Game Review: Snow Tails

By W. Eric Martin
December 10, 2008

Publisher: Fragor Games
Designers: Gordon & Fraser Lamont
Players: 2-5
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 45 minutes
Rules Language: English & German
Price: €35
Links:

Version played: Production copy
Times played: Three, once each with 3, 4 and 5 players

I’ll admit that I was predisposed to like Snow Tails, the new Lamont Brothers game that was released at Spiel 08, from the get-go as it sounded similar to one of my favorite games, Wolfgang Riedesser’s Ave Caesar. That title is a stripped down race game in which each player has his own deck of number cards and a twin set of goals: (1) efficient movement to hog the shorter inside tracks and (2) effective movement to land on choke points and stick it to others. Oh, and winning, of course – but that result flows from success at those goals.

In Ave Caesar, each player has a hand of three cards, with the cards numbered 1-6, and on a turn you must play one card if possible and move exactly that many spaces. While the rules have a few movement restrictions and details on how to change lanes, they are otherwise minimal, which allows players to focus on the consequences of their actions rather than the mechnical nature of how to take those actions.

Come to the Land of the Ice and Snow

Compared to Ave Caesar, Snow Tails ups the difficulty level of both vehicle movement and navigation on the track, with results both positive and negative. Each player again has his own deck of movement cards, numbered 1-5, but players use these cards to adjust the speed of the left- and right-hand husky dogs on their sled as well as the strength of the sled’s brake. The speed of a sled is the sum of the dogs minus the strength of the brake, with a starting speed of 3 + 3 – 3 = 3. On a turn, you must play 1-3 cards, with all played cards bearing the same number, then move your sled. If your dogs are of unequal strength, the sled drifts in the direction of the stronger dog; if your dogs are equal, on the other hand, you can take a bonus movement equal to your position in the race.

The drifting of your sled is a nice design touch and effortlessly summons the feel of your sled gliding across the frozen Alaskan tundra. In the picture on the left, for example, the green sled at the front of the pack has just completed a controlled slide sideways across multiple lanes to position itself for a run at the upcoming straightaway. Drifting is also essential since unlike in Ave Caesar and numerous other racing games, the corners and U-turns of the track force you to change lanes or else race headlong into a wall of snow. Doing so damages your sled and reduces your movement options in future turns.

The combination of possible card plays on both dogs and brake presents you with multiple opportunities to make clever plays, both to exploit the nature of the track (which includes giant-sized spaces in the inner lanes to represent the advantage of that position) and to stymie opponents. Movement each round is taken in order from first place to last, which means that sticking your nose (or your dog’s nose) ahead of someone else gives you a chance to block them out of a curve or simply reduce their options for movement as collisions are always the fault of the moving party and result in damage to the mover’s sled.

The drawback of the movement system is that it increases the level of whining around the table – that is, people complain about having only low numbers or having non-matching numbers. To be more charitable, figuring out your optimal move takes more time and experience, so you’re likely to be staring at the track more than in something like Ave Caesar, puzzling over what your speed and drift would be if you play this card, or this other card, or this pair of cards. You’ll eyeball the movement, then eyeball it again if you drift at a different point during the movement, and so on. Experience will get you over this hump, and by my third game, movement felt more intuitive as I could better visualize the result of possible card plays.

The multiple shifting lanes in the corners and U-turns are an interesting complication to the race, but they also make the game more difficult to explain and play because sleds that drift earlier or later in their movement might end their turn in a different location. In general, the tracks reward earlier drifting in curves with a more advanced position and later drifting with sluggish movement, while not affecting the ending position for those who drift in the middle lanes of a curve – yet those effects aren’t obvious at a glance, so players tend to count off their movement, then count again, etc. Again, experience should alleviate the tedious and worklike nature of these types of turns, but until you reach that point, you might struggle.

How that awesome slide was accomplished...

Hail, Huskies!

All-in-all, I’ve stuck with my initial assessment of Snow Tails as Advanced Ave Caesar. The feel of the two games is similar as you need to use hand management to fuel movement this turn and prepare for future turns, whether you’re aiming to drift through a U-turn or approaching a speed limit that will damage your sled if you cross it too quickly. You can time passes in order to cut someone off and force them to hit you or go out of control. You can also be aware of which opponents have played which cards to give you a sense of what’s left in their deck and possibly already on deck in their hand.

Beyond those comparisons, Snow Tails uses a more dynamic movement system that should reward more extensive play. Currently I feel like I’m still struggling to find the sweet paths through a course. In Ave Caesar, the good spots on the course are clear to everyone; the only question is whether you have the cards in hand to take advantage of them. In Snow Tails, you have more freedom to move and experiment, to push your dogs and sled and take damage and yet still keep moving. Damage can take you out of the game if it’s too severe, but you can also throw away future options (by clogging your hand with damage cards) to gain a positional advantage in the present; the ability to make those kinds of trade-offs is always welcome in a game.

While Snow Tails lists a range of 2-5 players, I enjoyed the game more with five than with four, and more with four than with three. The additional players add to the difficulty and interaction of the game.

I still appreciate the cleanness and simplicity of Ave Caesar, and perhaps in time the gleam of newness from Snow Tails will be revealed as a case of snow blindness, but for now I’m enjoying the ride. (No comment on the view!)

Note: Asmodee has announced a new edition of Snow Tails, with an as-yet-unannounced new name, for release in Q2 2009.

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