Brummmmmm, Brummmm, errrghhhhhh, brummmmmmm < In case you could not tell this was me making car noises and yes I did make them while I played this game, am I ashamed? No! I am an adult and if I want to make car noises while playing this game I will! In your mother f**king face!
Now you might be sat, stood up, hoovering, or god knows what else you are doing and reading this thinking how does this work? Well it works really well :) This is the Rallyman GT game where players will race across tiles to be the first player to cross the finish line, this is a press your luck game where pushing the car to hard might just bite you in the ass.
Let us cover the basic information for the game;
Players: 1 - 6
Age: 14+
Time: 45 to 60 minutes, depends on the number of players
Now let us take a look at what we get in this box!
What is in this box?
So in this box you get quite a few bits you will need for the game, I would like to point out that I love the art work in this game and some of the concept drawings are beautiful!
In the box you get;
1 Rulebook 12 Dashboard cards 6 Driver cards 31 Double-sided track tiles 6 Gaming aid cards 1 Pit stop tile 1 Damage token bag 1 Round marker 160 Focus tokens 6 Cars 48 Gear markers 42 Various damage tokens; 6 Gear damage tokens 6 Break damage tokens 6 Coast damage tokens 6 Weather change 6 Yellow flag 12 Green flag 11 Dice;
6 Gear dice 3 Break dice 2 Coast dice That is everything you have in the box and funnily enough that is everything that you will need to play this game! Now it is time for us to get our dice ready and set up this game!
Setting up the game
In this game you can build the track however you wish to build it, great! But for your first game they do you give you a few helpful tips to get used to the game, for this reason we built the first track in the rulebook to help us understand and play the game. We highly recommend that you do the same if you have not played this before, make your life easier not harder. 1: Place the 1.9 trillion focus tokens in a easy to reach place for all players. 2: Put all the damage tokens into the damage token bag and give it a good shake to make sure they are all mixed up. 3: Pick your starting colour, once you have picked the colour take all the player pieces for this colour;
1 Car
Pick 1 of the 2 dashboard cards and place it sunny side up for the first race
Player card
the 8 gear tokens
4: Pick who will go first, place the 0 gear token from all the players into a cup and give it a shake and draw them out 1 by 1 and place them on the starting grid;
1st drawn should go at the front on the inside track to go first
2nd next to them at the front
3rd one back on the inside track
You get the point from here. 5: Place the 0 gear maker white side up (cover this later) next to your car at the side of the track. That is the track set up and now we are ready to race! The rule book does show a great example of how the board should be set up or you can use my image above!
But how do I win?
To win the game you need to cross the finish line first on your turn! Now the number of laps you pick to race is up to you! But make sure you are tracking what lap you are on!
You can always continue the race to see who comes in 2nd, 3rd and so on, you can also make it into a campaign and award points for positions you finish and race over a series of tracks just like a real car race.
How to play
This game is a dice luck pushing son of a b***h where sometimes you might push the car a little to hard and spin of the track and you do not want that! Now the first thing to note is that the turn order is never the same and will change all the time! Basically the turn order is determined by;
Speed (highest gear)
Distance (who is in the lead)
Position (who is on the inside lane)
But what does that actually mean? Well at the start of a round you look for the car in the highest gear and they would go first this turn, even if they were right at the back of the track! If two cars are in the same gear then the car who is in the lead would go first and then the next car would go second! Now what if they are both in the same position and the same gear? The car that is on the inside of the track would go first. This is why when you first set up the game the player who was drawn out first would have the inside track position on the starting grid so they go first! Makes sense now you know this. Rounds, if all the gears are on the white side and you move forward you put down your new gear marker but this time on the black side showing, This means you have had your turn this round and are ready for the next round. Once all cars have moved and show their gear markers on the black side you flip the round token, figure out who goes first and then move and place the new gear marker with the white side showing, always alternate between white and black to keep track if you have moved or not! Each player will have a car dashboard card, this card gives you information about the car and what dice you can roll and what happens if you lose control.
On the image above we can see;
I have the sunny side showing so using asphalt tires
I am in a GT-6 car
I can use;
6 Black dice (these are the gear dice and go from 1 to 6) 1 Coast dice (can use this to maintain speed on one section) 2 Breaking dice (can use these to perform harsh breaks and drop gears quickly) It shows 3x! which means if I roll 3 ! on my turn I lose control! Now you can see the grid below for what happens to me;
To use the grid you need to check what gear you are in (this depends if you rolled one at a time or went flat out). What indicator is on that tile (on the tiles there are yellow, amber or red warning markers near the start and end point of the track on that tile). If it shows a - you just either put it in 0 or 00 gear depending on what gear you was in. If you see a black square this means you draw one random damage token from the bag and place it on your player card. If it shows 2, 3 or 4 black squares that is how many you have to take! 0 gear - If you end up in the 0 gear you spin the car 180 so it is facing the wrong way and place the 0 gear token next to the car, next turn you can spin the car back around and continue as normal from the 1st gear.
