaction. You don't need to overthink it like I do.

Flamme Rouge

Plays: 5Px1 (expansion included)

The Game

Flamme Rouge (red flame) is a race game about professional bicycle racing. You have a team of 2 cyclists, a sprinter and a roller, with different abilities. Every round every cyclist gets one move, done by card play. The game ends once any cyclist crosses the finish line. Among those who manage to cross, whoever moves the furthest is the champion, and the player he belongs to is the winner of the game.

The sprinter and roller have different sculptures. They also have the letters R and S on their backs to help tell them apart. On your player board, the deck on the left belongs to the sprinter, and the deck on the right the roller. Both decks start with 15 cards, and the card distribution is listed on the reference card on the left. The sprinter has 9's, but the rest of the cards are 2's to 5's. The roller's cards are more even, ranging from 3's to 7's.

The rulebook comes with recommended layouts for race tracks, but you can build your own too. In our game we used one of the recommended setups. Some parts of the tracks have special rules. When going uphill, there is a cap to how fast your cyclist can move. If you play a high card, you may be wasting movement points. When going downhill, you enjoy a minimum speed. Even if you play a low card, you are guaranteed a specific number of moves. So it is best to play your lousy cards when going downhill. Some sections disallow slipstreaming. Slipstreaming is a mechanism which allows cyclists to make free moves. Every round after movement is resolved, if a group of cyclists is exactly two steps behind the group in front of them (i.e. there is exactly one empty space between the groups), the whole trailing group gets one free move and joins the leading group. They combine to become one group. If there is another group in front of this newly formed group and it is also exactly two steps away, then the whole newly formed group gets to slipstream. That means the previously trailing group receives two free moves. This is a big deal. Slipstreaming is always resolved from the last group forwards.

Every round you pick movement cards for both your cyclists. You do one then the other. You draw four cards to pick one from. Cards not picked are returned to the bottom of the draw deck face-up, so that you know when you need to reshuffle your deck. The card picked for the round is placed face-down next to your board. You need to wait for everyone to have chosen their cards before all movement cards for the round are revealed simultaneously. Movement resolution is done according to position on the race track, from leading cyclist in the rightmost position onwards. You simply move a number of steps as indicated on the card. If your destination row is full, then you move one step fewer and must settle for the next row. Movement cards used are removed from the game. If you use up your strong cards early, you will have only lousy cards later. Cyclists of the same class have the exact same deck and have no advantage over one another based on starting cards. You need to jostle for advantage throughout the game yourself by making use of slipstreaming, terrain, and positioning.

The red cards are exhaustion cards. All have value 2. At the end of every round, you examine every group on the race track. Cyclists in the first row of each group must take an exhaustion card and add it to the bottom of their draw decks face-up. This represents these cyclists who are facing the headwind getting tired. Those who hide behind them are protected from the headwind and do not suffer any penalty. Exhaustion cards are basically weak movement cards. Collecting them don't affect you immediately. They only come into play the next time you reshuffle your deck. You will more likely draw these poor cards, making your deck less efficient.

These are the roller's cards. They range from 3 to 7. You always draw four and pick one.

The Play

At the start of our race we had a bidding round which allowed two cyclists to start at forward positions. Cards which won the bid were discarded, so these two cyclists started with one card less.

Once the race started, the black player's sprinter sped ahead, leaving the green roller behind. The rest of the cyclists formed the peloton - the main group of cyclists all bunched up together. The big group did break up now and then, but due to slipstreaming the lagging fragments caught up and they all merged to become a single peloton again.

Red boxes are uphill stretches, blue boxes are downhill stretches. The number 5 for the red boxes refers to the max speed if your cyclist ever touches a red space on his turn. The 5 for the blue boxes means the minimum speed if your cyclist starts his turn in a blue space. Even if you play a small movement card, you get to move at least 5 spaces. In this photo the two green cyclists are exactly two spaces apart. Normally the one behind would be able to slipstream and thus move a step forward. He would be protected from the headwind because he wouldn't be in the first row of a group anymore, i.e. no need to take an exhaustion card. However the cyclist in front is in a red box, which disallows slipstreaming. So the one behind can't enjoy all these benefits.

