Sure! My guess is they slipstreamed between curves 3 and 4 on the first lap so they could take those turns in succession and did the same on the second lap to get down to 15 player turns, but I’d love to know how they managed the two long stretches with the speed 7 curve in between. It’s tough to go 17 spaces twice with only on turn in between.
@@wingames9172 Racetrack weather: start with 5 heats; corner 1 (spd limit 7) - overheat, corner 2 (spd limit 3) - overheat, corner 3 (spd limit 3) - spd+1, corner 4 (spd limit 2) - spd+1. Picked garage cards: Gas Pedal (3 spd, 3 discard), Body (5 spd, 1 stress), 4w Drive (4 spd, 1 plus). Turn 1: passing starting leg on 2nd gear with 10 spd. Turn 2: passing 1st corner on 3rd gear with 7 spd. Turn 3: passing 2nd leg on 3rd gear with 14 spd. Turn 4: passing 2nd corner on 2 gear with 2 spd. Turn 5: passing 3rd leg on 3rd gear with 12 spd. Turn 6: passing 3rd corner on 2 gear with 5 spd. Turn 7: passing 4th corner on 3rd gear with 5 spd. Turn 8: passing 5th leg (start-finish) on 4th gear with 18 spd. Turn 9: passing 1st corner on 3rd gear with 8 spd. Turn 10: passing 6th leg on 3rd gear with 15 spd. Turn 11: passing 2nd corner on 2nd gear with 3 spd. Turn 12: passing 7th leg on 2nd gear with 12 spd. Turn 13: passing 3rd corner on 1st gear with 3 spd. Turn 14: passing 4th corner on 2nd gear with 7 spd. Turn 15: passing 9th leg (finish) on 3rd gear with 16 spd. These speeds do not include slipstream, also I did not record what cards exactly have been played and when, no recording on spending and cooling heats. You can watch the replay yourself for more details.
You should know the weather before you draft btw. That's the rules, only in Championship do you not, and it will influence how you draft. The optimal turns for each track are more: France 15-16 turns Great Britain 13-14 turns Italy 17-19 turns US 15-16 turns Depending on how kind or ugly the setup is.
I would love a discussion of hand management in this post to post style gameplay. For instance, on the USA track I notice that you assume the use of 2 of the 3 4 cards in the opening turn to stay in second gear. Then 2 turns later, you spend all the 4s and a 5. This seems like it would be problematic. I personally love this rubric for evaluating the tracks and the expectation of turns. But, I I think it is an incomplete system. The hand management of the game is central, do you have similar rubric for thinking about that part of the game?
This is a great question, and a very astute observation. Each section of the track was analyzed without regard to what cards you would need to get through the previous section. The long stretch on Italy, for example, cannot be achieved in two player turns without using heat to boost, specific garage cards, or a very lucky and well timed reshuffling. Hand management is the name of the game, and this video only showed what you were trying to get your hand to do. I’m still learning the hand management aspect, but a good starting principle is that you want to have the cards you need this turn and the cards you need next turn at the same time. Try to save your 1’s for getting around the last turn before the big straight away in third gear. I never discard cards unless it’s very obvious that I won’t have what I need next turn. If I figure out more I’ll add an update!
Yeah, I'm with you on that. The argument against is that it adds time to decision making, but I find that a player is much more likely to spend extra time if they have to sit there trying to remember their previous two turns. If you just let them peek at their discard pile they can often make a decision more quickly. A brief look at the BGG forum, however, shows that this can be a pretty heated topic of debate, so I went with the rules for this video.
This is so concise! Great break down. I have to admit my first instinct is to test your assessment by drafting cards that cost heat or use cooling and then either race conservatively on the first lap and go extreem on the second or else try to make progress on lap one and then cheat back into a good position using cooling cards for lap two. What do you think my results would be?
I'd love to know what you find out! It would be nice to have a digital version of the game so we could race a wider community. The challenge with spending too much on the 1st lap is that your discard reshuffles before (or on) the longer stretch where you are typically playing a lot of cards. This means the 2nd run through your deck happens very quickly and you can end up with a lot of heat in your hand at once, making it harder to control your car on the second lap. In addition you usually need at least 2 heat to get over the long stretches (double shifting to 4th, boosting, paying for a turbo, etc.) which leaves you very little margin if you've already spent 3 or 4 heat on lap one. Cooling cards are nice if they come up at the right time, but that's difficult to control, they offer little benefit on lap one, and they don't address the challenge of getting through your stress cards. I would admit that I've mostly tested garage cards independently, and there may well be strategic pairings that produce distinct advantages, which is part of what makes this game so great!