00 gear - Oh no, you span of the track, put the car to the side of the track and place the 00 gear token next to it, next turn you can put the car into the 0 gear and do the above, this means basically you lose 1 turn! That is not good in a race..... Damage tokens! Okay we need to quickly cover the damage tokens since we have started talking about damage and the 0 and 00 gear. When you draw a damage token from the bag you need to resolve its effect.
Black token with -1: This is a gear damage token, you can now use 1 less gear dice while racing, if you end up with 3 of these this means you can only use 3 gears, not great! Now in the rules it says this can go to 0 but nothing about if you hit 0 I would say you are out of the race if this happens as you have no gears to race with.... Red token with -1: Well just like the above but with the break dice, however if you hit 0 it just means you can not break and will need to use your gears to slow down for corners! Grey token with -1: Same as above but for coasting. Weather token: All players flip over their dashboard card and make note of the dice they can now use in this weather condition. Yellow flag: This token is not placed on the players card but next to the car on the track, and now no one can over take or move along side another car, this means you must end your turn 1 space behind another car (if you can reach one). You can however move past any cars in 0 or 00 gear, once the car with the yellow token moved this restriction is removed and the game continues! That basically covers damage and what happens when you lose control, however you might need to make a pit stop to fix this damage. Pit stops! You can make a pit stop at any time but you need to make sure that you obey some rules;
1: You are not on a space with a hazard warning (!) or speed restriction
2: You are on a lane next to the edge of the track (some tiles have 3 lanes you can not be in the middle lane)
3: You are in 1st gear at the end of your turn
Now pick which lane of the pit stop you wish to use and then place the matching 0 or 00 gear token on the track where you stopped for the pit stop. In the pit stop you have 3 options;
Change tires (0 gear) = Pick any side of the two dashboard cards you have and place it in your play area. Repair (00 gear) = Take all the damage tokens from your player card and put them back in the bag, no restrictions for you now! Both of above (00 gear) = Do both of the above, Remember if you are in 00 gear on your next turn you go into 0 gear and that is all you can do! We have now covered damage and pit stops before we even got talking about how you move, how you over take, breaking and so much more so lets continue.
Before we do talk about dice rolls and how they allow you to move we need to cover the basics of the road! Because these are important.
Moving: You always move forward, this can be in the same lane one space at a time (if you look at the tiles you can see white lines these are spaces, moving on to a new tile is also a space). You can never move to your left or right but you can move diagonally into the other lane, imagine racing lines and how cars move in real life you can not move directly to your left or right you move diagonally into the other lane. Corners
Some corners have a number in a circle this is the highest gear you are allowed to be in when entering that corner, if you are in a higher gear you lose control no matter what! Some corners have a number in a triangle with a ! this is a dangerous corner, if you enter this at a number higher than the one shown you lose control, if you enter the corner with the same number shown then you add 1 hazard to your dice straight away (this is not good but sometimes worth the risk). If you enter in a number below the one shown you are fine and nothing happens. Sharp corners also are in the game, if you look at the photo above near the blue car you can see that the inside corners have a dotted line with the number 1 this means if you move across that line (by moving in a straight line and not diagonally from the other lane) you must enter the corner in 1st gear, if you fail to do so you lose control straight away! Some sharp corners also contain hazard symbols which mean you have to add 1 hazard to your dice rolls which can really mess up your day! Now lets us go over the dotted lines with the numbers, these are known as racing lines, in a real race you would never go into a chicane on the inside corner as this would slow you down and can be an hazard, you would take a racing line where you would move from outside lane into the inside lane and into the next inside lane and finally exit on the outside lane. Ever played a racing game on a computer? If so think about the line you would take to maintain speed.
To explain this further I have edited the photo to try my best to explain this hard to explain rule! So follow the red lines, if you did any of the red line movements you would need to cross the dotted line in 1st gear or lose control, you would also need to obey the 2 in the circle so could never got past 2nd gear, makes sense right. Follow the blue racing line we move diagonally avoiding the dotted lines so we can enter the corner in 2nd gear (no need for the 1st restriction and potential lose of control) and then coast into the next corner and finally accelerate out into 3rd gear! Easy right! Trust me it sounds complicated but it is really straight forward! Before over taking I want to now talk about the dice and how we use them to move! On your turn you can use any number of dice shown on your player dashboard card, you can never use more then that, that is your limit. If you have damage tokens you need to make sure you are not cheating and using dice that they have stopped you from using also.
Before you roll the dice you place them which have some basic rules
1 = Never can place a 0 or 00 gear as there are no dice for them
2 = It can be the same gear
3 = Can be a coast
4 = Can be a break
5 = Can be a gear higher
6 = Can be a gear lower
7 = You can never use the same gear twice! Okay that sounds a little confusing but lets look at this in a picture to understand what we mean.