The black sprinter has turned the sharp bend. The two green cyclists being side by side is not a good thing. It means both are in the front row of their group, and both need to take exhaustion cards. In that big group behind them, only the black roller in front needs to take an exhaustion card.

The leading black sprinter decides to throw caution to the wind and charges ahead, hoping to cross the finish line before the others can close the gap.

The peloton has now caught up with the two green cyclists.

Near the end of the game, the black sprinter shows signs of fatigue, and is overtaken by the white sprinter. The green cyclists who have been in 2nd and 3rd place are also being overtaken by others.

The eventual winner in our game was Ivan (white). In the early and mid game he stayed in the peloton, making use of slipstreaming and avoiding headwind, thus earning free moves and also avoiding exhaustion cards. Abraham did these well too, in particular making good use of slipstreaming. Since everyone has the same decks, you need to rely on those free moves from slipstreaming to gain an advantage over your opponents. These small bonuses do eventually add up if you grab these tactical opportunities well. Towards late game, Ivan made his breakaway move earlier than the others who had been conserving energy inside the peloton. So he managed to win the lead position. Some in the peloton fell behind, e.g. the blue roller in the photo above. Falling behind is bad because you become the front row cyclist of your one-person group, and you will take exhaustion cards turn after turn.

The Thoughts

Image from www.boardgamegeek.com

Flamme Rouge has a modern-looking cover design. It's a 2016 game. However the gameplay and the components remind me of classic Eurogames from the 90's. Rules are simple, but there is some strategic depth. I own a bicycle race game from 1989 called Um Reifenbreite, which won the 1992 Spiel des Jahres. Um Reifenbreite uses dice for movement, so the luck factor is higher. Flamme Rouge has no dice and only uses cards. Still, there is luck in the card draw. Being able to draw 4 then pick 1 reduces this luck element. You have more control. There is an element of luck in the choices made by your opponents too. For example, even if you manage to position your two cyclists to be exactly two spaces apart, allowing the second to slipstream to catch up with the first, there may be some other player's cyclist moving in to fill that space between your two cyclists, spoiling your perfect plan. This is one of the exciting aspects of Flamme Rouge - watching what cards your opponents have selected. Sometimes you get happy surprises, and sometimes you get nasty ones.

The key to winning is accumulating those small advantages gained from slipstreaming. Card decks are the same so you can't squeeze all that much advantage from your card decks. The best strategy is to conserve your energy throughout the early and mid game, making good use of slipstreaming and avoiding exhaustion cards, and then towards late game, pick the right time to breakaway and shoot for the finish line. In the game I played, some of the others had played before, and one of them (black) tried a different approach - sprinting ahead from the beginning and hoping to reach the finish line before others caught up. That didn't work out. The exhaustion eventually caught up and the last stretch became a slow slog for him. This sounds worrying, because if there is only one valid strategy, how high is the replayability of the game? I think this best strategy does reflect what the sport is. I am not overly troubled. The competition is not so much about coming up with a wild strategy. It is about the tactical decisions you make round after round. It is about jostling for position, making the best of the cards you draw, and creating synergy between your two cyclists. The game is more about execution than grand strategy. However there is still one crucial strategic decision - when to breakaway and go for the kill. That's an interesting question of timing.

One element in the gameplay of Flamme Rouge which feels modern is the deck-building. Deck-building became popular with Dominion which was released in 2008. In Flamme Rouge, used movement cards are removed from the game, so your deck gets thinned. When you take exhaustion cards, you are making your deck less effective by adding poor movement cards.

The Quest for El Dorado

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

Reiner Knizia doing a deck-building game! This game caught my attention well before it was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres (it didn't win eventually). This is a race game in which you use your deck of cards to advance your pawn on the race track. The race track is customisable. You can use the recommended setups or make your own. Everyone has the same starting deck of cards, and a hand size of four. During the game you improve your deck, adding and also possibly removing cards, hoping to speed you up towards your destination. Whoever reaches El Dorado first wins.

