Episode 161 AP Table Talk: Race

AP Table Talk: Race

Episode Summary:

In this episode of AP Table Talk, Brian and Dave dig into the race mechanic, where players compete toward a shared finish line and the first to cross it ends the game. From childhood staples like Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land to modern classics like Catan, Splendor, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, and Cosmoctopus, they unpack how race structures create tension, pacing, and dramatic finishes. Along the way, they explore design tradeoffs around luck, runaway leaders, player interaction, and why some games feel like races without truly using the mechanic at all.

Brian Eng:

Hello, and welcome to AP Table Talk, a podcast where we explore board games and what makes them interesting to us. As always, I'm your host, Brian, and with me, as usual, my cousin Dave. And Dave, this episode, we have a very controversial topic… race!

Dave Eng:

Race. Exactly. I was thinking about that, Bri. Going through, I was like, "Yeah, I'm covering race." As the mechanic guys, the mechanic, that's what we're covering for the next AP Table Talk episode. So, yes, I was thinking about that.

Brian Eng:

Every time I said it, I'm like, "Oh, this is controversial." And then it got me thinking of our ... Was that our last episode, variable player powers?

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Yep.

Brian Eng:

Because then you have races where they have variable players.

Dave Eng:

Oh, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when we were talking about this, Bri, there was a game I wanted to cover for variable player powers, but I did not and I was upset, but it also had the race mechanic. So we will be talking about it this episode.

Brian Eng:

All right. Good. I am interested to see what that game is.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, we'll jump right into it.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, sure.

Dave Eng:

So Brian said we're going to be talking about the race mechanic. So Brian, you want to lead off with how you define the race mechanic to everyone?

Brian Eng:

All right. So I thought about it a little bit because this is, again, I feel like this is one of those early fundamental mechanics. So I tried to dig down to just boil it down to its essence. And essentially, it's a mechanic where there is a single shared goal or task and when it is achieved, the player that achieves it wins and signifies the end of the game.

I mean, obviously, the obvious analogy would be an actual race where you reach the finish line and the game ends and whoever crossed the finish line is first. But we're talking about any specific goal. So you could be talking about reaching a certain number of points or I mean, those are generally the two things. Reaching the end of some track, whether it's a point track or a physical track. Yeah. So that's how I define the race mechanic of board games.

Dave Eng:

Okay. So I think you got pretty close here, but I'm going to read the definition of the race mechanic or off of BoardGameGeek, bgg.com. So the website says, "Games where the first player to achieve a key objective wins the game." Typically, this is expressed as the winner being the first player to reach the end of a track, but any type of fixed goal also qualifies as a race mechanism. Catan, as an example, where players race to reach 10 points, and The Quest for El Dorado is an example where players race to reach a goal on a map. So those are the two examples of the website.

Brian Eng:

I think that's pretty close. I think my example I was going to use was Candy Land.

Dave Eng:

Yep. Yep. It's a race game.

Brian Eng:

What is it? Flipping cards, right? Where you flip a card and you move to whatever color and whoever makes it to the end wins.

Dave Eng:

Yep.

Brian Eng:

Horrible, horrible game.

Dave Eng:

Well, I mean, it's a horrible game if you want to have decisions, right?

Brian Eng:

Yes, yes, yes.

Dave Eng:

When you think about it, it's all predetermined, right? Because that gets shuffled and you just flip them over. But if you don't want to make any decisions, I think it's great.

Brian Eng:

The other example I came up with, because I consider that basically what you would call a race, a traditional race. And then I was thinking for points, an old one is Cribbage. It's a card game where you race to get to, usually it's 121 points. People play to all different points, I guess.

Dave Eng:

So your version, you played 121 points?

Brian Eng:

I think that's the standard. Maybe not. That might just be my cafeteria.

Dave Eng:

Did we cover that under trick taking?

Brian Eng:

Did we? I don't remember if we did.

Dave Eng:

I don't know. It's a while ago now.

Brian Eng:

So, yeah, it's been a bit. But anyways, yeah, those are some common examples. I'm sure we'll get to some more.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yes.

Brian Eng:

When I was thinking of the definition, so in preparation of these episodes, we usually play some games related to the mechanic on Board Game Arena or whatever to try and kind of just get familiar with some different ones. And one of the ones we've been playing, and we still have a game going, is Luxor.

Dave Eng:

Yep. Yeah, Luxor.

Brian Eng:

And then as we were playing and I'm thinking about my definition, I'm like, it does not fit the race mechanic definition because in that game, the game ends when you reach the end, but the first person to reach the end is not the winner.

Dave Eng:

Yep, that's true.

Brian Eng:

So it triggers the end game, but it does not declare the victor.

Dave Eng:

Well, that's one of those points I wanted to talk about.

Brian Eng:

It does not suit this specific definition of the race mechanic.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah. But like in my research for this.

Brian Eng:

But it is a race.

Dave Eng:

It is a race. Yeah. My research for this, I did discriminate in between what different types of race mechanics can be implemented in games because it's not always mutually exclusive. It doesn't have to be a race to determine the winner, but there's other race mechanics that you can use in order to integrate it in your design, and we'll talk about that later.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. Okay. All right. So well, we might as well move on to our actual major examples that we chose. Okay. I just got my dice out. Oh, here it is. All right.

Dave Eng:

So if you are listening to AP Table Talk for the first time, in this section, Brian and I are going to go through our first, our favorite and our most noteworthy and biggest examples of the mechanic for the episode. So what we do is both Brian and I have a D20, we're going to roll them and whoever rolls the highest is going to lead. We'll do the first game we played with the mechanic, your favorite, and then most noteworthy/biggest. So I'm ready to roll when you are, Bri.

Brian Eng:

Okay. Let's go.

Dave Eng:

Three, two, one, roll.

Brian Eng:

I got nine.

Dave Eng:

I have 19. Nice.

Brian Eng:

Okay. So you can lead us off.

Dave Eng:

All right. So we are leading off with the first game that has happened.

Brian Eng:

So I'm making a prediction that we might have an overlap on our first game, but we'll see. Let's see.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, I think so. Well, considering you kind of brought it up already, but I'm going to say the first game is Chutes and Ladders.

Brian Eng:

Okay. All right.

Dave Eng:

I mean, it's not exactly Candy Land, but I mean, it's pretty close.

Brian Eng:

So I don't know how many times I've actually played Candy Land. Does Candy Land, is there anything that makes you go back or forward, or do you just literally move forward?

Dave Eng:

I think you might just literally move forward, but it's been a while.

Brian Eng:

So Snakes and Ladders, assuming that most of the people are familiar with it, I mean, I grew up as Snakes and Ladders.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, for me were Chutes and Ladders.

Brian Eng:

It's 100 squares and you roll a die and you move. And if you hit a space that's the bottom of a ladder, you go up or the top of a snake or a slide and you slide back down.

Dave Eng:

Exactly.

Brian Eng:

And you're just trying to make it to the top. So yes, that was also my first game.

Dave Eng:

That's your first game?

Brian Eng:

I have that as my first game played, yes.

Dave Eng:

Okay.

Brian Eng:

I have a feeling that might be a lot of people's first game.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's a reason. There's a reason.

Brian Eng:

Very simple.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, it's super simple. I mean, I specifically remember playing it on the floor of my childhood bedroom at home because it's just very simple. Like you said before, you just need to get from this part of the board to that part of board, try to land on the spaces with the ladders, avoid the spaces with the slides. As a kid, it's just like, "Okay, well, I just have to get over there." There's nothing else to explain other than get over there, right?

Brian Eng:

Yeah. Point A to point B. Sometimes you get unlucky and slide 80 numbers back.

Dave Eng:

Well, what do you remember about playing this? Because mine, I specifically remember playing it in my first bedroom.

Brian Eng:

I do remember playing it. We would have just been somewhere usually in the family room of a house in Hamilton and it would just be probably me and my brother. I don't even know if I enjoyed it much when I was a kid either.

Dave Eng:

It was just kind of an activity?

Brian Eng:

It was just a thing you did. I think I ended up just playing on the board more because I doubt that my brother would have wanted to play it very much. So I think I just used the board and just kind of like ... I remember looking at the drawings on the board a lot. So I was probably just playing on the board. Yeah. I know it was my first because I can't think of another one that would have been that early. I didn't have Candy Land.

Dave Eng:

No. Yeah, I didn't have Candy Land either. I only had Chutes and Ladders.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. So I'm positive it was. I don't remember a lot about it. I get why it's a game to introduce the kids. We can teach them to count and move spaces and things, but we have many more games for that. My kids have never played Snakes and Ladders.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we've iterated since then.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, exactly.

Dave Eng:

We've innovated.

Brian Eng:

So I have no need to bring that one back.

Dave Eng:

And for good cause.

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

So that was our first? Chutes and Ladders for both of us?

