Review of Formula D

Blurb from the publisher: 'The action packed game of Formula 1 and road races!

Formula D also means the suspense of illegal racing on the streets of the big cities. Anything goes: customized cards, nitro fuel injection, skidding in roundabouts, unfair tricks... The game principles always stay the same, but different cars, rules and circuits come into play. This new edition of Formula D contains material which has not yet been published, including painted cars, dashboards, driver profiles, and circuits. Simple playing instructions are also enclosed, allowing you to start playing immediately. Off you go!'

What you get: Your USD 59,99 or equivalent will buy you Formula D, the racing simulation that kicked of the Formula D gameline before the expansions came out. The game can accommodate from two to ten players. It is fair to say that the game lasts an hour, even though that depends on the number of players, the number of laps, and the chosen circuit.

In addition to the 8-page Rules for Beginners and the 16-page Rules for Advanced Players that can also be found on the publisher's website free of charge, the game contains the following: 2 Game Boards (Monaco F1 circuit, Road Race Circuit), 20 painted Cars, 70 plastic parts (markers and gear sticks), 10 Score Boards, 7 special dice, and 10 Dashboards.

In the interest of full disclosure I have been playing Formula D since 1999 (when it was still called Formule Dé). I have even won a six-pilot, 14-race championship. This is not your average playtest.

Gameplay: Formula D is a racing game where each player pilots either a Formula 1 or a race car. The rules cannot be mixed, i.e. a game cannot be contested by both Formula 1s or by race cars. It will be either the one or the other.

The former have six different characteristics: tires, brakes, gearbox, car body, engine and road handling. Depending on the game one plays these can be either predetermined and identical for all players, or customizable by each. The latter only have wear points (18 in a basic game).

Vehicles move according to their position on the board. The further to the front one is, the earlier he moves in a turn. Each vehicle has six gears, represented by different polyhedrons (d4, d6, d8, d12, d20, d30). Yet, the number allocation is not the standard one. The d4 has two 1s and two 2s, the d6 has two 2s, two 3s and two 4s, and so on and so forth, until the mighty d30 and its allocation of numbers from 21 to 30, all appearing thrice. A player can only shift up by one gear, without the possibility of jumping over a gear. He can however shift down by jumping gears and using either wear points or gearbox points. Movement is straightforward in straight lines each of which has invariably three lanes, with some limitations to avoid pointless zig-zagging. One basically moves forward, with the possibility of changing lane. That is not however the case on the turns of the circuits. In order to simulate the reduced speed, each turn requires a certain number of stops. The Casino chicane requires only one stop, yet the much longer Loews requires three. Failure to meet these requirements through dice rolling alone can end in the pilot either using breaks or through shredding his tires, at least in the advanced rules of the game. Other rules cover the engine overheating, collisions, multi-lap races, and pit stops.

To make the game more engaging, players can also agree to use slipstreaming (getting advantage of the preceding car reducing air resistance), run qualifying laps with a stopwatch, have three-lap races, and have the weather conditions impact the game. Rain is much more dangerous to drive in, doubling the chance of a collision, and increasing the possibility for engine damage and road handling damage. To mitigate this effect, the players can use one of three different types of tires (hard, soft, and rain). Creating player teams is also possible.

Road races add additional variables like shooting damage to the cars from enraged bystanders, danger zones that are integral to the circuit, police stations, checkpoints that replenish tire wear etc. Most importantly, the divers for the Road Races, apart from a differentiated set up also have a special power. One is more aggressive than others, forcing more collision rolls to his opponents when he collides with them, while another has perfect skid control and can adjust his moves in corners not only through diminishing them but also through increasing them.

The strong points: Formula D is an amazing game, full stop. Here is why.

First, it is fully customizable and modular. If you wish to play a fast game when you open the box, you have 5 pages of extremely easy rules, dominated by pictures. Were I to remove the pictures, there's less than one page of rules, which can be learned in less than ten minutes and explained in five. For a racing game, this is quite an achievement. Once you feel comfortable with those rules, you can play two-lap games, use pit stops, or even use the road racing track with its special areas like the tunnels, the police station or the danger zone. Once you feel comfortable with those, you can proceed with the game's advanced rules. The rules fit organically upon one another, do not impose on the players, and are extremely easy to remember. Setting the roll of the dice aside, there are no surprises. Every piece of information you need is open, including the status of your opponents' vehicles. Not even F1 drivers have access to that telemetry!

Second, it really feels like a racing game. The adrenaline rises when you pick up your dice to roll on your selected gear, thinking whether you calculated your chances right, or whether the gambit your are about to take will pay off. Will you stay in the chicane? Will you ruin your last breaks to get into the optimal position? Will you blow up your tires, overshooting like crazy? Will you risk touching your opponent in such close quarters? Will you remain in the same gear, to steal slip-streaming from your opponent? Should you go for a pit stop now, or withhold it for the next turn? There's genuine excitement around the table, especially when players are playing a full game with all its bells and whistles and are committed to it.