@@wingames9172, having that problem on a BGA ranked-arena asynch game right now! I led after lap 1 but can’t keep a good speed getting through the long straightaway to the second lap’s first curve since I have 3 or 4 heat cards now in hand.
I have just played my first game, so i may misunderstand the rules: but how can you skip two 'posts' (corners?)? For example, on the France map. Corner 1 has a speed limit of 5. If you start at the space just before corner 1 you need to move 9 spaces to pass corner 2. As it is setup that is 4 more than the first corner allows and 6 more than the second corner allows. Wouldn't you need 10 heat in total, or 8 heat with slipstreaming? Thx!
Great question! You're absolutely right. It is not feasible on the France track to take two curves in a single player turn. I introduce the phrase "post-to-post racing" in this video to describe driving as fast as possible without spending any heat. In general this means it takes one player turn to get across a straightaway, one turn to get around a curve at the speed limit, one turn to cross the next straightaway, one turn to get around the next curve and so on. A post refers to the locations where your car stops at the end of each movement. For the France track this means the first lap would take 11 turns/posts. If, however, you could travel two extra spaces between the first two curves by slipstreaming or paying heat, then instead of: (1) go around curve one, (2) traverse the straightaway between them, (3) go around curve two; you could instead: (1) go around curve one and slipstream (2) go around curve two. Completing these two curves in 2 player turns instead of 3 is what I mean by skipping a post. Hopefully that makes more sense.
Note that there are Garage Module upgrade cards that raise the speed limit of a corner and increase your slipstream.. So in France, if you for example play tires ++ (+2 corner modifier) and wings 3 (+2 corner modifier, costs one heat) you could even get through the first two corners without slipstreaming by paying a total of 5 heat. If you also caught a slipstream, you could potentially get through with a 3 heat cost or even less depending on weather conditions. Similar feats can also be achieved with the slipstream upgrade cards. In theory you could for example play two slipstream cards that add +2 and +3 to your slipstream, and the weather in that sector could add another +2 allowing you to slipstream as many as 9 tiles. Suddenly corner-skipping is a piece of cake if you just manage to hit a slipstream.
I dont think you mention how crucial it is when you're racing toward finish line against someone To sacrifice more heat, to hop from second to first And then next turn you go first is huge.
An interesting point. If crossing the line first made you win it would be absolutely critical to go first on the turn that both of the finishing cars crossed the line, but the winner is the player who crosses the line by the most at the end of the round. The only advantage of going first in the final round is that you win the tie breaker if both cars cross by the same amount. That means that it if you have a choice between going one space further and owning the tie-breaker, you should always go the extra space. In my experience over the last two hands of the race I often have a choice of spending my heat on the second to last turn to boost/shift or spending my heat on the last turn. Of course if you can do both, you should do both, but if you have to chose I think that you can increase your chances of going farther by spending the heat in the last round. This is because I'm often playing a lot of my higher cards in the second to last hand, so they won't be in my deck and thus are not available for my boost. If I wait a hand, however, my discard may reshuffle into my deck and give me a much better chance at a high boost. Even if my deck is sufficiently large that none of the cards in my second to last hand will be reshuffled, I'd rather not be forced to play the next bad card. I'd rather look at the next set of cards and play them if they're high and skip them if their low. This gives me the best chance of going the farthest. It's usually not a game breaker either way, but for what it's worth, when I'm forced to chose I spend the heat on the last hand.
Also remember that if you have only 1 or 2 heat entering the final turn, each heat can mean EITHER going on further space speeding around the corner, OR let you play an extra card through upshifting, boosting, or paying the heat cost on drafted cards.
Yes, I unfortunately introduced my own vocabulary. If you watch starting at minute two I place stones along the track to indicate how far you can go on each turn without spending any heat. This lets me count how many player turns it will take to finish the race without heat. If you just race from one stone to the next, I call that post to post racing, and the goal is to figure out how you can spend heat to skip a post so that you finish the race a turn or two earlier than you otherwise would.