The map consists of hex spaces. Each hex indicates the resources required for your pawn to enter. Yellow hexes require coins, green hexes require machetes, blue hexes require paddles. They represent villages, jungles and rivers. When you play a card, you expend the resources on it to move your pawn onto a new hex, or along a few hexes requiring that resource type. Mountains are impassable. Grey hexes require discarding cards.

This is one of the setups recommended by the rulebook. The starting line is at the bottom right. El Dorado is at the other end.

You start a turn with a hand size of four. You may play cards to move your pawn. Then you may play cards to buy one new card (which is put into your personal discard pile). Eventually you draw back up to four cards. You may discard unwanted cards before refilling your hand. If a card you play has more than one resource, you may use it to move your pawn multiple hexes, as long as the number of resources is sufficient to pay for every hex. However if a particular hex requires multiple resources, you are not allowed to pool together a few cards to move your pawn onto that hex. You need a single card with at least that many resources. If you don't have that, you need to take another route.

When buying a card, coin cards count according to their card values. Other cards can be used, but they only count as half a coin each. In the worst case, if you don't have any coin cards, your four cards can still add up to 2 coins.

The strip at the top left is the card market. Normally you may only buy cards here. The game starts with a predetermined set of 6 types of cards. There are only three cards per type. Once all three are bought, a space is opened up. At that point, you are allowed to buy any card outside of the market. If you do so, you will be buying the first of three cards. You move the other two into the market, thus filling in the blank. The market is now full again, and the restriction of buying only from the market applies again.

The price of a card is written at the bottom. Green, blue and yellow cards have machetes, paddles and coins respectively. White cards are jokers. Purple cards give special abilities. Some cards can only be used once, after which they are permanently removed from the game.

This is a deck-building game, and most of the standard rules apply. When you buy a new card, it goes to your discard pile. You reshuffle your cards only when your draw deck is exhausted. That means a new card will only come into play after the next reshuffle. You can thin your deck. The remove action removes a card from play, i.e. the card is set aside and not put in your discard pile. The next time you reshuffle, it won't come back. Removing weak cards makes your deck more efficient.

The start cards are all value 1 cards.

I'm rich, rich, rich! This hand looks good, but may not be all that great. Yes, I can afford expensive cards, but I may only buy one per turn anyway, so this is overkill. Most of the time, on your turn you try to make use of every card, be it to move or to buy a card, because you always draw back up to four anyway.

Some mountain hexes have caves. This is a variant, which we used in our game. When you approach a cave hex, you gain a random single-use special ability token. Their powers vary, and they can be quite handy. They give good flexibility because you can keep them till the ideal moment to use them. They are fun because everybody likes lucky draws.

So, on your turn you may move, and you may buy one new card. While you race towards El Dorado, you are tuning your deck to be able to race more effectively. Your deck is your tool. Your goal is to be first to cross the finish line. Positioning on the board is important, because blocking applies. You may not enter an occupied hex, and you may not pass through such a hex either. Trailing behind others is usually bad because they'll all be in your way. Blocking is something you need to defend yourself from, and you need to use it against your opponents too.

The Play

Ivan taught Allen and I to play. I have a bad habit when playing deck-building games. When I play Star Realms, I often enjoying building that perfect deck, that I lose sight of my true objective. I like to buy red cards which let me trim away the weak starting cards. I like to focus on buying cards of just one or two colours, so that there will be more synergies. In themselves, these actions are fine and they are valid tactics. My problem is I lose sight of the goal of killing my opponent. I don't get enough combat strength quickly enough to defeat my opponent. What use is my perfect deck when I'm close to being exterminated? When playing The Quest for El Dorado, I made the same mistake. Up front I decided I was going to focus on coin cards, which would help me buy more cards. There was a good variety of cards in the game, and many looked awfully powerful. I enjoyed collecting them and making use of them. I did have some "Ladies and gentlemen... " moments, when I made fantastic moves. However, I was too lax in pushing my pawn on the board. Ivan was the leading player throughout most of the race, and I was trailing most of the time. I kept thinking once I made my perfect deck, I would pull a come-from-behind victory. I did have the strongest buying power. I bought many coin cards. I was rich rich rich! Unfortunately rich rich rich did not automatically mean win win win. What was more important was being efficient in achieving the goal. Spending too much time on deck-building was actually bad, especially since I did it at the expense of not paying enough attention to the board.