Brian Eng:

Yeah. So we have some common Snakes/Chutes and Ladders for both of us.

Dave Eng:

Okay. Well, hopefully the next one I think will have different responses.

Brian Eng:

I'll let you lead off again on this one since that was a draw on that one.

Dave Eng:

So this one is, we're covering your favorite game with a race mechanic and I have a number one and then I have a runner up, Brian.

Brian Eng:

Okay.

Dave Eng:

So my number one is Splendor, because I have over 150 plus plays of Splendor when I last checked.

Brian Eng:

Nice. Good choice. That was on my short list for sure.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. It's a game I played a lot. It's a race to 15 points. So it's not a physical race. It's a race to just like a point threshold. There's a variant where you can race instead to 21 points. And then my feedback is that the game can feel very, very fast if you're not paying attention because someone will just reach that threshold and then the game will be over. And then you want me to cover my runner upright, Bri, or you want to leave your favorite?

Brian Eng:

Sure, go ahead.

Dave Eng:

Okay. And then my runner up, this is the game, Bri, that I wanted to cover in the last episode because it has asymmetric player powers, but I could not, but it is a race mechanic. It's called Magical Athlete.

Brian Eng:

I am not familiar with that game. Is that older?

Dave Eng:

Well, when you look at the arts, it looks like it's a game from the 70s, but I mean apparently ... You know what? I didn't really dig into history. It had a recent re-release, but basically it's a roll-and-move game. And before you roll your eyes, what I think is cool about it is that it's a roll-and-move game, but you have a Magical Athlete and you can draw these, you draft these, they're drawn from the deck randomly, but people get to snake draft them and all your Magical Athletes have different abilities, asymmetric abilities. So it's a roll-and-move game, but depending on when you roll, when other people use their abilities, if you use your ability, you get to move faster, slower, move around the positions of everyone else.

Brian Eng:

All right.

Dave Eng:

So I like this game because it made me re-believe in like roll-and-moves again. And my Magical Athlete that I play normally if I can draft them is called Party Animal because Party Animal, one, I don't know, Brian, if you can bring up Magical Athlete.

Brian Eng:

I brought it up on Board Game Geek. So this is 2003 was the original.

Dave Eng:

Oh, okay. So I mean, it sounds relatively cute, but it's like close to 20 years ago at this point. Or over 20 years ago.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. That's still kind of an older game in the grand scheme of board games.

Dave Eng:

The sphere of things? Yep.

Brian Eng:

Yes.

Dave Eng:

But my favorite Magical Athlete is Party Animal. I don't know if you can look up an image of what Party Animal looks like.

Brian Eng:

Oh, you know what? You probably have the newer version, right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Yeah. The recent printing.

Brian Eng:

Which was 2025. I'll look at that one up because there's ... Oh, they don't have names. They just have little like the wooden pieces.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah. What's great about it, Bri is that every-

Brian Eng:

Is it just a Big Mouth?

Dave Eng:

What's that?

Brian Eng:

One of them is just a Big Mouth.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah, it's just called Big Mouth.

Brian Eng:

Okay, that's not Party Animal?

Dave Eng:

And one of them just called Huge baby or Big Baby. But anyway, the reason I like Party Animal, because it's a race on a single track with Party Animal, whenever Party Animal starts their turn, everyone on the track moves one space closer to Party Animal. So if you're behind Party Animal, you move up. When you're front of Party Animal, you move back.

Brian Eng:

So you're a magnet?

Dave Eng:

Everyone comes to my party.

Brian Eng:

Nice. Nice.

Dave Eng:

And then based on how many players are on your space, that's how much I get to add to my die roll. So if I roll a six and I have two other players-

Brian Eng:

Oh, that's kind of cool.

Dave Eng:

... then I get an eight. But it's one of those games where it's like, "Hey, I don't know if I'm going to really like this too." I really like this game.

Brian Eng:

That's pretty fun. I'm seeing if I can guess which one of these is Party Animal and I have not figured it out. I see Big Baby.

Dave Eng:

Is it Big Baby or Huge Baby?

Brian Eng:

I don't have the names. I just know which one that is because it's just a giant baby. That piece is kind of much bigger-

Dave Eng:

Yeah, Bri, if you can find this-

Brian Eng:

... and clearly much thicker than all the other pieces.

Dave Eng:

Do you know what its ability is? Can you guess based on what it looks like?

Brian Eng:

Does he block people?

Dave Eng:

You cannot pass Big Baby.

Brian Eng:

All right. I got it.

Dave Eng:

And I think if Big Baby lands on you, you get pushed back one space.

Brian Eng:

Ah, that's pretty funny. I don't know which one's Party Animal.

Dave Eng:

There's no images? I thought it would say-

Brian Eng:

No, I have the images, but it doesn't have the names. It's just the image of all the pieces of the players.

Dave Eng:

Oh, I see.

Brian Eng:

I mean, I'm sure I could find another image, but I'm just trying to guess from this one, which one's Party Animal and I'm not able to guess.

Dave Eng:

Well, I'll just point out ... Oh, you know what? I tried to ... Oh, here we go. I found a screenshot of Party Animal.

Brian Eng:

Oh, okay. The bear. Okay. Nice.

Dave Eng:

Who's doing this.

Brian Eng:

I'm just going to ... Yeah.

Dave Eng:

Party Animal. Whenever I play it with the Banditos, if I'm the Party Animal before my tone, I just say, "Everyone come to my party!"

Brian Eng:

Okay.

Dave Eng:

That's fine. So that's me. That's my favorites.

Brian Eng:

All right. Okay. So I also have two. The reason I have ... I actually have more than two, but I had some neck and neck with my most noteworthy as well.

Dave Eng:

Yep.

Brian Eng:

So one of my most favorite gets talked about from me a lot in this podcast is Dune: Imperium.

Dave Eng:

Yep.

Brian Eng:

I'm not going to talk about that because we talk about that a lot.

Dave Eng:

I think every episode there's been at least one Dune: Imperium reference. This is no exception.

Brian Eng:

So in that one, it's first to 10 points is the winner. It doesn't really feel like a race in that sense. So I kind of decided, "You know what, okay, I'll mention it because it does use the race mechanic." My next choice for favorite game is another one I do mention in this podcast, but I don't think I've mentioned it since one of our earlier episodes. I believe it would have been the Mancala episode, which is Istanbul.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. It's one I discovered with you at whichever PAX it was.

Dave Eng:

I think it might have been the first packs, but we also played in your basement. I remember that specifically.

Brian Eng:

Yes. I bought it after that. So in that game, I will talk about this because I probably haven't talked about it for a while if I even described it much. So you are each merchants and you're navigating a bazaar in Turkey, obviously, in like the Ottoman era and you have a stack of tokens which represents you and your assistants. And you move in like a Mancala fashion, which is why we talk about there. You can move one or two spaces and you're basically moving around this randomized 4x4 grid of locations.

The goal of the game is to be the first to collect five gems. And as you move around the different space, you can buy, sell or trade goods. I like it because the randomization creates ... It's not quite an engine builder. You're kind of trying to find an efficient loop, I guess, of getting gems. And by randomizing the locations, it kind of changes up the game each time and you can get blocked by other people and stuff like that. But there are many paths to get those gems. So I like that puzzle and it has a good amount of player interaction, which I like and things like that. And, yeah, I think the first time we played that, I loved that game.

Dave Eng:

Yeah.

Brian Eng:

I still really enjoy that one.

Dave Eng:

And funny story about this, Bri, I usually bring a new game to the Banditos each week, and the new game I brought to the Banditos last week is Istanbul: The Dice Game.

Brian Eng:

So I've seen that. I've never played it or I didn't even really look into it. So how was that?

Dave Eng:

I think that if you had to make a dice game based on the assets for Istanbul, it totally does that because instead of using the discs as your assistants, your assistants are just dice and you just roll them and then whatever the results are, the things you get, if you can roll enough of a set. So what I like is that it's very fast. I think we play in a four player game in under an hour, but I don't think ... For me, it's not a replacement of for Istanbul because it's not the same, right?

Brian Eng:

It's a different game just using the theme of Istanbul?

Dave Eng:

Yeah, basically. It's a race still. You still need to get rubies. It's first of five rubies in a four player game, but when you get the dice, you just roll them and then you just have to try to make the best sets you can or use other gems to re-roll. So it's not a replacement, but I think it's a good ... Good for you. You've reused the assets for a new game.

Brian Eng:

So is there any way to interact with the other players, or are you just taking your turn and you do your thing?

Dave Eng:

Your main interaction is there are cards. One of the die results in the D6 is our cards. And then based on how many cards you roll, you get to draw that many cards from the top of the deck. You can only resolve one. And a lot of those cards are like you as the active player, you get to do this, like you get both a fruit and money, and then everyone else can get a fruit or money.

Brian Eng:

Oh, okay. All right.