In this picture the yellow car would go first because of the turn order, they move from 0 into 1st (they can not coast because they are not moving), then into 2nd gear, then 3rd gear and they coast still in 3rd gear to the corner and end their (after dice rolls). The blue car moves diagonally into the inside lane as it is the better track to take and goes into 1st, then into 2nd on the next space, the next space they go into 3rd, Now they can not end their turn in the same space as the other car so they move diagonally again and into 4th gear and coast into the bend in 4th gear. Now they would not do this at the same time, yellow would plan out their route and then roll and then blue would plan out theirs and roll. Before we talk about rolling the dice and the methods we can use I just want to talk about over taking quickly as this example contains not over taking but pulling along side a vehicle and that is a over taking example.
Over taking! Now in this game you can never pull along side another car if you are in a lower gear then they are, so for example in the photo above yellow car would be in gear 3, the blue car would be in gear 4 meaning it is okay to pull along side them, if the blue car was in 3rd gear this would also be fine, however if the blue car was somehow in the 2nd gear they could not pull along side the car. You must always be in a matching or higher gear to pull along side them. After you are along side of them it does not matter if you drop down a gear as you can then do what you want! It just matters that to pull into a space next to them it needs to be the same or a higher gear! Right back to moving and rolling the dice, we have covered the dice placement and how you plan your route, now we need to talk about how you roll the dice! There are two methods here;
1) One at a time = This method is the less risky method and safest option, all you do is move your car into the first dice space, take that dice and roll it, you then can stop or move into the next space and roll that dice. This is to make sure you do not lose control and you can stop rolling at any time and end your route, once you end your route place the gear token next to your car in the last gear you rolled and make sure it is showing the next round colour. There is no real way you can lose control in this method unless you push your luck. Sometimes you might have a break dice and a gear dice in the same spot and you must roll them together, we will go over this in the breaking section. 2) All at once = This is the risky, fun and the only way to gain focus tokens to spend later. Now what you do in this method is place your car on the last spot of your route. You then place the matching gear token and place it on the next round colour. You take all the dice and roll them all at once! If you get 3 or more hazards you lose control, however if you make the roll you gain a focus token and these come in handy! Breaking! Sometimes you might be in a too higher gear for the corner that is coming and need to break, you can drop 1 gear with 1 brake dice, for example if the corner is a 2 and you are in 4th you can use a break dice (this would mean it drops into 3rd) and then the 2nd gear token in the same space (if you roll them one at a time you roll both of these together). This would mean you brake hard into the corner drop it into 2nd and you are good to go! If you was in 5th for this corner you could use 2 brake dice and the 2nd gear dice (if you roll them one at a time in this space you would have to roll all 3 at once meaning more chance to gain a hazard). Brake dice are never used in a space on their own and must always be used with the gear dice you want to end up in. Coasting! Basically you use these to maintain speed and are a great way to move one extra space! Focus tokens
If you go flat out (roll all the dice at once) and succeed you gain one of these little bad boys. Focus tokens can be used later to basically lock in a dice without having to roll it! The more you have the more you can lock in on hard corners and so forth. There are some rules with focus tokens we need to cover;
1 = They can never be used in a flat out and must always be used in a one at a time roll.
2 = You can use them at any time in a one at a time roll but only if the dice has not been rolled! If you have rolled the dice tough luck you can not roll it again. 3 = After the first token was used they go up by 1 to use one so for the second dice you would need to use 2 focus tokens to avoid rolling that dice, the 3rd dice would of course cost 3 focus tokens. These are a great way to negate hazards and the lose of control! Wow I have really gone on here and I think I have finally covered the rules of this game and how you play it!
Final thoughts!
What a game! This was such a good game and I never expected it! I like racing games and play a lot on the PC with my racing rig but was a bit dubious about catching the excitement of that genre into a board game but these glorious bas****s have done it! So the rule book can be a bit confusing and it was a bot of a pain at times to really grasp some of the concepts but after a few plays we had it nailed down and knew what we were doing. I am not sure if it was us just not reading them correctly but it was annoying none the less. I would highly recommend that you watch a video of the game played so you can grasp the rules. The all game mechanic works well and it is exciting, pushing your car to its limits in the hope of over taking the other players really had me on the edge of the table ( I would say seat but I play standing). Going flat out can be rewarding but also dangerous but even after I lost control I managed to win the race with a gear lost! This is all about planning the perfect route and using your dice wisely. Sometimes it is better to slow down for an area to allow you to speed out and gain some pace! This game as it all! It also can be a very close race which is dead exciting and when it comes to the end you are neck and neck, wow! The rush of just pipping the other player to the post and rubbing it in their face! Take that! Brilliant! Now I know this game will not be for everyone just like most games but there is just something about this game that had me gripped! I loved it and I never really get this excited over a game. You know what I am going to be crazy and score this... 9/10