Another lesson I learned was the need to plan ahead very specifically. There was one particular stretch of river on the board which I had underestimated and did not plan for. It was four consecutive spaces of water which was part of the shortest path to El Dorado. Each space needed just one paddle, but paddle cards were rarer, and that made a stretch of four a challenge. I didn't want to buy many paddle cards, and decided I'd just take a longer path, expecting my strong deck to help me to advance quickly enough. Both Ivan and Allen strategised to make use of this stretch. They were able to cross the whole stretch within one turn, by playing a value-4 joker card. This is the kind of efficiency we are talking about!

I also learned the importance of blocking. The leading player commanded a big advantage, because he would normally be trying to take the easiest path, and that meant he would be blocking the next players from also taking that easiest path.

There are things you can strategise, but at the same time the game is very tactical. What you can do depends on what you draw. There's a tension of whether you'll be drawing the right cards at the right time. There's the fun puzzle of how to make the most of your hand of cards, given your current position on the board. A turn is usually fast, because you can only do what your cards allow you to do. You can temporarily forget about everything else.

El Dorado is at the upper left. Now the three pawns are about to enter the board section in the middle. If you trace the shortest path to El Dorado, you can see a hex in the middle requiring 4 coins. This can be a pivotal point. There aren't many cards with 4 coins or cards that allow you to enter such a space. If you have such a card, and also happen to have it in hand when you approach this hex, you will be able to take the shortest path. Otherwise you will be forced to take a detour, costing you precious turns.

As we played, the card pool dwindled to a point which surprised me. Many card types were exhausted. I wonder whether it was because we (especially me) had been buying aggressively. If it were a full four-player game, there would be even fewer cards left.

The Thoughts

I was not disappointed. The Quest for El Dorado is a quality design. You need to strike a balance between equipping yourself for the race, and running the race itself. There is a lot you can think about and strategise about, yet on your turn the things you can do are often simple and few. You can only do what your hand of cards and your position on the board allow you to do. You can plan ahead, and try to position yourself better for future turns, but what you get to execute now is usually straightforward. The most difficult decision is probably when you get the option to buy any card on the table. Hopefully before you get to that point you have been paying attention and thinking about how you are crafting your deck. You should already have a general idea what your game plan is.

This is a game of flexible depth. You can play it simple mindedly; you can choose to put in a lot of thought. Naturally if you do the latter, your chances of winning are better. Either way you play, the game is enjoyable. It might be a problem though if some players play at one extreme and some at the other. One side would be accused of being brainless, and the other side slow.

I like how the game gives me much freedom to customise my deck. Throughout the game I am always occupied, with many strategic considerations I can delve into. I think about the board situation, the cards in the market, how I am going to adjust my deck, and the strategies my opponents are using. Many of these factors are constantly changing, and I always need to adapt, and do the best with what I draw. Puzzling out what best to do with your hand is satisfying.

Thunder Alley

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

Thunder Alley from GMT Games is a team racing game based on NASCAR racing. Each player manages a team of cars, and the number of cars per team depends on how many are playing. The game comes with different race tracks, and the number of laps to complete differs by track. You score points based on the final positions of your cars. The leading car at the end of every round also scores 1pt. At game end the team with the highest total score wins.

A round consists of players taking turns to activate their cars, until every car has been activated exactly once. You draw a number of cards at the start of the round, and play them to activate your cars. In our 3P game, we drew 6 cards for 5 cars, i.e. all but one card would be used. There are four types of movement cards. The simplest is the Single movement cards, which allow the player to move only the activated car. Most other card types usually allow (in fact, force) other cars to move. If you play a Draft card to activate a car, that car may move sideways first (possibly pushing other cars away or backwards) and then moves forward, chaining along the whole train of cars in front of and behind it. If you play a Pursuit card, the effect is similar, except that you push the chain of cars before you but leave behind the chain of cars behind you. If you play a Lead card, you don't affect the cars before you, but you pull the chain of cars behind you.

