My Small Shipment - Formula Motor Racing & Railroad Tycoon
I finally broke down and ordered a copy of Railroad Tycoon and a copy of Formula Motor Racing (FMR) from Game Surplus.
FMR is a light, quick, filler designed by Reiner Knizia known more for his more heady, lightly themed, simple yet elegant designs. FMR feels like something he would have designed in five minutes while taking his morning shower. The game supports up to six players so it's a great opener or closer. It consists of six pairs of cars in six colors, a deck of cards, and a 12d. All twelve cars are played regardless of the number of players. In the game above, each player was playing two different pairs of cars. The cars are always kept in a line on the table and players play cards which adjusts the order of the cars in the line and then draw a card. The goal is to be have your cars in one or more of the top six spots garnering points at game end. An official game lasts multiple sub-games determined before play begins. The cards consist of actions that advance a pair of cars, cause crashes, loss of position, etc.
The game has great moments of Schadenfreude when players suffer the consequences of well timed card play. The kids seemed to relish the 'oh yeah...well take that' aspect of the game and after a quick round we set up for round two after a resounding "lets play again!".
I don't have much to say about Railroad Tycoon yet. I opened the huge box, punched the bits, and set up the board to just see how big the thing really is.
In the image above, the board has been placed on my dining room table and as you can see, the board is large enough that playing the game would be difficult with such a small amount of edge space.
However, the neat thing about this table is that the entire top pivots towards one end of the legs and then the double thickness top opens up using hinges along the long edge (now in the center of the table). In its open state, the playing area is effectively doubled making a great space for playing this game. I'm really looking forward to tearing into this one.
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I'd hesitate to call my comments a review of FMR but I'm glad they did pique your interest in the game. The game does have some sense of player elimination not found in many (most?) "Euros" (like there's a clear definition for that :-). I only mention it because some players don't like elimination especially when it may have occurred through random bad luck and/or malicious meta-game reasoning.
In any case, there's not much to the game and therefore deserves little in-depth discussion. It is what it is. It's cheap so throw in a copy with your next order.
It sounds better than it is, sometimes. For example, our group consists of 4 couples. Two couples are up for different games, one couple it depends on the 'theory' behind the game, and the last one, well, they're pretty much trying to restrict the group to trivia based games. *sigh* We introduced the group to Killer Bunnies last year, and out of the 8, 5 enjoy the game and 3 absolutely despise the game. I'm actually afraid to see what would happen if we were to introduce typical "Euro" games to them...
We pretty much enjoy the same types of games but some of us are more, shall we say, boardgame geekier, than others (Hey...I resemble that remark!). I and one other member represent the game librarians for the group.
The most difficult issue we have is a mixed desire to break up into multiple groups or to stick together in a common game. Hovering at 5 or 6 limits our game choices as you might expect.
I've never played with couples very much. We just don't hang out with that many couples that have boardgames as a common interest. I wish you luck in your group. Maybe you should introduce a 'real' Euro. Maybe they'd like that better?
FMR looks quite interesting. Unfortunately, our group consists of 8 players. Very rarely do we have only 6. Perhaps I'll keep FMR in mind when playing with our nieces...
Thanks for the review! :)