Dave Eng:

Or like sometimes there's exclusive actions for yourself, but basically everything in the deck just speeds the game up. You just get more stuff on other people's turns. So not like take thaty, but I mean, still good, I enjoyed playing it. I'll try to bring it back.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, I might look at it. It doesn't sound like it would be one I would get, but I'm interested to see the re-implementation, I guess.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. And then when I brought in the Banditos, they kept saying, "You keep emphasizing the dice game after the title. Does that mean that there's a regular Istanbul?" It's like, "Let me tell you about the regular Istanbul. Vanilla Istanbul."

Brian Eng:

It actually has two expansions, which I've never played either because I generally play at a low player count and each expansion adds either a row or a column.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, the board figure. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

The grid. And which to me would mean less player interaction, which I don't want. So I'm not sure I'll ever actually get those expansions.

Dave Eng:

And it's a game that's held up, I feel.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, that's one I like. The only thing, I think it's the Shut Up And Sit Down guys when they did their review. There is one aspect that now, once you've seen that review, you cannot unsee it. They happen to mention, if you look at the art in the regular Istanbul game, there are no women.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah. Well, I wonder if that is ... I mean, I don't know much about the Ottoman.

Brian Eng:

I mean, it might be, but it doesn't ... I don't know. I can see It's just odd. It's not done in an offensive way, but now that it's been brought up, it's hard to unsee it.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah. Okay. I feel like you've told me this before, Bri, but I don't remember it, but now I've re-remembered it and I can't un-remember it now.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. And I think they just did that to torture people.

Dave Eng:

Well, mission accomplished.

Brian Eng:

Mission accomplished. All right. So we will move on to our most noteworthy/biggest game, race mechanic game. All right. I'll let you go ahead.

Dave Eng:

Me first? Okay. So I have two games for this one, Bri.

Brian Eng:

Okay.

Dave Eng:

My personal one, and then I feel like an industry one. So my personal biggest, most noteworthy, biggest race game would be backgammon, because I think that it's just a solid skill game with a lot of high randomness. And what I learned was that in the early 2000s, there was that big poker boom for Texas hold'em. A lot of professional poker players are coming over from professional backgammon because it's a game ... Both poker and backgammon are games of skill, but there's a lot of randomness. So I remember a lot of new pro poker players came over or just transitioned over from playing professional backgammon.

Brian Eng:

That's interesting. There's a guy I used to work with who played a lot of online poker and I remember every time I would go to his desk, he would have online poker in one window open and online backgammon and in another window.

Dave Eng:

In other window?

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

I wonder if you could have played backgammon for money online at least.

Brian Eng:

I'm sure you can play anything for money.

Dave Eng:

Legally? We don't know.

Brian Eng:

It's online. It's in the cloud. So that was your industry one?

Dave Eng:

My industry one is going to be with Catan. I don't think you can attribute the current renaissance of board games without giving a nod to Catan. It's a race to 10 victory points. I think that the reason that Catan became so popular was because, again, the race mechanic is just so easy to communicate. It's just like first person to 10 victory points. That's the end of the game.

Brian Eng:

Yep. And so we have a little bit of a crossover here as well because I also picked two and I did what I kind of do was kind of like an older game and a newer game. So Catan is actually, in this sense, my older game, even though it's kind of like the beginning of the newer games, but I classified it as an older, but yeah, it's hard to talk about race mechanic without talking about Catan, I think, as being pretty significant. And then my other choice, which was very close also to going into my favorite is Heat: Pedal to the Metal.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah. I remember playing this.

Brian Eng:

So you have played this, right? Have you played it in person?

Dave Eng:

No, I don't know. I don't think so. I only think we played it on-

Brian Eng:

So I do think if you ever have the opportunity to play it with like at least five, if you can do six or more players, playing it in person, this game is really fun because there's a large portion of your turn you can do simultaneously. Even though you have a lot of people, it still speeds it up.

So Heat: Pedal to the Metal is ... We have talked about it before, but I'll briefly go over it. I guess it's '50s style Formula One racing and you're using cards to move. So you kind of select your gear and that lets you choose a number of cards from your hand. You have a seven-card hand and there's a number of ways that you can kind of be more aggressive.

The trick of the game is managing what's called heat cards from your engine, either in your engine or spending them to be more aggressive. And trick with that is, so for example, if you are in third gear, you get to use three cards to decide your speed, but you can boost for a heat. So you spend a heat out of your engine and boost and you just draw another random card, but you only have so much heat. And if you ever run out of heat, well, you just can't do the thing. Or there's certain parts where if you're in a turn, if you go too fast, you have to spend heat. And if you can't do it, you spin out and all kinds of stuff. So it's about managing this heat and kind of managing your deck, I guess.

The heat cards, once you spent them, they go into your deck and they become dead cards until you can put them back in your engine. So again, there's a trade-off of using it to be aggressive, but also it kind of mucks your deck up, right? And I just really like kind of the efficiency puzzle there as well and there's a lot of like ... I think there's a lot of planning. So each turn kind of has a speed limit, so you have to downshift beforehand and you can hang onto cards for the next round. So if you know, "Okay, I got to get through this turn." And then I have a big straightaway, so you can keep some of your higher cards so that you can spend them all on the straightaway and those kind of things. It's really satisfying when you pull that off. It kind of builds on, what's the ... Flamme Rouge?

Dave Eng:

Yeah, Flamme Rouge.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, which we played that at PAX. I enjoyed that a lot, but I think this is just kind of a better evolution of it. Even though it's luck driven, I think there's a lot of ways to mitigate luck. Yeah. So it was very popular when it came out. I know it's still pretty popular. Probably not as big as Catan, but I did want to come up with a more modern example. And that one is both an actual race, but yeah, obviously ... So usually, it's a couple, two or three laps of whatever the track is.

Dave Eng:

And I'm trying to remember the episode of which we talked about it before, Bri. I think it was deck building, right?

Brian Eng:

Could have been, yeah. Might have been.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, deck building because like you said, you're trying to create your deck with enough heat but not too much heat.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. And there's many different modules. There's one. They even bring in like asymmetric powers because there's a variant where you draft powers, which are special cards that are only in your deck. Like one that lets you choose a number between one and three for the card when it's time to move. So it gives you a little more variability or like extra cooling so it lets you put more heat back into your engine and things like that. And, yeah, you can tailor it a little bit to your racing style. For me, it's just bigger numbers all the time.

Dave Eng:

Even when you're trying to go into that curve.

Brian Eng:

Exactly. But yeah, it's very fun with a lot of people because, again, it doesn't bog down and there's a lot of tension in the racing because they ... I actually will probably talk about it later in the episode, but they have good ways of managing like people taking off in the lead or lagging behind and stuff for the most part. If you get too far behind, you're going to have a problem, but usually you can still kind of catch up even if you're last, you still have a chance. But, yeah, so that is my most noteworthy and kind of a tie almost for my favorite as well.

Dave Eng:

There you go. And I remember you were playing a lot of just the solo version of it on BGA.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, they have that on BGA.

Dave Eng:

You don't even play a lot of solo games. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

And I just thought it was a really good implementation because they handle all ... You can play with six opponents and they just handle it all for you as opposed to having to do it if you were doing it solo, and it was still pretty fun. That was when I was really into the game and I just wanted to play it more. So I guess we'll move on to our Beyond the Basics.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, yeah. So in our Beyond the Basics section, Brian and I are going to go back and forth again. We're going to discuss three likes we have for the mechanic and then three dislikes. But before we do that, we're going to roll again. And again, highest role on our D20s is going to lead with initiative.

Brian Eng:

Great.

Dave Eng:

So I'm ready to go, Bri, when you are.

Brian Eng:

Yep. All right. Roll. Seven.

Dave Eng:

Six.

Brian Eng:

Okay.

Dave Eng:

Nice.

Brian Eng:

Okay. So we'll start with some likes here. I guess we'll just alternate.

Dave Eng:

Yep. So your first like.

Brian Eng:

Okay. My first like, I think we touched on it when we were kind of just defining it a little bit. What I like is it is very clearly defined goal for everybody. So when you're explaining a game, if there's one thing that's not in question is, okay, this is how you win. It's very clear. So all of your thoughts about the rules and everything can be geared toward ... If you lay that out upfront, you know that everything else, how does it apply to reaching the finish line?

So generally speaking, the goal is easy to understand number of points or reach the finish line or whatever. In most, I also think it is easy to see kind of where you stand in the game, like who's winning, that kind of thing. And I like the tension that gets built when everybody is kind of pursuing the same goal. So that's my first like for the race mechanic is that clear definition of the goal of what you need to do to win.

Dave Eng:

Nice. So I think we're thinking along the same lines here, Bri, because my first like is that it's universally intuitive and that means it's easy to teach. So per your feedback, like I teach games all the time. So I think just having a really good clear win condition, like just be the first to do this or to cross the finish line. That's super easy to teach, super easy to convey. New players, based on what you said, Bri, new players can track progress easily, especially if it's like a physical race because you're just looking at the track, right?

