Thunder

I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about Formula D before. Formula D is a newer version of The old warhorse Foruma De with a different set of starters tracks and a few extra advanced rules.

Formula D is as old as Adams foreskin but it’s holds up well (unlike). I first played it a good twenty years back and enjoyed it then. It’s a good one to have when you have seven to ten players and want to keep the gaming group together. There’s not that much outside of card games to keep that sort of cohesion.

If you haven’t guessed it’s a racing game and it’s aimed purely at fun although you can get some serious serious advanced rules online if you’re hardcore. Speaking of which the games comes with simple basic rules and fully leaded advanced rules. It’s worth going the whole hog.

The game is deceptively simple, it revolves around six dice which represent the gear your car is currently in. You start out in first gear with a D4 and each turn you can up a gear to bigger and faster dice. You move a distance equal to the roll of the dice/gear you’re currently in. The catch is dice aren’t standard sized and have a range. So 1st gear goes from 1 – 2 only. Second 2-4 up to mighty sixth gear that goes from 20 – 30.

The map consists of a track with three lanes and lots of squares for you to move along and of course the all important corners. Corners are what get you. Corners consist of a number of spots that in order to safely negotiate you have to stop in at least once. (Some nasty ones more than once). Fail to stop in a corner and you spin out dropping down to first gear and have to suffer the ignominy of everyone passing you by and some particularly horrible players making musical car horn sounds as they whizz past.

To assist you in your endeavor your car comes equipped with a limited amount of points to tweak the dice rolls. Brake points allow you to reduce the dice result. Tyres points to overshoot the corner a bit. You can also drop multiple gears to get your engine to brake with you but it burns valuable engine points and gear points and can lead to your car blowing it’s engine or gearbox. Everyone else is doing the same boat as you, pushing their car and pushing their luck which categorizes the game nicely

The game comes with two tracks, simple and advanced rules and room for up to ten. It’s nicely produced with keen little pieces and easy to follow instructions.

It’s a fun game. Definitely not too serious and luck does play a part but you usually lose because your ego was writing cheques your dice rolling couldn’t cash. Depending on numbers the game could rattle on for 1 to 2 hours but there’s little down time and games are always close. The feel of being ahead and others snapping at your heels is very well realized.

This game will appeal to new players as well as vets. (Not that type of vet). It’s got a certain somewhat. It’s not the greatest race game. Not the most accurate simulation but it’s definitely worth trying out. Tell you what I’ll demo it at Knavecon 11 better still I’ll pick up some more tracks for it.

Huzzah!

Vic