In addition to the movement type, a movement card also specifies the distance you move, the damage your car will take, and special restrictions or bonuses. Damage to your car can be temporary (e.g. tyres, fuel) or permanent (e.g. engine, body). Temporary damage can be repaired during pit stops, but there is nothing you can do about permanent damage. Any car with 3 points of damage or more moves more slowly when activated, but is not affected when it is pulled along by other cars.

The movement cards. At the top left, the larger value is the normal movement value, while the smaller one applies when you reenter the race after a pit stop. At the top right, a damage type is specified.

At the end of every round, an event card is drawn. Usually something bad will happen to a car with a specific type of damage. The event card will have a green flag or a yellow flag. Green flag means all is well. In car racing, the yellow flag means caution (e.g. there has been an accident on the race track, or there is rain). When it is raised, all cars must slow down, and may not overtake one another. The result is all cars will catch up to the leading car, and then they resume racing only after the yellow flag signal is cancelled. In the game, the yellow flag is like a reset, allowing trailing cars to catch up. It is literally a catch-up mechanism.

The game ends at the end of the round in which at least one car passes the finish line, which means every car will have been activated the same number of times.

The Play

I did a 3P game with Heng and Ivan, and we each had 5 cars. This was a team game, so we kept trying to maximise the potentials of our cards by pushing or pulling along other cars on our teams. We wanted to avoid helping others, but it was not always easy or even possible. I think sometimes it is more important to try to position yourself to be helped by others than to try to avoid helping others. E.g. squeezing your car between two cars belonging to another player will force him to help you if he wants one of his cars to help the other one. We had 6 cards every round for our 5 cars, which meant sometimes we could be screwed by poor card draws. If we drew many Single movement cards, we would have fewer opportunities to get our cars to help our other cars.

At the start of every round when you draw your hand of cards, it can take a while to analyse the board situation and think through how you are going to make the most out of your cards. New players beware. Also the board situation can change drastically between your turns, even in a 3P game, so your perfect plan can become rubbish and you need to rethink your strategy. It is important to stay flexible. However sometimes others' moves can inadvertently help you too, and create opportunities for you. You will want to grab these.

If some of your cars are disqualified (due to being lapped or voluntarily retired), you can forfeit a turn. Sometimes this can help, because by the time your next turn comes, you may have a better use for one of your cards. Also sometimes you may want to see how your opponents play before you react. However this can also be risky. Everyone is trying to leave his opponents behind. Forgoing one turn can be dangerous because you may find yourself cut off from the leading pack and being unable to catch up.

The race was about to start so every car was lined up neatly before the starting line.

The race had just started (this was still the first round), but already two cars had been left behind, one of mine (green) and one of Ivan's (yellow). The rest of the cars were mostly still in one leading pack, except for one of Heng's cars (black) lagging slightly behind. It should be able to catch up to the leading pack soon.

The two draw decks are the movement cards (left) and the event cards (right).

Cars which are lapped are automatically disqualified at the end of the round. They still score points. They just claim the last available position and score the points for that position.

You will have at most six cars on your team, which is when playing 2P. This player board is for recording damage to your cars, and points scored.

We were in the 2nd lap now. All four of my remaining cars (green) were in the leading pack on the left, which was good. Heng (black) had three, Ivan (yellow) only one. Both Heng and Ivan had cars left behind. The outlook was quite positive for me. However in the middle of the race a yellow flag came up, which did a kind of reset for us. We all took the opportunity to do pit stops to repair damage. It was good timing since most of our cars were close to their 3rd damage. When there is a yellow flag, the penalty for a pit stop is much less.

After the yellow flag event, there was one crucial bend move in which my chain of cars was overtaken and then left behind. That was one major turning point in the game, after which I never managed to recover. I switched from dominating the leading pack to having no presence at all. Eventually I came last. Heng was the ultimate winner, with a comfortable margin ahead of Ivan and I.

Of 15 cars in the race, the positions my cars earned were 7, 8, 9, 11, 14. Not good!