Brian Eng:

Yeah. Just who's in the lead? Where am I?

Dave Eng:

Or save that. With a lot of modern board games, they have the Kramerleiste, which is the score track going around the board. So for the most part, in a lot of modern, commercially available like mass market games like Ticket to Ride, it's very easy to just look at the scoreboard and see like who's in the lead. That's the score right now. There's going to be some bonus scoring later, but it's just very easy to see like what the game state is in terms of like the leading player.

Brian Eng:

Right.

Dave Eng:

And then I also think that it's universally intuitive because I feel like it just crosses different cultural boundaries. I think that everyone kind of already knows what a race is. And when you explain the race mechanic, it's just like just that in this game, right?

Brian Eng:

Right, right. As we said, in board games even itself is one of the more basic mechanics. It's one of the earliest kind of things is like, "Okay, who can get there first?" Right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah, exactly.

Brian Eng:

Very easy to understand for the most part. I don't think anyone really has any questions when you're like laying out that it's a race.

Dave Eng:

Right, right. Just do this. Be the first to do this. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

All right. I'll move on to my second.

Dave Eng:                                          

Yep, go ahead.

Brian Eng:

So when I was kind of thinking about what I like about the mechanics, again, because this is such a basic mechanic in board games, I'm thinking about what I like and how the mechanic is implemented in a way that I like. And the ways that a race mechanic is implemented in the games that I like that use race mechanics is when there is a good balance of risk reward. So if we go back to heat, for example, that one's kind of almost a push-your-luck.

You can choose to push and be raced more aggressively, but the risk is you're using up that heat, you may need it later, you may be in trouble because you don't have enough heat later. So you have to decide. And part of that is based on where you are in the race. Do you need to push that hard? Maybe you can save your heat because you're ahead a lot.

I guess the generalization of that is there's some higher costs, whether it's time or resources in order for you to progress quicker towards that goal. When that's done well, that usually is a game where I like the race mechanic better in those games.

Dave Eng:

Right. You discussed this a little bit before. Mine kind of relates to yours is that I like the overall player experience with the race mechanic. It has really good pacing. I think it has a lot of good tension. And especially at the very end, the climax I think is great. So I think the race mechanic inherently is just great at having rising tension, especially if it's a physical race, like you said, with heath. With what I said with Magical Athlete.

And then at the end, I think that finish line moment is super thrilling. And the example I'm using here, and we've been playing this a lot, Bri, on Board Game Geek, it's Cosmoctopus because I think that ... I said, "Oh, I like that game a lot. I picked up a copy." And you're like, "I also picked up a copy."

Brian Eng:

Yeah, that's funny. Part of the reason I picked up a copy is it was a super deep discount on Amazon. I don't know where you got yours, but-

Dave Eng:

I got mine in a trade.

Brian Eng:

Okay. This was Amazon Canada, and it was ... I don't remember, but it was a pretty deep cut. And I just saw the pictures. I'm like, "Oh, those are some nice components." And then when I was looking for games for us to play, I saw Cosmoctopus. I was like, "Oh, that's a race game. Okay, let's try it out." Because it had okay reviews and whatnot. I'm like, "Okay, let's try it out." And then we played it and I'm like, "Yeah, I actually really like this one. I think there is some complexity." I'm always thinking, "How long until I can play this with my kids? Do I hold onto that long?"

Dave Eng:

I think I'll get there in at least the next maybe one year.

Brian Eng:

It does have a little bit of complexity in chaining those cards together, but I think Maxine could pick it up. I mean, she wouldn't win at it, but she could pick it up and then get better at it. And I like to push her because that's how she gets better. So, yeah, I'm like, "Oh, I'm just going to get it."

Dave Eng:

Yeah. If you're listening to this, you never played Cosmoctopus before. I looked this up, Bri. The designer is Henry Audubon. And when I realized that, I was like, "Oh, okay, this makes a lot of sense." Because he also designed Parks, also designed Trails, also the designed Space Park, also designed Kingswood. So he's very much about move the thing to get the thing and then convert those things into other things which are hopefully points. But the reason I bring this up for player experience was because our last game of Cosmoctopus, I saw ... If you haven't played before, basically, it's like Cthulhu themed, but it is like an octopus in space.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, kind of space Cthulhu sort of.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. And the race is you need to get all eight of Cosmoctopus' tentacles through your portal because once you do, you've summoned them, then you win the game. It's a race to eight points, basically. And Brian and I played this game maybe half a dozen times at this point, and I'm looking at Brian's board and I'm like, "Oh, Brian's like one move away from winning and I'm two tentacles behind. Could I do it?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I think I can." Because I had invested in some other cards that kind of increased my engine. I was like, "Yeah, there's only one way for me to win right now and I have to do it right now." And I did it and I was like, "Yeah, I did it. Brian was only one move away, but I did it sooner."

Brian Eng:

Very satisfying, because the chains are complex enough that you could make some big jumps, but it's hard ... I'm not paying enough attention to your cards, so I'm just taking a gamble that's like, "Okay, on average, you might be able to get a 10 ..." Depending on how far along in the game you are, you probably can get one tentacle per turn. So if I can do it in this amount, I'm pretty far ahead, but there are those times ... I think there was a game where you were pretty far ahead and I got like four or five tentacles or something like that.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. I was like, "What the hell the heck happened?"

Brian Eng:

It just happened. Everything lined up and I was able to just grab a bunch and just ended the game.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. And I think that's a thrilling part about the race, right?

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I actually enjoy it. It's funny because in certain situations, I could see that being not fun, but in that game, it's very satisfying. And I don't even mind when it happens against me. It's just fun to see those chains happen.

Dave Eng:

And I think we said that in the chat. We're like, "Oh, that escalated quickly." You went from like two to eight instantly. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I think we've both, based on our games, like the first game took a while. I can see how much quicker the games are now because we understand how to build that engine a little faster. But yeah, I like that game a lot and it has enough variability too, I feel, that you can get a lot of plays out of it.

Dave Eng:

I'm glad the box isn't big because I'm running out of shelf space. And I saw it and I was like, "Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, I could..."

Brian Eng:

It's one of those like half size boxes.

Dave Eng:

Yeah.

Brian Eng:

Perfect. All right. Where are we here?

Dave Eng:

That was our second like. I talked about the player experience, so it's onto you, Bri, for your third like.

Brian Eng:

So on my third like is when the race mechanic is implemented such that there's a good amount of strategic planning that you can do. And by that, I mean, this kind of relates to what we were just talking about with Cosmoctopus is being able to kind of like see a few steps ahead, know whether you need to be aggressive or not. Again, if I go back to Heat, it's like, okay, I mean, this is why I used it as my kind of biggest or most noteworthy, because I think it embodies a lot of what I like about race mechanic games and that it's very clear in heat because the track is laid out. So you know where you are, you can see when the turns are coming, when you need to slow down, when you need to speed up, and you can kind of plan for that.

The deck building part is the part that throws the wrench in for you. Are you going to get the cards you need? But there are many different ways to handle it. And the other part of that, not just for yourself, but your positioning like in racing. So if you know a turn is coming up and cars are behind you. So one of the things is if you land in a space directly behind another car, you draft and it lets you move up spaces. I think you can move basically two spaces so you can overtake them.

When you are coming up to turn, so each turn has a speed limit, really tight turns could be like a two, so you can't move more than two spaces without heat. So you want to get really close to those turns, but if you end your turn one space before the turn, and the person behind you lands behind you, then they can just get over that turn and a big part of it is-

Dave Eng:

Overtake you?

Brian Eng:

The overtaking, but generally, so we talked about how when you're behind in that, even if you're in a lot of spaces behind, you can catch up. More important than spaces in that game is how many turns behind you are, because turns is where everybody has to slow down to a certain speed limit.

If you're one or two turns behind, you can usually catch up. But if you're like three or four ... Once you get to three or four turns behind, you're probably out of the race unless something disastrous happens. So that's where it's important is not letting ... You don't want people to get turns ahead of you in a turn. And that's where it's like ... So that positioning comes in. And I really like that part of the planning is like, "Okay, where do I want, not just how far do I want to go, but where do I want my car to end up?"

Because you can also have two cars beside each other, which kind of blocks people from drafting past you. So that's another strategy you can use for that or just crowding up a turn so that people can't get close enough so they're forced to spend two turns to get around a tight turn or two rounds to get around a tight turn.

Dave Eng:

I think you specifically did that to me before when we were playing Heat online.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. It's definitely a strategy.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Eng:

I mean, the same goes in ... I'll use my other example, Dune: Imperium. So that's your race to 10 points. Because it's so few points to win that game, every point matters, but each round, one of the big things is there's a battle at the end of the round. And as the round goes on, what you win from that battle becomes bigger, like they break it up into three phases. So the rewards get larger as the game goes on.

