Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 45 minutes
The Components
Snow Tails comes with:
Track Tiles: The race track is made up of modular track tiles. The game includes: eight straights (each of which has plain track on one side and special track on the other); four corners; two U-turns; one start tile; and one finish tile.
They're all printed full-color on linen-textured tiles and feature attractive artwork. There's some nice attention to usability, such as the fact that there's always a red flag to the right and a yellow flag to the left, to help you keep track of what your sled's current orientation is. Speed limits (or minimums) are also depicted on the track tiles.
Sleds: Each player gets a sled (made of linen-textured cardboard) in their color which has spaces for you to place two Husky cards and one brake. Each of these sleds also includes those yellow and red flags, so that you can turn your sled around to match the track if you're having troubles figuring out the geometry.
The five brake tiles (labeled 1-5) are likewise linen-textured.
Cards: Half-sized, linen-textured cards are used to mark the speeds of your two dogs. These are pretty plain, though the Husky artwork is attractive. There's one color-coordinated deck for each player.
There are also 20 dent cards; as you'll see, they can fill your hand as well.
Wood Bits: Finally the game includes some colored wood: a sled for each color, plus 20 green trees used for the special "sapling" boards.
Overall the pieces are very good quality and attractive. I also love the modularity of the board (though of course you have to be careful to keep it together sometimes; it's a pity that some sort of jigsaw construction wasn't used). Combining that with good quality illustrations causes the game to be rated a full "5" out of "5" for Style. It's a nice production.
The Gameplay
The object of Snow Tails is to complete the frozen course, first!
Setup: The racing track is laid out. There are 7 race tracks listed in the rulebook, but I think you could throw tiles together in many other sequences and have them work fine.
Each player takes a sled card (which has spaces for his cards and brake), a sled token (which goes on the board), and a deck of cards (which has four each of cards marked 1-5, and which is shuffled).
In a random player order, players place their sleds in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th starting positions. Now each player takes 5-7 cards as a starting hand (with the number based on his starting position).
Racing Turns: A turn in the race is very simple. A player plays 1-3 cards of the same value to his sled. A card may be used to change the speed of one of the huskies or to change the value of the brake. In each case, the card played overrides the previous value for that dog or brake. Note that you must play at least one card each turn.
Then the sled moves based on its updated values. Its base speed is the sum of the two huskies minus the value of the brake.
If the sled is balanced (meaning that the two huskies have the same value), then the sled may take a bonus of 1-5 spaces forward, based on the sled's racing position at the start of the turn. This is optional, and as you'll see momentarily when we talk about curves, you might not want the extra speed.
If the sled is unbalanced then it drifts a number of spaces equal to the difference in the value of the two dogs, toward the stronger dog. This is the only way to shift lanes in the race, so it's very important to manage well. Each drift replaces a normal move forward and moves you one space forward and one space in the appropriate direction; it can be taken at any time during your movement. You can't drift more spaces than your current speed.
Tricky Tiles. Things are made more complex by various tricky tiles. First of all, turns and U-Turns have maximum speeds. If you're going faster than that speed (3 or 4) as you move onto the tile, then you take a number of dents equal to how much you went over.
There are also tiles that cut off some of the spaces to one side (snow drifts) or to both sides (chasms). These mainly increase your chances of running off the track, as discussed below.
Finally, there are tracks with saplings. If you hit a sapling (marked by a wooden tree), you take a dent, remove the sapling, and continue on with your turn. The people behind you will probably thank you for the clearer racing space.
Running off the Edge of a Track. If you run into the edge of a track (usually because of special tiles or because of turns, though you could just drift off), then you take a dent and end your turn.
Hitting Other Sleds. If you hit another sled (usually from behind, but also it could happen as part of a drift), then you immediately end your turn and don't get to draw your cards back up that turn, but there is no other ill effect.
Managing Cards & Dents: The cards you play on your Huskies are left on your sled, while the cards used for your brake are discarded. In any case, you'll need to draw up to replace them. You typically get to draw back up to a hand size of 5.
There's a catch: dents take up card space in your hand. Thus, for example, if you have one dent, you're only going to get to draw up to an actual hand size of 4 cards. If you ever get a fifth dent, your sled falls apart.
Ending the Game: The game goes until everyone crosses the finish line. Order determines victory. If multiple players cross on the same round, than whoever gets past the finish line by the most in that turn wins among them.
Relationships to Other Games
Snow Tails is a card-driven racing game. This certainly isn't the only racing game I've seen in that style, though I think that dice-driven race games are probably a bit more common.
The Game Design
Snow Tails is a great game. Its basic mechanism for managing the two dogs and how that causes your sled to pull in a specific direction is simple and elegant. It for a lot of great tactical play. This is amped up by the fact that the construction of the board can introduce a lot of constraints to where you can go and how fast.
I've heard some concern about the possible random effect of bad card draws on the game. Some players worry that if you get behind you can't catch up. Clearly, there's some randomness in any game with a randomizer, but I think it's considerably less in Snow Tails than in other games, because you tend to go through your deck almost exactly once (for the prepared tracks at least), and the balance between your dogs and your brakes lets you always find a use for a high card or a low card at any time.
Of course I skunked the other players in both of the races where those complaints rose, so take my notes with a grain of salt. But given that those were my fourth and fifth plays of Snow Tails and everyone else's first and second, I think that suggests the possibility of real strategy, rather than the converse.
Beyond my comments on the elegance of the mechanics and the fact that I think the luck of the game is well-balanced, I'll also say that it's quite fun. Part of that's because I love a puzzle, and there really are puzzles in this game; you must figure out which plays of cards will let you move in different directions and at different speeds, as the course demands. Part of it is that racing games tend to be exciting, as you jockey with your opponents for position.
Overall, I give Snow Tails a "5" out of "5" for Substance. It's currently my favorite racing game of everything I own. I also think it's the best racing game of the year--and it's been a strong year for the genre.
Conclusion
Snow Tails is a beautifully elegant, original, and just-plain-fun racing game. If you enjoy the genre, you should rush out and buy it at once.
