Lambourne Games Designed by Terry Goodchild

This review is based on the original 1986 release of Metric Mile, the main changes I believe to later releases were improved production quality. The layout and components of this release were typical of small press games at the time before DTP being widely available, so by modern standards look a bit crude (typewritten text and hand drawn components). As keen amateur track runner for a number of years (primarily 1500 and 5000 meters) I feel that I can review this as a game and simulation.

The game aims to be a simulation of the 1 Mile/1,500 metre race with the ability to match runners from different eras against each other, so for example Jack Lovelock and Sidney Wooderson can take on Coe and Ovett. The statistics of the historical runners have been modified so that they can compete with the current racers.

Components are the rule book (a5 format), 7 sections of 'track' , four charts (summary, race pace/progress record and timing charts for 1500m and mile), 36 cards for runners and record sheets for races and a training log for the optional campaign rules. Four dice (two yellow, red and green)and two counters are also supplied.

Game play is fairly simple with only 4 A5 pages of rules and 3 A4 pages of charts used. The optional campaign rules add another two A5 pages. The rules may be simple, but the tactics for the game include quite a lot of subtle twists as each individual runner has a best approach and this may need to be varied depending on the opponents. The game is divided into 10 turns with lap one being 1 turn, lap two 2 turns, lap three 3 and lap four 4 turns. This simulates the greater importance of the latter laps in the race and does help give a realistic feel to the game.

There are five running modes in the game: ease up; normal; pick up; forcing and sprint with a tieing up mode that occurs when a runner's stamina is exhausted. Each runner has a different set of statistics for how far they move when in a given mode with stamina being reduced at a variable rate, except when easing up when only one stamina per turn is used. When a runner commits to sprinting they must keep sprinting until they complete the race or run out of stamina and start to tie up.

The turn sequence starts with the player assigning a mode to each of their runners for the turn, checking for runners being boxed in or lost touch which can cause penalties, then rolling the dice for each runner in turn starting with the one leading the race and going through the field. All four dice are rolled together, the red and green are used to see how much stamina is used and the two yellow dice how far the runner moves that turn. The stamina and movement points are recorded each turn with the stamina reducing and the cumulative total of movement points used to find how fast each lap has gone. At the end of each turn the pace count is worked out and the time is calculated each lap by cross referencing the total movement points of the fastest runner and the pace count.

The runners included are from the 1930's up till the 1980s when this edition was produced with a bias towards the 1980s with Coe, Ovett, Cram, Aouita, Abascal, Maree, Steve Scott and John Walker. The runners include the famous pre WWII runners Jack Lovelock and Sydney Wooderson and from the 1950s has Roger Bannister and John Landy. The tactics need to be varied by each runner as their strengths and weaknesses are reflected in the statistics and you would need to play the game fairly often to really master the tactics.

Metric mile is highly suitable for solo or multiplayer games, with an ability to support up to about a dozen players easily. I would tend to advise that with 4-6 players each has two runners which matches the normal field for a race of 8-12 competitors and means that it is harder for one player to end up out of contention quickly.

I rate this game highly both as a game and a simulation, on a scale of 1 to 10 overall I'd give it a 9 and if I split it into game and components I'd say a 10 for the game and 4 for the components. It is no longer in production and Lambourne Games has replaced it with 3 3/4 laps which I haven't played yet.