And in the later rounds, you're winning victory points or multiple victory points from winning that battle at the end. People start to hoard their soldiers because the battle is essentially a points game is how many soldiers or whatever combat points you're going to commit to the battle. So everyone throws that in at the end and it's spent whether you win or lose and the winner will take the top and sometimes there's a second or third place thing, but generally victory points are only for the winner. Have you played the Dune: Imperium - Uprising?

Dave Eng:

I don't think so. I've only played the base Dune: Imperium.

Brian Eng:

Okay. So Dune: Imperium had the victory points for wins. I think there could even be two victory points at maximum to win one of those battles. In Uprising, what they added was the worms. So you can get a worm and you can commit that into a battle. And when you commit a worm, if you win with a worm in the battle, you get twice the rewards.

Dave Eng:

You don't have to be a Fremen to use the worm. You can be-

Brian Eng:

There's a number of steps to be able to get a worm in, but anybody can have a worm in the battle. And if you have worm in the battle and you win, whatever rewards you get, you get double. So if you win with a reward on a two victory point thing, you can get four victory points, which in a game that goes to 10 is a huge jump.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, that's a big jump.

Brian Eng:

So you may bank on that. So you don't know what the rewards are until each round starts, but you might hold onto your soldiers in anticipation of, "Okay, I'm going to commit these ..." When that card comes up, it may not come up though, but I'm going to hold onto these until the victory point card comes up so I can get all these victory points. And it's one of those things. I just like that kind of strategic planning. And sometimes, yeah, you hold on and it's too late because somebody else finds another way to win faster. It took you too long. You waited too long kind of thing.

Dave Eng:

Right, right.

Brian Eng:

So that's my third implementation that I like about race mechanics.

Dave Eng:

Nice. All right. So my third and last like is that it is flexible and versatile. So to like your point, Bri, the two types of race mechanic implementations we talked about are like the physical race, like you're actually like moving on a track and you're trying to race with that track. There's also the abstract scoring race, a threshold up to a specific point.

We talked about this in other AP Table Talk episodes before, but I think that this mechanic is so base level that it can pair well with a lot of other mechanics like with Heat, with engine ... Yeah, I guess engine building and Heat, right? It's like deck building kind of.

Brian Eng:

Yep.

Dave Eng:

Area control, betting. A lot of race games also have betting in them. Some notable ones I wanted to bring up is ... Have you ever played Can't Stop, Bri, online?

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

So Can't Stop, I mean, it's an abstract race in that you want to get three numbers, but also it's kind of like a betting race too, where you're like, "I'm only like two spaces away from the top of seven and no one has seven yet. Should I keep pushing it?"

Brian Eng:

Yeah, definitely, that is the embodiment of the push-your-luck game for sure. And that's why I am both, I can only lose that game horribly or win very quickly because I just keep going.

Dave Eng:

You can't stop. You can't stop.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, yeah.

Dave Eng:

And then we also played Nova Luna online, which is a game I liked or a game I like, I had the physical copy, but I traded away because our group had multiple copies of it floating around in the group. I still play that game a lot, but you didn't really like the game, Bri, like the overall core loop?

Brian Eng:

I don't know if it works well online. I wonder if I would like it better in person. I found it hard to pay attention to what you were doing.

Dave Eng:

Oh, for Nova Luna?

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much that matters for ... Really, it's about my picking pieces you need, I guess would be the only thing.

Dave Eng:

For like player interaction?

Brian Eng:

Yeah. For like what you're doing. Does it matter for me at all? And I feel like at least in a two player game, if we were playing in person, I'd be able to pay attention to that a little more. It just felt like it was a solitaire game, which is what I like.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. And that's one of the things I'm going to bring up later, but for that game, I wasn't really looking at your board, Bri. I was just like, what is the ... Because it's a time track. It's by Uwe Rosenberg. So it's a lot like Patchwork, whoever's behind in the time track gets to build it.

Brian Eng:

Right, right, right.

Dave Eng:

So I'm just like, "What is the smallest possible tile on the time track I could take that allowed to score some stuff and reach the ..." Because I just always wanted to take multiple turns in a row.

Brian Eng:

Exactly. Yeah. And I was doing the same. I feel like we were pretty close to even or you came out ahead and wins on that one before we started.

Dave Eng:

I think we were even on wins, but even the end of the game where it's a race to 10 points.

Brian Eng:

It was pretty close. Yeah.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. You had 10 or 20, I think it's a race to 20. You had 20 and I had 19 or I had 20 and you had 18. It was never a blowout. It was always very close.

Brian Eng:

That was another thing about playing it online, whereas I think in person ... I wasn't paying attention to how many pieces were left till the end of the game. So the game would end and I'm like, "Oh, I didn't even realize that you only needed one or whatever." And I think that's just because I don't have the components in front of me. So I wasn't looking at that counter going down. So I think I might like it a little more. I don't know if it's my game still, but I think I might like it a little more in person.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. I mean, I think it's still a good game. I don't know. I prefer to play it online just because it's easier, but in person works out too. But the other game I wanted to ask you, Bri, what you thought about it, so I played this game called EGO. It's a Reiner Knizia game. It recently had a rerelease by Bitewing. Have you ever played EGO?

Brian Eng:

I don't think so. I'm going to pull it up here myself, but ...

Dave Eng:

Okay. Well, while you're pulling it up, I'll give a brief explanation to the audience. So EGO is a rerelease game by Reiner Knizia released by Bitewing Games. It doesn't have the race mechanics specifically indicated on the BGG page, but I'll explain the core loop here, which is interesting in that I don't think this game really has like a "traditional" core loop because it's very much a game based on card play and it's very linear. You start on the first board, you go through each individual space on the board, everyone goes through those phases together, but most of the game centers around this. The theme is that you are part of an intergalactic organization and you're trying to communicate with other alien races. And by drawing these cards, it indicates how well you can communicate in their native language.

So the core thing you're trying to do is like when you reach these points where you're doing card play, you want to always be the last person in the ... You always want to be the last person to not shed, to stay in the round, basically. If you can't outbid someone else, you have to go out of the round early, which means that you're not going to get as big a reward.

Brian Eng:

Gotcha.

Dave Eng:

I said it was kind of the race in that you don't want to be the first to go out. You want to be the last. So it's kind of like an attrition. Because if you're the last one to go out, you get first pick at the rewards. So based on that, I don't think it fits the definition of race.

Brian Eng:

No, I don't, but I understand what you're saying of kind of the race feel kind of thing. And I will say, just looking at the ... I really like the game design. The pictures of this game very much appeal to me, the graphics and stuff.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. It's got a good graphic design and it's like serviceable and it's also very easy to differentiate between the components.

Brian Eng:

You'll have to bring this the next time we meet up. I want to try this game. I don't know how it works too, but-

Dave Eng:

Oh, okay. I don't think it's best to ... I think you need at least-

Brian Eng:

Well, yeah. I mean, if you're talking about like ... You probably want more than two, but maybe we can get somebody-

Dave Eng:

Well, it's Fred's copy.

Brian Eng:

Oh, okay.

Dave Eng:

But if you come down for any of events, I'm sure he'll play. It's really interesting because again, you are going through the board. Like you start on board number one, start on space number one, go through all those spaces, then go to board number two. So you never cycle back.

If anything, I would say the core loop is just like you want to get the right cards into your hands so you can play them at the right time. So it's weird because it breaks the conventions of other games I know and I'm trying to make it fit the race mechanic, but I don't think it does. I don't know. It's just very weird. It doesn't like check all the boxes cleanly.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I think I'm going to write that one down on my other thing here. Check that game out. Looks cool.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, that's a good one. If you can play it with your local group, Bri, I highly recommend it.

Brian Eng:

I just have to convince one of them to buy it and ...

Dave Eng:

Exactly. You buy it.

Brian Eng:

Yes. That is how a lot of things happen. That's how I got into the X-Wing Miniatures Game.

Dave Eng:

Well, you ended up buying them anyway for yourself.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, I know. It backfired, but ...

Dave Eng:

Sorry, that was my last like, Bri. Should we go into dislikes now?

Brian Eng:

All right, so we'll move on to the dislikes. Sure.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you will lead again for first one again?

Brian Eng:

I'll lead this one again. Sure. Okay. So again, with the dislikes, it's more about implementations that I dislike. So the first one, which we touched on already is when a game with a race mechanic is overly luck based. I don't mind a little luck, but what I'm talking about here are your typical old school roll-and-moves, like Snakes and Ladders or Candy Land, which we ... They're just boring to me. You're not really making any decisions. It's all based on the roll of the dice or whatever cards you flip or whatever. I mean, those games don't even have any sort of player interaction whatsoever. So, yeah, that would be my number one dislike for race mechanic games.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. I mean, I think anything really too luck-based is not going to be a good player experience. Luck is not bad, but mitigating this.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I just need to be able to mitigate it in some ways.

