Players:2-6
Playing Time: 45-60 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Winner's Circle comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• 7 horses
• 28 horse cards
• 6 color cards
• 24 betting chips
• 1 pace chip
• 50 money chips
• 1 die

Gameboard: A four-panel linen-textured gameboard, that centers on an attractively painted 36-space track. Around the track are spaces for other important elements, including 7 horse spaces at the top and a payout chart in the middle. It's all colorful and easy to use.

Horses: A set of 7 plastic horses, each nicely modeled with fine details. They match the 7 spaces at the top of the track, which are colored white, light brown, red, beige, gray, dark brown, and black. Unfortunately two of the horses don't match that well. The brown horse is actually green and the dark brown horse is actually dark gray. This caused considerable consternation in each game I played, and a few times someone moved the wrong horse before they realized what they were doing.

It's a pity these were done wrong, and I need to talk someone into painting numbers on my horses to correct it.

Die: A wooden die which shows the icons used to move a horse forward: a horse's head on 3 side, and on each of the other sides a jockey's camp, a saddle, and ahorseshoe. The different icons are easy to distinguish.

Cardboard Bits: All of the other elements are cardboard, generally printed on thick, linen-textured boad.

There are 28 horse cards, which each show a horse name and values for the four movement types. The general suply of cardboard bits also includes small chips in denominations of $50, $100, and $500 (each helpfully in a different color) plus a $100 pace chip.

Each player also gets 4 betting chips (marked 0, 1, 1, and 2) and one small horse chip in his color.

Generally the cardboard bits are all pretty plain, with almost no artwork. Some of them are also a bit small. However, their print quality is good.

Rulebook: The rulbook comes in three languages (English, French, and Spanish). They're each a simple three-page affair (plus a color cover) which are illustrated, but a little dense. They're easy enough to learn the game from.

Overall, the components of Winner's Circle are high quality and pretty easy to use, other than the troublesome miscolored horses. The board and horses are pretty nice, but the cardboard bits are pretty plain. The resulting Style rating is thus a "4" out of "5": well above average, but with room for improvement.

The Gameplay

The object of Winner's Circle is to bet on winning horses over three rounds of play.

Racetrack Setup: At the start of a race,7 random horses are selected from the set of 28, and laid out in the 7 horse positions. Their figures are then placed on spaces 36 through 30, the 7 spaces behind the starting line.

The pace chip is placed on space 18, and will be awarded to the first horse that reaches or passes it.

About the Horses. Each horse has four characteristics: horse, jockey, saddle, and horseshoe. Each horse also has a numerical value in each characteristic. The horse value is always from 1-7, while the other values can vary from 1 all the way up to 20 or so.

These numbers together define the horse. Citation (7/3/3/3) for example goes ahead at a great clip normally, but falls back if he tries anything special. Alsab (1/6/12/9) is a pretty mediocre horse, conversely, but has lots of good tricks. Regret (1/20/4/3) meanwhile is a super-longshot, who actually can win.

These values will ultimately help determine which horses you bet on.

Betting: Now that the horses are selected, each race continues with players betting on those horses. I suggest the hidden bet method, in which you bet with all four of your chips (which are valued 0, 1, 1, and 2), but you place them face-down when you do, so that no one knows where your "0" is or where your "2" is.

Betting goes around the table, starting with the First Player, with each player placing one chip at a time until all the chips have been placed. Each player may only bet on each horse once.

Running the Race: Now the race begins!

Starting with the First Player a player rolls a die, which shows either a horse's head (3x), a jockey's cap, a saddle, or a horseshoe. He then moves a horse forward by the number of spaces shown by the numerical value next to the appropriate icon for that horse. You can make a move that helps or hinders a horse. For example, if you rolled a jockey's cap you might move Regret 20,his best value, or Whirlaway (6/1/10/1) 1, which is his worst value. This would presumably depend on where your bets are.

Horses can never share the same space, and thus if a horse arrives in an occupied space, it must fall back until it gets to an empty one. This can actually result in a horse taking a move without really moving.

After a horse is moved, its tile is flipped face-down. It can't move again until all of the horses have.

Ending the Race: The race ends after three horses have crossed the finish line. They're placed in the Win, Place, and Show spaces on the board, while the horse in last place is placed in the "7" spot.

The winner pays out $150-$500 per bet (with 0 bid chips counting for nothing and 2s for 2x), depending on how many bets were placed. (The more bets, the lower value each has.) The second-place horse pays $100-$350 and the third-place horse pays $100-$250. If any of these horses was the pace horse, which crossed the halfway mark first, it pays an additional $100.

Finally, the horse that came in last costs its bidders $100 each (times the value of the bid chip, as usual).

Ending the Game: The game is played out over three races, each with new horses and new bids. The last race race pays out 2x for all bids (and losses).

In the end, whoever has the most money wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Winner's Circle is a game of bidding first (and with that bluffing and deduction if you're playing the hidden bids game) and movement only second. There's also a bit of brinkmanship in the movement system, as you might hold out on an average move, hoping that another player will make a great move for your horse instead.

It's the most reminscent of Knizia's other bidding games, especially Titan: The Arena (or later revision Colossal Arena or variant Galaxy: The Dark Ages or even moreso the original Grand National Derby, which was another horse racing and bidding game). Winner's Circle feels a like a slightly more complex game than the others, but that might simply be because it has a board.

Winner's Circle was originally released as Turf Horse Racing, then revised as Royal Turf, #5 in the Alea Big Box series, then revised again as Winner's Circle. Each game has slightly different rules, but most of the older rules appear as variants in the back of the Winner's Circle rulebook. (Use the "Royal Turf" variant to mimic the previous version's play, and that plus "Crowded Field" to mimic Turf Horse Racing.)

The Game Design

The measure of many games can be taken based on how interesting a turn is. Winner's Circle is one of those game that, despite its random element, there's almost always something interesting that you can do. Likewise, there's usually something bad that an opponent can do to you on your turn, and thus you're always on the edge of your seat. Winner's Circle is light, have no doubt about that, but nonetheless it's constantly exciting and interesting.

There are a few orthagonal types of strategy in Winner's Circle. This starts out with the simple question of where to bid, which has to be measured not just by the statistics of the horses, but also where other players are betting. After that Winner's Circle turns into a pretty good deduction game (assuming you're using the hidden bidding rules), as you try and figure out which players are more to help you and which aren't based on the positioning of their "0" and "2" chips.

Finally, there's simple but meaninful tactics in Winner's Circle as you decide when to help horses and when to hurt them.

Overall Winner's Circle has the opportunity for a lot of chaos, between the die rolling and the hidden bidding, but I think the strength of the system is that it overcomes that, and allows for real strategy and tactics.

Winner's Circle is simple yet exciting, allows for "lucky" chances yet balances that with good strategy and tactics. It's a good gateway game, but also a game that will appeal to serious gamers looking for more casual fare. As such I've awarded it a high "4" out of "5" for Style: it's very good.

Conclusion

Winner's Circle is a horse-racing game of bidding, bluffing, statistics, and clever gameplay. It's somewhat light, and will appeal most for casual play, but despite that it's an enjoyable and thoughtful game that will appeal to serious gamers as well.

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