I love Monte Carlo, but any of the tracks from that user are really solid; well-designed, cohesive art style, fun to race. I’m sure the fact several of them look like the outlines of cock and balls is just a coincidence.
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Wait–you can play this game solo?!? I’ve been ignoring this thing because I knew I’d never get anyone to play it with me.
You people are the worst…
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Yeah, exactly the same reason why I’ve got it on my wishlist. BGA has the solo mode implemented if you want to give it a whirl there (and have a BGA subscription since it’s one of their premium games).
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It has one of the easiest to manage solo bot systems I’ve seen. One flipped legends card per turn runs all the bots. The bots position before or after a marked line between each corner on the track determines which of 2 values they use to move. There’s no other overheads to manage so no reason not to race with a full compliment of bots. Despite being simple to manage, the bots are challenging and their behaviour changes between turns and depending upon their position on the track.
@OhBollox has posted a lot about the game which piqued my interest. There’s a lot of value in the box with different modules. So far I’m up to the Weather and Road conditions module, and the Garage module ( allows you to tinker with and improve your car pre race to handle whatever weather and road conditions are active) and the Championship mode which I haven’t even touched.
And then there’s a ton of custom fan made circuits available for download. I don’t see this gathering dust on my shelf for a while.
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I think I went from playing the basic game and going “Oh, this is like Flamme Rouge, that’s okay I suppose.” to playing with weather “Okay, this is good.” to playing with upgrades across a championship “This is amazing!”.
In my most recent championship, we all won one race, as we all had built very different cars and specialised differently which paid off for different weathers/tracks, but even in the last race, the fastest one we played, we were all in the running until one player took too many risks, another (me) didn’t race conservatively enough and cycle his heat, and the third simply raced as fast as possible without taking risks, and as a result she was untouchable. I’ve never seen that before and it was partially due to the weather and track, but the first two players could have done the same thing if they had been smart enough about it. Picking up sponsorships and upgrades across the championships is what makes the game a classic, in my eyes.
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Really hope they have plans to implement the championship mode on BGA in the near future.
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Championship mode is THE way to play and feels pretty solid on there. Hope enough other people approve it soon so it lands in beta on BGA so we can start up a couple games of that. Unless anyone else on here is an alpha tester on BGA like myself.
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Broke out my newest Heat tracks for some players who had yet to experience them. Had a blast, even though one new player slowed things down enormously. Sunny conditions meant it was a total fuckfest, as after one lap we were all drawing 4-5-6 heat and trying to simply not overheat.
Deployed a 3D printer to get some additional pieces made. Well worth it.
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A friend got the new edition of Tyrants, so I played it out of the goodness of my heart, and beat him 124-93 (Drow & Undead) and 103-101 (Dragons & Aberrations). The new production is good, the tokens are better for usability than the shields in 1e, shame the promotion discs were removed from the game but it’s of no real consequence. Fancy sleeves aside, the rest of the game was identical to my 1e, including the slightly cumbersome market board. I love this game.
My newest hit at the pub is Trio which is a fairly simple memory/bluff/guessing game, which is perfect for people who have just had one drink too many. Just enough to it to get you outraged when you lose with winning cards in hand.
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I have a gaming accessory question:
I think it might be helpful for my kids to have some sort of card holder so that they can arrange and see their cards better. It seems, though, that most card holders have a curve to them for some reason. Even the printable models for a 3D printer have a curve. Has anyone used any card holders/racks like this and has there been any issue with damaging the cards? I don’t care if my standard deck of cards develops a bend but I don’t want to mess up and expensive board game.
You should be able to find plenty of straight ones.
I don’t think I’ve seen many, if any, curved ones.
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Lol, thanks! My internet skills seem to have failed.
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I have these ones, which I got from the BGG store during a sale some time ago:
They’re pretty good. A little longer would suit often, but the two rows of slots help, and you can always use two. I also bought 10 Days in the USA when my kids were little, which come with wooden straight ones, but I found they fall over too easily, and it’s out of print, anyway.
If you’re feeling crafty (and I absolutely get the desire for a professional product rather than something tossed together by an amateur), there are a few not-too-challenging ways to make them. One of them is to get clear corner protectors for wallpapered exterior corners (an example: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Prime-Line-0-0625-in-x-0-75-in-x-48-in-Clear-Plastic-Outside-Corner-Guard/5014399483 ), cut them to length, and then attach one with a bit of gap inside another then mount the assembly on something heavy or wide enough to prevent tipping. Another is to take a piece of wood and use a circular saw or track saw to cut a channel deep enough to hold cards securely, but not so deep you obscure important information. Straight up and down works, but most of them will cut on an angle; I like about 15˚, but it might depend on the heights of your surfaces and players.
I did that a while ago, and used them as the front and back edges of felt-lined trays I made to be the size of Arkham Horror 2nd edition player mats, with space for some cards and tokens. They were pretty handy for organizing multi-handed solo play, but also good just generally for games where you have a hand of cards and some other stuff to keep together, plus they doubled as dice trays. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that I’ve never seen such products offered commercially–they seem cheap to make and I thought they were quite useful. But the geekup silicon ones are pretty good and much more compact, and have divisions among the wells which are often nice for organizing your stuff.
Oh, my BGG gallery still has an old photo which shows you what I mean (though this was my first design, which only had the card holder on the back):
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Apologies for the color scheme–my daughter chose it, and she was probably four at the time. Works well when you’re going insane in Arkham Horror, though.
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I’ve used a curved playing card holder for regular cards. This one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V7P5FM
It worked well. I’m not seeing an issue with it being curved. It is about as curved as when I hold the cards.
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