Fraser McHarg: Some racing games

As promised last time, here is a little discussion on some new, to our house, racing games.

Melissa brought Powerboats back from Essen, Fast Flowing Forrest Fellers arrived as unaccompanied games a little while later, Snow Tails arrived last week via the slow and bumpy boat from Essen and Formula D was a Christmas present to myself when collecting my Secret Santa gift.

Fundamentally Formula D is the same as Formula Dé except that it has the really cool dashboards and street racing rules.  A quick flick through the rules showed no radical changes although I did notice that at least one thing had moved from the standard to advanced rules, in effect making the standard Formula D game a bit simpler.  Maybe this is why the recommended age has dropped from 10+ to 8+

Looking at the map I saw that the new map does not have the racing car guy and the array of special dice scatted around as additional artwork which was a feature on all the Formula Dé tracks.  It, of course, has no impact on game play but I do miss it.  Luckily one can play all the old tracks.

There’s additional cars in the new version and I have already drooled enough about the dashboards.  If you have Formula Dé you don’t need Formula D, but you may well want it ;-)

So far I have only managed to player two player games of Powerboats and I think it would be a little more interesting (read chaotic if you will) with more players.  Where as Formula D[é] is really a resource management game, Powerboats is more of a risk management game.

The decision on whether to change the number of dice you have and which, if any, of the existing dice you should reroll can be very important in avoiding that potential crash and/or sinking on your next turn.  Melissa claims to be cursed at dice games and given that her powerboat sank in the first two races, perhaps she is correct.

Daughter the Elder (ten) played although didn’t seem overly enthused, however Daughter the Younger who watched us play specifically requested to play it a couple of days later.  I think it would be interesting to try with four or more players.

I have now played Snow Tails with three, four and five players.  We found that three players was a little bland in that there was very little interaction between players, but with four and especially with five players there was a lot more jockeying for position, cutting people off etc. which made it a much more fun experience.  In a sense Snow Tails has the same risk issues as Powerboats especially when you a travelling at high speed towards a corner or a safety limit and are not sure if you are going to be able to slow down or drift enough.  I can see this being even more fun after graduating from the beginner tracks to the more advanced obstacle laden tracks with trees and ice walls.  Will you play it fast and furious and risk a dent or three to your sled or play it safe and slower?

Fast Flowing Forest Fellers is a game that can be played “nice” or “competitively”.  Playing it nice, you would just try and reach the end without interfering with other players.  Playing it competitively you try and try and reach the end and do everything in your power to stop or hinder other players.  You push them into rapids, put logs in their way and try to avoid them doing the same to you.  We have always played it competitively.  It is quite a light game but a lot of fun indeed.  Like Snow Tails you construct a course out of components and you can make it long or short or easy or difficult.  The modular boards allow for a huge variety in playing fields and thus a lot of replayability.

My guess is that Fast Flowing Forest Fellers and Snow Tails are going to get the most plays at our house as they are shorter than Formula D.  Initial interest in Powerboats has not been as high, but a couple of whole family games may change that.

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