Dave Eng:

Right, right. Okay.

Brian Eng:

So that's my number one. Yeah.

Dave Eng:

Okay. I'll go with my first dislike here. So mine is the runaway leader problem. So not necessarily luck-based, but I would say if you can mitigate the runaway leader through some sort of uncertainty or randomness or catch-up mechanisms, I think that would be good because otherwise, if there's no chance for me to catch up, what is the point of me to continue to play? So that's my number one dislike. The game that I'm going to cite that I think has a good mitigation for the runaway leader problem. Bri, have you played Wavelength, like the party game?

Brian Eng:

I've played like a round of it.

Dave Eng:

Oh, okay.

Brian Eng:

I haven't played a full game, but I'm familiar with the game.

Dave Eng:

You know the general case?

Brian Eng:

Yeah, yeah.

Dave Eng:

Oh, okay. So if people are listening, if you've not played Wavelength before, basically it's a party game, you break up into two teams and then one team has like ... It's a pie slice or like half of a circle and has a target on it and then you get a wavelength card and it's like from extremely hot to extremely cold. And then based on where that target is, you give a clue and then you're trying to give a clue so that your team can guess where to turn the dial so that it's right on the target.

Very fun game, but I think that what it mitigates for the leader here, because I think the threshold is 10 points. So the first team to reach 10 points wins the game. But I realized this, I've been playing wrong the entire time, is that if your team is behind in Wavelength, you get to go again until you catch up to the other team. So that's like a very, I don't know, like easy mitigation and you just rally until you catch up to the other team and then the other team goes.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I see. Yes.

Dave Eng:

A runaway leader.

Brian Eng:

Okay. So my second dislike is the runaway leader problem. So the example that I have is, do you ever play RoboRally?

Dave Eng:

Yes, I have. Once way back when. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

So that's a race game. It's a programming game. So I think it's like five cards you lay out and each one of them is in action. And kind of the fun of it is you interact with things on the board. A lot of stuff happens on the board in between the turns and it messes your programming up or you run into other robots and stuff. And that's kind of the fun and that's also where the difficulty comes in the race. But if you manage to get far enough ahead of the group where you're kind of out of the chaos, there's much less interaction and now you're not only ahead, but there's nothing really ... As long as you don't mess up your own programming, nothing's really there to stop you anymore. So it becomes impossible for anyone to catch you because you can just play optimally, right?

Dave Eng:

So that's the way I should have played RoboRally, just my robot getting away from the pack? I thought I would have to get into that.

Brian Eng:

If you're able to get out of it, right? If you're able to get ahead of it, then that was one. And I think sometimes the runaway leader problem is really related more to the player experience gap. So if someone knows how to play a game a lot more than the other person, they get ahead and there's really no way to catch up. And so once the knowledge of the game is even, the game itself becomes more even and it's not as much of a problem.

But I do like when a game has an elegant solution and not one that kind of hammers you in the head either. So I'm going to go back to Heat again because they have a number of small ways to catch up that don't feel bad. So if you are in, depending on the number of players, either the last spot or the second last spot, you can cool one of your heat back into your engine every turn.

Dave Eng:

In the last spot, or very last? Or one of the last?

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I think it's last spot if it's four players or less or if it's five or six players, it's the last two positions. And then I think you can also get a free plus one move if you're in the last. So just small things to let you go ahead.

The way they created the drafting mechanic also helps anyone that's not in the lead, which ... And it's very thematic for the game, so it fits well. I talked about Dune as well, Dune: Imperium, and that's one where they start giving you more victory points as the game goes on. So you could be behind, but there's-

Dave Eng:

Oh, it speeds it up?

Brian Eng:

It speeds up but also like, yeah, you could be a little behind, but because things are worth a little more later, you can still catch up. But it's not as crazy as the joke about the game shows where it's like, "Okay, in round three, the questions are worth this many points. So all the previous rounds are pointless." Yeah. Yeah. So again, it's that nice balance of having the right, I guess, rubber-band mechanic, right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

But yes, I had the same thing, the runaway leader problem with race mechanic was my second.

Dave Eng:

That was your second dislike?

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

Okay. My second dislike is that with the race mechanic, the game length can vary a lot, especially if that's the end game trigger, like the specific race. So races that often end suddenly when someone hits the finish could be just very unsatisfying. So the game that I play a lot where I feel that happens is Splendor because I'm like, "What? 15 points? I didn't even get my engine going yet."

And whenever that happens, I'm like, "I just wasn't paying ..." I really got to pay attention to the opponent and look at their engine being like, "Okay, well, I feel like I'm kind of far behind, so I'm going to have to make some moves here." So I think that this can be mitigated though if the designer clearly signals when the race's end is approaching. We talked a little bit about this. I don't think you could qualify it as a race game, but you know how when we played Inis that you have to take the pretender token in order to win?

Brian Eng:

Yes, right. Yeah.

Dave Eng:

That's the signal, right?

Brian Eng:

Right.

Dave Eng:

If you take the pretender token, I think I can win on this round.

Brian Eng:

So when you take the pretender token, if you still have the victory condition when your turn comes back around, you win the game.

Dave Eng:

Oh, okay. So this is your signal to tell everyone like, "Hey, I'm going to try to win. You got to try to stop me at this point."

Brian Eng:

So that mechanic, specifically the pretender token always reminds me of UNO.

Dave Eng:

Oh, when you just-

Brian Eng:

Calling out UNO when you have one card left, right? And actually, so would UNO be a race game, the race to get rid of all your cards?

Dave Eng:

Yeah, I think you could say that.

Brian Eng:

It's a shedding game, but=

Dave Eng:

Yeah, it's a shedding game.

Brian Eng:

... it's the first person to get rid of all their cards.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. But then I would say like, are all shedding games race game?

Brian Eng:

All shedding games. Well, as long as the victory condition is getting rid of all your ... Because you can have a shedding mechanic, but that's not the victory condition.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, that's true. Because I know a lot of shedding games we cover are just the round-end conditions. And if it's the last round, then it is also the game end condition.

Brian Eng:

But the game end condition is not the same as the victory, because it's the last round, whereas it's the round-ending condition, right? So anyways, they're very semantic, but ...

Dave Eng:

Very semantic. Other games I wanted to bring up that with the variable player length that are also race games, according to BGG, is Jaipur. We played Jaipur a lot.

Brian Eng:

Right.

Dave Eng:

I'd say that I don't think that this is a rush to the end, but whenever I've played, I think with you, I played it with Chris too. I played it with Carolyn is that all the different commodities, like there's spice, there's leather. Whenever someone breaks the rubies, the jewels for the first time, because those are worth the most, I'm like, "I'm so far behind now."

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

And especially if you sold five of them and you got the bonus, I'm like, "So far behind." I got to think of a different way to catch up at this point. So I think that's the only thing that I would consider maybe too fast, but at least when you do that, I'm like, "Oh, okay, well that's a huge upset, so I have to do something different."

Brian Eng:

Right. Yeah. And I feel that it can create the gap in that round, but because that game is like best of three or whatever. So even if you get blown out, it's still just, "Okay, you lost that round," right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah.

Brian Eng:

So it's not too bad.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. If you beat me by like 10 points or 20 points-

Brian Eng:

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Dave Eng:

... you just won the round.

Brian Eng:

You just won point ahead, right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah.

Brian Eng:

Oh, you reminded, I haven't played that game in a while. I enjoy that one.

Dave Eng:

That's a good one. And that's a good one to play in BGA because I hate doing the setup stuff...

Brian Eng:

Yes, because the worst thing about that is because the game is so fast, the setup is almost as long as the round, but I feel like I would play it on BGA, but I feel like you also have to play it live. I want to play that-

Dave Eng:

Yeah, you should play it live.

Brian Eng:

Because you need to remember things in that game too.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Eng:

All right. What are we on? That was your second?

Dave Eng:

That was the second. That was my second dislike. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

Oh, okay. I'm realizing I probably said my third already, but okay. So my third way that I don't like race mechanics implemented is with a lack of player interaction. So I've already mentioned these, Snakes and Ladders, Candy Land. I mean, I guess I could say that about most mechanics because I like player interaction. But definitely with race mechanic, it even kind of eliminates the tension for me because it's like if there's no interaction, I have no control over what the other person's doing. It's just like, "Okay, well then it's not really ..." The game is less fun for me. I need to be able to impact that race, not only my positioning, but the other person's positioning to make me kind of feel invested in the game.

Dave Eng:

Right, right.

Brian Eng:

How about you? How about your third?

Dave Eng:

My third?

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

So very close to you, Brian. Mine is on interaction. So I think that the two ends of the spectrum are like it can be way too chaotic for a race mechanic or it can be way too solitary. So the solitaire focus we talked about with Nova Luna, because other than the drafting, we're basically playing our own game at that point.