The Thoughts

There is definitely some luck in Thunder Alley (the movement cards you draw, the event cards, and whether others' actions mess up your plan or create opportunities for you), but there is much in your control too. You need to evaluate the board situation and plan how to best use your hand of cards. The board situation is constantly changing, so often you need to adapt, and you need to try to stay flexible. There is constant jostling to try to leave opponents behind and to try to position your cars to maximise the chances of others helping you. You try to create opportunities. You try to prevent your opponents from making big moves.

It's a team game, so you want every car to do well, not just the leading car. The point differences between the car positions are small - only 1pt between each position, except for the 1st place, which is 4pts more than 2nd place. You cannot rely on just your leading car to win the competition for you. Others need to do well too. Yet 4pts is not insignificant either. Also there is the 1pt bonus every round for the leading car at the end of the round. That can be quite significant too. You need to balance between getting everyone to be team players, and allowing your superstar to show off.

I'm not a car-racing fan and I am not familiar with the sport. I find Thunder Alley quite fun. This is a game where you need to analyse and plan. You try to do your best with the cards you draw and the opportunities that present themselves. There are opportunities for clever play, and when you pull off a genius move, it is very satisfying. This is not the kind of game where you roll dice, push your luck, gamble, and have some mindless fun. It is a little thinky. There's still some good and bad luck that you can cheer or swear at. It can be quite rewarding when you manage to execute a killer move, like snatching the 1st position from your opponent just before a round ends.

PitchCar

Plays: 3Px7, 2Px1.

During the Raya holidays Allen suggested to lend me his PitchCar set for me to try with my daughters. His children are still a bit too young for it. So I played, and I had a great time. I didn't know much about the game before, other than having seen some photos and knowing it's a dexterity game. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

The Game

PitchCar is a car-racing game, where the cars are discs that you flick around the race track. There aren't many rules. If your car goes off track, or you cause another player's car to go off track, you reset all discs to positions before your turn, and you have just wasted a turn. If your disc flips over, you need to spend your next turn just to flip it back. First to complete 3 laps wins. That's the gist of it. Let's look at how it plays.

The Play

At first we designed our own race track, but I found that it wasn't very good, so after that we stuck to the recommended designs that came with the game.

The race cars.

After playing for a short while, we realised we needed to push away all the chairs. They got in the way. We had to keep moving around the table, and we ended up all sweating. The weather being hot didn't help.

This is one of the recommended race tracks. However we modified it slightly by adding a ramp.

The race tracks have barriers, which can act as guides for the cars and thus help players move their cars further.

Crossing the ramp was harder than I thought. Flick too hard and the car would go off track. Flick too lightly and the car wouldn't make it past the gap.

I wonder whether it's possible to make something like the Sepang F1 race track in Malaysia.

This was a challenging shot. Shee Yun had to be careful not to knock Chen Rui's car off the track.

Allen has not only the base game but also quite a number of expansions, so there is a lot to play with. I grouped the parts by type to ease building the next race track.

Another race track.

This part is actually not easy. Flying over the ramp is challenging. Going through that narrow corridor is also tough.

See how Chen Rui missed.

The Thoughts

This is a simple fun kind of game, but it is not mindless. You are constantly involved, and because it's a dexterity game you do need to focus. Turns are quick, are you are always eager for your next turn. When I played with the children I had to keep reminding them it was not their turn yet. We had to chant a mantra like "red blue green - red blue green" so that we kept to the proper turn order.

There is often a balance between slow-and-steady and fast-but-risky. Everyone will try to push his luck and try to go faster and further, but if you are careless or overly ambitious, you may end up going off track and wasting turns. So there is a nice tension of how far you want to push yourself. When you are behind, you need to keep your cool and not be too rash, because otherwise you might make things worse. Playing with the kids was relaxing for me, since they were not as nimble as I was and I kept winning, but I imagine the game can be quite challenging when playing against adults. We had a lot of laughs with lousy shots or unlucky shots, and we had a lot of cheers for great shots or crazy lucky shots. Say all you want about balancing risk and gain. Eventually when you play, you don't really think that much. You just immerse yourself in the simple fun and the adrenalin rush.