Third, the materials are fantastic. The gears in the Formule Dé iteration of the game that I started playing countless years ago were just pawns on a cardboard, and the vehicle set up was noted with a pencil on pieces of paper. Now the game offers a realistic plastic gearbox where you change gears as you go. You also track your car's status neatly, in a way everybody can see. That might not be the way gears are changed in F1, yet give me a break; it's a fantastic visual. All vehicles come painted, nicely painted I might add, taking their small size into account. The art is solid, opting for realism instead of the cartoony and slightly slapstick style that dominated the initial Formule Dé releases.

Fourth, the circuits are very different. They last a different amount of time, and radiate a particular feeling each. This is noticeable with the easy rules already, but it becomes outright obvious when one plays with the full rule set. It's not just where the turns are located, or how long the straight lines are and whether they allow you to reach the sixth gear. The math behind everything becomes apparent when one is paying attention, and it all leads to the same conclusion: different circuits call for different car builds. Setting aside the elements exclusive to road racing for a moment, nothing precludes you from using the F1 rules and vehicles in the Race City circuit, or the road race drivers in the Monaco circuit.

The two different styles of F1 and road racing make for quite a difference in the game. There are more things going on in road racing (like shooting!), including some fantastic elements like tires improving on the fly, which do not exist in the F1 circuit. I admit I am more of an F1 kind of person, this doesn't mean however that the additional elements of road racing are not welcome.

Were I to recommend a way of gaming Formula D, that would be using the full set of rules including the qualification rounds. These are a blast! One is racing against himself, counting the amount of dice rolls he needs in order to compete the track. Yet, the more real time he uses to do that, the more penailzed he gets. If you wish to make your games even more brutal, transpose the timed aspect from the qualifying rounds also to the actual game. The tension is surely to rise (and mistakes will multiply) when each player has only a fixed amount of time to finish his turn.

Formula D is very well supported. Not one, not two, but six additional packages have been published, containing two tracks each. I am writing a holistic review about all of them as we speak. Seeing how the initial Formule Dé had released 32 circuits, Formula D with its only 14 circuits up to now has quite some potential in front of it.

The weak points: Formula D is a roll-and-move game, with all the negatives that it entails. The gear your vehicle should be in is obvious in most situations. In more relaxed games it isn't unheard of for an opponent to hand you the correct die when your turn comes before you even ask for it. It is also not unheard of for one of your opponents to show you the best possible area you wish to move into after the die is rolled, if you are slow on the count. This means that every other option is either non-existent or bat-shit crazy. Then again, the game encourages bat-shit crazy, at least in controlled bursts.

There isn't that much meat in the game with small numbers of players. The solution is rather simple. If you are playing with under five players, have each control two different vehicles, even three if needed. Just like in F1, award points for each vehicle finishing, giving an incentive for the players to see all their vehicles face the checkered flag. These circuits are designed to be full, I am telling you.

If a game has a serious problem, that would be the fact that it does not tackle in a formalized way the player dynamics around the table. If I had written the rulebook, it would have been evidently clear that one should not touch dice, point on spots on the track outside of his turn, advise, or move any other vehicle but his own. This is a game about managing die results, about finding the optimal way to tackle the numbers that are rolled taking into account a number of variables like your exact position in the race, where the others are, and where you want to go. This, by definition, is something one should do on his own, not with the help of a crowd. If others start chiming in, the game descends into a semi-cooperative activity where the winner will be decided only through the rolling of the dice. That is not however the point. The point is that each player should make statistically dubious choices, poor choices, as well as outright mistakes, when it comes to how to proceed. Without them the game isn't fun at all...

...at least if you have the same idea of fun as I do. Yet, I know from experience that this leads to a relatively silent and snarky environment. The only thing one can do in-between his turns is to wait for his turn to come again, or roll a black die or two depending on whether somebody collided with him, his engine overheated, or the weather needs to change. For larger groups of people this might not be as enjoyable, especially if you are playing without any stakes.

Formula D needs stakes. It thrives on them. Poker is fun because you have something to lose. The game collapses without an ante, because everybody can keep taking impossible risks without repercussions. Formula D is identical. One might not care in a two-lap, or even worse, a one-lap game, about the survival of his car, and push his luck substantially more than the design allows before transcending into a travesty. Change the setting however into three lap games, which form part of a championship, and everybody behaves differently, seeing how not only the first place, but every place gives points. In my eyes Formula D is designed for championships, with stakes at hand. For everything else, it requires mature players around the table who won't just try to trash their vehicles with metagaming in mind.

The dice of the game are also sold separately. Good! To be honest however, I would have preferred a slightly higher price and a second set of dice included in the box. When you play with more than five or six players, one set only is simply not enough.

You'd better have a large table. The maps are as gorgeous as they are big. And I am talking 98 x 66 cm big here!

Conclusion: Formula D is a fantastic racing game that I cannot get enough of. It allows control, risk and choice, within a framework that is perfectly designed to simulate car racing through an astonishing simple design. It might not appeal to the more casual gamers when used in very short, one-lap or two-lap games, due to the metagaming and reckless behaviour that comes into play. Make a championship out of it however, and its risk management brilliance can be heard from afar, like a well-oiled racing engine. Reserve a sit on the curves, if you want to see the vehicles passing instead of a buzzing blur.

For more info on Formula D, visit Asmodee at https://www.asmodee.com.

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