The Cars, oh the cars!
To say that the cars in Racer Knights are the most complex constructable card models yet is no exaggeration. In fact it's practically compulsory. Making them is almost a game in itself. The car chassis alone comes on two cards, and contains at least 14 to 20 pieces. Also in each pack you recieve cards for an engine, a weapon, a set of 'wheels' (although one of my sets of wheels turned out to be rocket boosters), a set of shields, a driver card and, as is now customery, a pair of tiny D6 too small to practically play with but very cute nonetheless. The rules come on a roughly A3 size sheet, one quarter of which is taken up by assembly instructions. It seems that there are five basic types of chassis, one for each species in the game, and all of them need to be illustrated on the rules sheet, presumably so that the company does not need to pay for five separate print runs of the same instruction set. This can be a bit confusing, as it is easy to look at the wrong diagram when assembling the model. That said, they are clear enough to follow for someone of moderate intelligence, but younger players might need a little help.
The cars themselves are very well designed. These are no flat cardboard cutouts with wheels stuck on, they are fully three-dimensional hot rods making good use of the flexibility of plasticard, and they do indeed look fantastic. You could be forgiven for doubting this when looking at the pieces still in their card, since the colour schemes (at least on the two cars I had) were very gaudy and decorated in bright primary colours. Don't let this put you off. Once assembled, the shape of the vehicles makes up for the over-bright colour scheme. Even so I couldn't help thinking that the designers were colourblind.
Check out what I mean at the product's website www.racerknights.com
As I mentioned, the cars come in four basic parts. The chassis makes up the bulk of the vehicle though, with the other parts adding only slight stylistic differences. One of the problems I have with the product is that each of the five races (Human, Gremlin, Ogre, Serpid and Alfar) each have very individual styles. The Ogre chassis I have for instance looks like a classic hot rod made out of steel plating, while the Alfar one is more akin to a disco dragster. This may sound fantastic and indeed it is nice to see that variety. However, the various parts in the pack are randomly inserted, so it is in the extremes of unlikelihood that every part in your pack will be from the same race. This can result in some truly hideous colour combinations from the various components you actually recieve. No doubt the designers are hoping that people will buy more packets to customise their rides to their liking visually as well as statistically.
Statistics?
Speaking of statistics, these are a bit complex. Each separate part of the car comes with its own 'strip' of statistics which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle into a complete stat card. This means that, in order to read your stats, you have to go down a column of up to four or five numbers and total the result. Not a major feat of maths and you could always do this prior to the game on a piece of paper, but I couldn't help feeling that this addition was purely for gimmick value. A nice gimmick but not a necessarily practical one, especially as the unavoidable creep of the printing on the card means that the columns might not quite line up properly. Fortunately these columns are also colour coded, and since the cards are printed identically on both sides you can always flip a strip over and see if you get a better match the other way up. It's hard to describe on paper, but try it out with a pack and you'll see what I mean.
The top stat strip is for the chassis, and contains the colum titles so you know what each represents. Here I have another criticism. The text in each column is the same colour as the column itself but of a slightly darker shade. This makes it difficult to read, especially since I (like whoever painted the Alfar chassis I have - eurgh) am colourblind. Fortunately the numbers themselves are all in solid black and are easy to read, if a little small. There are quite a few stats here, so I'll give you a brief rundown. This may come in useful since it's something that the designers apparently didn't have room for on the rules sheet:
Reflexes (Ref) : used for initiative. 1D6 + Reflexes, highest roller taking his turn first Speed (Spd) : determines how much you can do per turn. It acts as a pool of points that you can spend on moving forward or backward, turning your car or firing weaponry. Handling (Had) : determines how many degrees your car can turn through for 1 speed point. Armour (Arm) : enemies have to beat this value with a simple die roll if they want to damage your car. Ram (er... Ram) : the base amount of damage your car does when ramming an enemy, although speed also has a lot to do with this. Durability (Dur) : Hit points, more or less. A cute little touch is that you record your car's durability by placing one of the tiny D6's in a special compartment in the car's engine with the durability score uppermost. You can then adjust the die as you take damage. Range (Rng) : how close you need to be to fire weapons at a target. Arc (well... Arc) : The fire arc of your weapon, between 45 degrees and 360 degrees (although the cards use other terminology to indicate this) Strength (Str) : armour penetration basically. Adds to the die roll when attacking enemy cars to determine if you cause any damage. Damage (Dmg) : And how much damage you actually cause. Special : Any special rules that the component obeys. There is a huge list of these. Valour (Vlr) : A pool of bonus points that you can spend once per game to improve your die rolls etc. Number (#) : I'm guessing this is the part number so that you can keep track of your collection.
Playing the Game (or not, in my case)
The game itself I will confess I have not played, so I will not pass serious comment on playability. However the rules are reasonably well laid out, understandable, and simple enough to play. My main bugbear with them is the large list of special abilities that each car might possess. That said, all the pieces you need to play are in the pack. Like other CSG's before, Racer Knights uses the short side of a card as a measure of distance so that you don't need a ruler. The back of your Racer Knight card also has a handy chart for measuring turning distances and weapon fire arc.
Gameplay is a bit of a free for all. The goal is to gain Glory by a number of means. You can cross the checkpoints (having first destroyed an associated dummy target called a blocker) in numerical order and try to finish the race first, or you can try and trash the other cars. Think of a tactical boardgame version of Carmageddon and you won't be far wrong. Theoretically this sounds fine, but I can't help feeling it might encourage camping tactics. You don't get any points for wiping out a waypoint blocker, only for driving over it in the right order. I guess this is all part of the tactics though. I also wonder how much easier it is to win by killing opponents than it is to win by racing. These questions can only truly be answered by thorough playtesting, which I will leave to other more capable tacticians.
The Bad Bits
On the whole I like the concept and the cars in Racer Knights, but there are always a few minor niggles. Firstly my usual complaint about this kind of game: I can't help thinking this would make a fun mini-RPG setting. I'd love to get to know more about the species and the tournament itself. Happily on this note there is a reasonably comprehensive website with some background information on it, but I'd still like to see this expanded upon more thoroughly. Secondly there are the weapons. These all slot into the back of the car in a circular hole so that they can be rotated to any angle. Nice idea, but since the peg for that hole is flat the weapon wobbles backward and forward loosely. Since being able to rotate the weapon is purely cosmetic and doesn't seem to have any in-game connotations, I would have preferred it to be merely slotted in like the other parts. Alternately having a second cross-piece over the peg would have allowed it to be secured more firmly in a round hole. My final criticism is about the shields. The instructions say that these attach to the front, sides and rear of the racer. The counters for shields appear to have fixing slots on them, but I cannot tell if they are supposed to be actually affixed to the model or if they are merely counters to be placed around. I experimented a little and found several places to slot them on, but the result was a rather ugly looking racer so I took them off again.
Conclusion
The cars look excellent, if a trifle too colourful and rather complex. The game appears playable with plenty of tactical options, although I have not tried it. All in all a high-quality product with one or two very minor failings that are hardly worth mentioning.