Jamaica

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

Jamaica is a racing game with a pirate theme. You race to complete a circuit around an island, picking up treasures where you can. You collect food, weapons and money, and also spend them as movement cost. The first to pass the finish line will score many points, but may not necessarily win, because players also score points from treasures and money collected.

At the start of a round, the active player rolls two dice, and assigns one each to day and night. Then everyone simultaneously picks one card for the round, from a hand of three. The selected cards are revealed and resolved one by one, starting with the active player. Each card has two halves, for day and night actions. Actions include moving forward, moving backwards, collecting money, collecting food, and collecting weapons. The number of steps or the amount collected depends on the die value. That means sometimes your card selection will not match well with the die roll of the round. E.g. high numbers are rolled, but you don't have any move forward action; or you do have a move forward action, but the active player assigns the high number to the other half of the day.

Card artwork is fantastic. Each action card has a left (day) and a right (night) half. On this card the day action is collecting weapons, and the night action is collecting food.

Every time you move, you need to pay the movement cost depicted at your destination, which is either food or money. If you can't pay, you have to move backwards, and it is possible that you end up further back from where you started. However being unable to pay is not always a bad thing. Sometime you want to have this happen to you so that you can end your movement at a buried treasure location.

The start of the race. Start / finish line is Port Royale. The tiny white squares on the sea spaces are food requirements when you land on the spaces. If you can't afford the food, you pay all you can and then must move backwards. That die on the right is the combat die.

When two pirate ships meet, you fight! That's regardless of whether the two players involved want to or not. Fighting is simple. The attacker decides whether to spend weapons to boost his attack, and then rolls a special combat die. After that the defender decides whether to spend weapons and then rolls the die too. The winner gets to steal a treasure from the loser, or steal the content of one cargo hold, or give a cursed treasure to the loser.

The game ends once a player crosses the finish line. Scores are tallied, and the highest scorer wins.

This player board represent the five cargo holds of your ship. You can only store one resource type per hold. If all holds are full, and you have a collect resource action, you must clear out a hold before you load the new batch of resources.

The Play

Michelle and I played Jamaica with the children (8 and 6) at Meeples Cafe. The game doesn't really feel that much like a race game to me, because you don't really keep pressing towards the goal. Instead you are at the mercy of your card draws, and you make tactical decisions to gradually sail forward, picking up food, money and weapons along the way, which are needed to fuel your race. The game is not just about the destination; it is very much about the journey too. There will be competition for the treasure chests. There will be fighting and robbing one another.

There is some luck in the game, but the fact that you always get to choose from three cards makes you feel you have reasonably good control. Also everyone has the same deck of cards, which helps in balancing things. And of course when you are the active player and get to roll the dice and assign them, that's a little bit more of control. There will be times that you can't do anything very useful because of the dice and your hand of cards. You just have to try to make the most of it. I think the relaxed pace of the race helps to make you mind less about the luck factor. There is less sense of urgency, so having a bit less control (I imagine the game is representing sailors at the mercy of the winds) doesn't make you feel too frustrated. In addition to the racing, you also enjoy the manoeuvring and positioning, the robbing and double-guessing along the way.

I was first to cross the finish line, and I won the game. However Michelle who was closest to the finish line was outscored by Shee Yun, who had more money and treasures. That proves the race is not everything.

Both dice are 1's so the active player has no decision to make when assigning them. There are still many round treasure tokens scattered around the race track. When you collect a treasure, you discard the token from the board and then draw a treasure card from the centre of the board. Treasures are usually worth points. Some are special equipment. Some are curses (negative points). There are more treasure cards than there are treasure tokens, so no every treasure card will appear in every game.

The Thoughts

Jamaica is well-suited for families and casual gaming. The copy at Meeples Cafe has gone through a lot of wear and tear. Nothing broken, but it has obviously been played many times. Components are soft and rounded and not crisp and sharp. It's a well-loved game. Jamaica has that balance of luck and control that makes it suitable to be played by adults and children together, or regular players and casual players together. More experienced players will do better but will not always win. Less experienced players are not overwhelmed and don't feel they have no chance.