Brian Eng:

Right. Yes.

Dave Eng:

The too chaotic, the example I had before was like Magical Athlete, but I think that part of the fun at the game is being chaotic.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I understand that the chaos, too chaotic can be a problem, but there are games where that is kind of the point. And like RoboRally we talk about. It's kind of the point that you're bumping in and messing up your plans is kind of the point of that game. And it sounds like with Magical Athlete, that is kind of the point is the chaos.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, yeah. But it's super fun, but the game that I think is like right in the middle of this, because I think as a designer, you want to hit that sweet spot, not too chaotic and not too much like solitaire. Have you heard or played 13 Beavers before?

Brian Eng:

13? No, I have not.

Dave Eng:

Well, I'll tell you. The core mechanic is very simple. There's a deck of cards and the deck of cards has beavers on them numbered 1 through 13 and there's two copies of each. So all you have to do is you ... And it's a race game on a map and you turn over the first card and it's going to say a beaver with a number and then you have to guess, for the next card, will it be higher or lower than that?

Brian Eng:

Okay.

Dave Eng:

And if it's higher, you get to move on the track and then you can stop and you can build your beaver dam so you'll start the next turn in that spot where you can push your luck and then the next card will come out higher, lower, higher, lower. And that's it, that's the game.

Brian Eng:

Oh, all right.

Dave Eng:

It's stupidly fun though, and I played it a lot with my nieces and nephews, but what I like about it is that they have added some things where it's like kind of like a catch-up mechanic where players that are really far ahead get stuck in this wolf's den. You have to try to cross it, but it also gives players behind you enough time to catch up.

There's also another thing called the ... It's like a magical shortcut tunnel. In order to take it, it's near the beginning and it jumps you right to almost the end. In order to get the magic shortcut tunnel, instead of guessing higher or lower, you have to guess the number.

Brian Eng:

Oh, okay.

Dave Eng:

And if you don't hit it, you go back to the beginning.

Brian Eng:

So I know how I would end up playing this game. I would sit at that magical shortcut and just keep guessing the number. Try a different number.

Dave Eng:

If you don't hit at the tunnel, you go back to the beginning.

Brian Eng:

But the tunnel is like near the beginning, right?

Dave Eng:

It's like four spaces away, but you need to go four spaces.

Brian Eng:

I'll be going for that one multiple times.

Dave Eng:

I've seen it happen once in a game and it was awesome when you did it.

Brian Eng:

Sorry, what's the number range that you're guessing?

Dave Eng:

It's 1 through 13.

Brian Eng:

1 to 13, right. 13 Beavers. Right.

Dave Eng:

So ideally, if there's a seven, you want to let the next person deal with the seven.

Brian Eng:

Right, I see. I see.

Dave Eng:

Okay. But there's also been sometimes when it's like the number is a two and I'll say higher. And then the next number is a one.

Brian Eng:

It's going to happen, right?

Dave Eng:

Or you have a 12 and the next number's a 13, you guess lower, but that's kind of part of the game. I think that's closer to chaotic, but I think it's okay, like Magical Athlete.

Brian Eng:

So I just looked up this game on BGG, and maybe this is a different version because I'm seeing a fishing rod.

Dave Eng:

Nope, that's the game.

Brian Eng:

Oh, okay. So what's this, the magnetic fishing rod thing?

Dave Eng:

Yeah. So one, it's just the toy part of it, but when you reach this one part, it's like a fishing pond. There's a magnetic fishing rod. It doesn't need to have this, but it does.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, yeah, but doesn't matter. That makes it better.

Dave Eng:

You had the fishing rod and there's magnetic fish. Magnetic fish in the pond and then you use the fishing rod to pick up the fish. And the fish is either three things. It's like a double. So the double means that if you guess correctly, you move two spaces instead of one. There's time travel. And time travel is if you guess incorrectly, you get to spend the time travel to undo it. And then there's just like stinky fish, which just means you lose a turn and that's it.

Brian Eng:

Okay.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, that's it. Again, it doesn't need to be magnetic, but it is.

Brian Eng:

So I will say that in looking at this game on BGG here, I'm looking at some of the pictures, it's another game that is very appealing to me visually. I'm looking at the number six card here and there is a children's TV show, cartoony looking beaver holding a flamethrower?

Dave Eng:

Yep. Yep. Number six beaver.

Brian Eng:

Which I love that kind of stuff.

Dave Eng:

And I like this game so much, Bri. I own two copies.

Brian Eng:

Oh my gosh.

Dave Eng:

Because I wanted to have double the number of beavers. Because the beavers are a little beaver meeples and become a little beaver dam. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

And there's really no reason you can't just increase more players into this game, right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Yeah. You could throw more players. Because oftentimes when we play, you're like, "Oh, who's purple? I think it's Purple."

Brian Eng:

Oh, so you can kind of keep ... Want to know?

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Your color beaver in front of you. It's a great game. And I only discovered it because it was deeply discounted and I picked up a copy and it was great.

Brian Eng:

I might have to look. When you say deeply discounted, what did you get it for? What does it say in the price?

Dave Eng:

I think it was like under $10 American.

Brian Eng:

Okay. Yeah. This could be when the girls would like this one.

Dave Eng:

It's so fun. It's really fun.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I might have to put this on my list at least. That's funny. So I recently played a game. It's pretty popular right now, but I hadn't played it before, which fits the race mechanic game. I finally played Flip 7.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah, that's a great one.

Brian Eng:

So that is race to 200. I mean, I guess you could pick whatever, but I think it's 200 points.

Dave Eng:

200 points. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

And it's another push-your-luck, which again, I just like. And you're just going around, I guess, blackjack style, taking cards and you just don't want doubles essentially.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. You want to have all unique.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. I think it's zero to 12 are the values. And each, there's one one card, two two cards, three three cards. And whatever number you're getting, you're getting that point value unless you bust, which a bust in this case is a double. So the higher numbers are better, you get more points, but there's more of them in the deck.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Right.

Brian Eng:

And then there's a bunch of other cards like Second Chance or like Flip 3 where you immediately flip three more cards, which could be good or could make you bust, those kind of things. So that was a lot of fun.

Dave Eng:

There's freeze.

Brian Eng:

Oh, freeze is fun because, obviously, I like that because that is now your take that mechanic.

Dave Eng:

You can freeze other people. I've frozen myself because I'm like ... I am at a comfortable lead and I'm like, "I just don't want to bust at this point."

Brian Eng:

I generally freeze other people, because I could always just not hit on the next round, right? I can just stay. I just usually want to screw whoever somebody.

Dave Eng:

I have busted on two though.

Brian Eng:

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Or even when you think you're safe. So if you get a Second Chance card, if you get a double, it wipes out your second chance, but you can keep going and that's a sure-fire time that you're going to get Flip 3. Yeah, that was really fun. I played that. Nice simple game, but fun. So yeah, I guess that takes care of our beyond. Yeah. Anything else-

Dave Eng:

For bonus run?

Brian Eng:

... race mechanic related?

Dave Eng:

For bonus round?

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

Is that what we're on right now?

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

We've got a few things.

Brian Eng:

We kind of just organically fell into it.

Dave Eng:

Okay. Well, I'll start out with these because I think they're really interesting. So Brian, my preparation for this episode, I went through every game on BGG that listed race as the mechanic, every game.

Brian Eng:

Okay. Okay.

Dave Eng:

I found two games where I was reviewing it. I was like, "What? Why is this the race mechanic?" And I have to bring them up to you because I need to share this with someone.

Brian Eng:

Yes.

Dave Eng:

So two games. The first game is called Indiana Jones: Throw Me the Idol! So you know Raiders?

Brian Eng:

So the entire game is based on him throwing ... What was the guy's name?

Dave Eng:

I don't know, but it's some Raiders.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, yeah Raiders just throwing him, the idol. "You throw me the idol, I throw you the whip."

Dave Eng:

So I was like, yeah, one, how did they make a game based on just the single line from the movie?

Brian Eng:

Yes. Yes, fantastic.

Dave Eng:

And how is it a race game? So I looked it up and it's a race game in that you basically ... It's two players where you can play as teams where you're playing cards in my hand and you're trying to do this in real-time to connect cards with symbols so that they go from like your home base to the temple that has the idol. So as soon as you do that, that ends that mini-game.

And then the rest of the game is that we come with these components like an idol in the bag of sand and you play a bunch of mini-games where it's like hot potato, so it'll like start a timer and you just don't want to be holding both the idol and the bag of sand at the same time. Or there's another mini-game where it's like a ring and an arrow because you know like the...

Brian Eng:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Eng:

Where one person on your team is to hold the ring and another person is to...

Brian Eng:

Throw the arrow through it?

Dave Eng:

And I was like, "This is a race game?" I looked up, there's a Tom Vasel review and he was like, "I think that this game was just a cash grab." They were like, "We have the Indiana Jones IP."

