23 June 2013

Formula D

When I first learned about Formula Dé, I immediately dismissed it because dice are used to determine how far a car moves. That is—typically—a bad sign in a racing board game. Then I saw (the now renamed) Formula D on Tabletop. While dice are used to determine how far you move, the die you roll depends on the gear you’re in and each die has a short range of values.

The game seems to have a lot of the spirit of Waddingtons’ Formula 1—for me, the canonical car racing boardgame—while still doing things its own way. Formula D also has the advantages of being “in print”, having two tracks in the box and additional tracks for purchase, and having some more in-depth rules. I can’t say much about that last bit yet, though, since we’ve only played the basic game thus far.

3 comments:

KenHR said...

It's a fantastic game, a really great mix of luck and skill. 90% of the time the most skilled will win, but there's always the chance that an ambitious amateur will take the cake, and that is how it should be to my mind.

One day I'd love to get a good-sized group together to do a full season of races. One-offs are fun, but tracking standings over time does much to mitigate the luck factor.

anarchist said...

Should that be 'Waddingtons'?

Robert said...

@anarchist

Whoops! Yes. Fixed. Thanks.