Brian Eng:

We have the Indiana Jones IP.

Dave Eng:

"We have to make a game around it and this is what we came up with." So that was my first race game where I was like, "What is this?" I had to investigate further. And then the second one was a game called Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots Fight Cards. And I was thinking about this. I was like, "What does everyone really like about Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots?"

Brian Eng:

It's punching the head off.

Dave Eng:

It's the robots, punching the head off.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. So this doesn't have the robots.

Dave Eng:

What if you took the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em IP and you got rid of the most fun part with the robots?

Brian Eng:

And just made it a deck of cards, sounds like.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, you make it a deck of cards, but instead of a deck of cards, Bri, both the red team and the blue team have a big boxing glove, a red boxing glove and a red boxing glove. And the way you play Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots fight cards is you're playing cards. And if you ever play two blue cards on top of each other, it's the first person to slap the deck that you have to be wearing the boxing glove. So I was like, you just took a really fun game and reduced it to cards and then added totally unnecessary boxing gloves to it in order to be able to slap the deck. Those are my two what games.

Brian Eng:

I thought you were going to say when that blue card on the blue card thing comes up, it's the first person to punch the other guy. Because that's how me.

Dave Eng:

Well, that's where it would evolve.

Brian Eng:

Because that's how me and my brother would have changed that game for sure. Tears would be flowing, absolutely.

Dave Eng:

Right. I didn't get it. I was like, "You just took the most fun part of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and turned it into a card game."

Brian Eng:

Oh my gosh.

Dave Eng:

So I don't know if you're licking these up on BGG, but those were the two games.

Brian Eng:

I did not, but you did a much deeper dive than I did this episode.

Dave Eng:

I mean there's a lot of games that have the race mechanic, but not like so many where I couldn't go through all of them, so I went through all of them.

Brian Eng:

Oh, I did want to mention. One of the other games we were playing on BGA that I really enjoyed was Agent Avenue.

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah.

Brian Eng:

And one thing that's interesting talking about the race mechanic is that, so it's a physical race, but the end point moves in that the end point is the ... So you're playing cards that essentially move your tokens around a circular track. You start on opposite ends and you're just moving around this track and your goal is to essentially catch the other person. So the end point is the other character. And I thought that was an interesting way to have a race, right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah.

Brian Eng:

I mean, it's that thing where it's like, "You're just reading or trying to psyche out the other person the whole game." So you have all these different cards that move certain number of spaces and you're playing one face down and one face up and the other person has to choose one for them and one for yourself. And you obviously you know the face up one, but you don't know the face down one. So very simple, but that's one which I think I'm going to put on my list to look for on sale one day because I think that's just a fun little quick game that's easy to teach and stuff.

Dave Eng:

I like that it's past.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. And like even if I ... I mean, Cammy can play more advanced games at, but even if like you're playing with someone who doesn't know what they're doing, if they just put two random cards down, it's still going to ...

Dave Eng:

You can't put down two cards on the same type.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, I guess unless you have no other cards, if all your cards are that. So there are some rules to it, but I just mean like she doesn't need to have a deep strategy, right?

Dave Eng:

Oh, yeah, yeah. This game actually reminded me a lot of Kiri-ai: The Duel. Remember we played that?

Brian Eng:

Yep.

Dave Eng:

I like this better, but what I don't like is that our last game of Agent Avenue, because I remember reading this in the rules, it's like I had a win condition and then you had a win and a lost condition, but if those things happen, then the tie goes to whoever's the active player. So then I realize it's like, "Oh, if something like that happens in the future, I just have to make sure I'm the actor."

Brian Eng:

Yeah. You want it to happen on your turn. But if you know that rule, it actually just adds to the strategy, right?

Dave Eng:

Yeah.

Brian Eng:

Because the more I played, it is definitely a very simple game, more so on the face value. But there are some intricacies, especially when you get into those black market cards, because I think the first game we played without the black market.

Dave Eng:

Yeah, we played a bunch of games with like-

Brian Eng:

It's kind of meh without it. But with the black market cards, it adds stuff because that's where it's like, "Okay, if you land on home spaces, you get to move up." So now, the number of spaces you move matters. So it's not just about catching the other person, but sometimes, oh, I could make myself move one or I could make myself move two, but I actually want to move one to get that black market card.

So it adds a layer to the second guessing is like, "Oh, are they giving me this card because they actually want the lower card, or do I want them to get a black ... What's on the black market right now? Do I not want them to get one of those cards, or do I want to get one first to make sure they don't get this?" So to me, that added a lot to the game to have that black market in there.

Dave Eng:

I realized that in our last game too, because there's the code breaker card where you don't move for the first two, but the third one gets you an instant win. And I was like, there was a card in there that allowed you to ... I think in the black market, maybe you can win with two code breakers or something like that.

Brian Eng:

So the only one I can think of for the code breaker is that Code Breaker cards still let you move three spaces ahead.

Dave Eng:

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

There's the one for the opposite one. I forget what the name of it is, but there's the one where if you get three, you lose.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Oh, the Daredevil something.

Brian Eng:

Daredevil. Yeah. So there's the black market card where if you get three Daredevil cards, you win.

Dave Eng:

Instead of losing. I won one game I think with that, which I thought was-

Brian Eng:

And that's a good one because you could be racking those up and the other person's feeding to try to make you lose with them, but then it pops up on the black market and you get it. So I like that. I like that game.

Dave Eng:

The other black market card, Bri, I like is the one that allows you to recruit a card that's already played into your hand and then immediately play it again.

Brian Eng:

And then play it again. Right.

Dave Eng:

Because you could potentially move really fast at that point.

Brian Eng:

Yeah.

Dave Eng:

Remember there's one card that has like a negative one, a six and then a negative one?

Brian Eng:

Yeah, I think it's a Double Agent.

Dave Eng:

Oh yeah, yeah. So then like you could move 12 spaces in one potentially.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, yeah. Which is almost guaranteed to win you the game.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. I think there was one game that resolved like that.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of combos I think that can come up organically that are just fun. And it's short enough game that if like it blows out, because there is a lot of luck obviously in what cards you get. And if that happens, like eh, it's not a big deal. There's very little setup to the game and just play another game.

Dave Eng:

I'm looking at you Jaipur. Very little setup.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. So that's another one where it's like, "Oh, I really enjoyed that one." For what it is, I could see that being an easy buy for me.

Dave Eng:

Right. I got one more point for bonus round.

Brian Eng:

Yeah, go ahead.

Dave Eng:

We covered up all the other things, Bri, but my one is that I think that listeners listening to this episode, you'll look at a game that has like a race and think that has a race mechanic, but I think that it's worth noting that there are going to be games that have a race theme that may not have the race mechanic.

And I would say like some of the ones that are most notable for this would be like Camel Up. The camels are racing. It is a race, but the game is about betting. So you don't necessarily ... You just want to be able to bet on the camel that is going to earn the most amount of money and it doesn't necessarily have to be the camel that comes in first.

Same thing with Downforce, which again is also like, I guess Formula One racing kind of like Heat, but that again is just about wagering. So it's a race theme, but not necessarily race mechanic.

Brian Eng:

Yeah. Or at least by the definition we're going by for race mechanic here, which is that it must signify both the end of the game and the first person to achieve it is the winner. Ready Set Bet is another one where it's obviously race themed, but that game is strictly your betting on horses. You're not even one of them racing. You're not even racing in that game. You're watching a race.

Dave Eng:

You're just watching the race. Yeah. Well, the other thing I wanted to bring up is I played another game called Honey Buzz because it had the race mechanic and that one had a more traditional type of race that I think I've seen in a lot of Eurogames, which is just like, they're just achievements that you're trying to race to like with Beyond the Sun. And the first player to get it gets the most amount of points and the second player to get it gets to the second.

Brian Eng:

But it's still a points is the ... And I think that's probably the more common thing that could be, I think easily ... Some people would call those race game or race mechanic games, but again, by this definition, they're not, where it's like there is a race going on and we talked about one like Luxor, right? So first person to get out gets more points, and the second person signifies the end of the game, but it's points that ultimately is who's the winner.

Dave Eng:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Eng:

Okay.

Dave Eng:

Those are all my ... Yeah, it's for bonus round.

Brian Eng:

Okay. Well, I guess that wraps up our race mechanic episode of AP Table Talk. If you'd like to hear more content like this, please be sure to subscribe. You can also check out more of our content, projects and other information about us at www.universityxp.com.

Dave Eng:

Thanks for joining us. We'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show. We live to lift others with learning. If you found this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could also benefit. Until next time, game on!

References

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Cite this Episode:

Eng, D. & Eng, B. (Hosts). (2026, April 5). AP Table Talk: Race. (No. 161) [Audio podcast episode]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/podcast/161

Internal Ref: UXPDI4H1R68J