Yes, I’ve discovered another gem of a game on BoardGameArena. I’ve always been board games on a motor racing theme (I own Speed Circuit and the Really Nasty Motor Racing Game for instance) and this one adds a new twist. In most games of this genre, players move their own cars according to cards, dice rolls or the like. But in Downforce, you can move any of the cars.
Let’s start with the track itself. The base game comes with two normal looking tracks (a double-sided layout), but they’re tight. There are six cars in each race, but the track is at best only three lanes wide, and for several of the corners, there’s only one lane. Clearly then, there’s going to be some blocking going on! The game plays from 2 to 6 players, but regardless of the number, all six cars take part in the race. The other components you get in the game – apart from the cars and the tracks – are a pack of Movement cards, 6 Power cards, and 6 8-speed cards, one for each car.
The movement cards need some explanation. Six of them relate just to one colour and go to the owner of each car (I’ll talk about how you determine ownership in a moment). The rest have a range of coloured bars on them, anything from one bar to six bars, with the colours matching each of the race cars plus a grey bar to represent a “wild car”. Each of those bars on the card also has a number, with the highest number bars at the top and going in descending order down the card. These cards are distributed among the players and when a card is played, the player who laid it gets to move all the cars that are represented on the colour bars on that card, moving them the number of spaces shown on the bars and in the order from highest to lowest. That player decides where the each of the cars moves to, but must move the full distance on the card if that’s possible. Since most of the cards have less than six bars, that means on any given turn, some of the cars won’t be moving. The wild car bars allow the player to decide which colour car that represents, but it must be a different colour from any other bar on the card. Once played, the card is put on a discard pile – note that means there is a finite number of cards which can move each colour car.
The aim of the game is not necessarily to have your car win the race, but to make the most money at the end of it. The money is dealt with in three ways: costs to buy the card in an auction, prize money for the owners of the cars finishing 1st to 5th (£12m down to £2m), and winnings from betting.
After dealing out the movement cards, we have the auction. The 8-speed cards are shuffled and the top one is revealed. Players now bid for that car. They play from their hands and the amount they are bidding is the value of the bar in that car’s colour. You can pass if you like. Each car is auctioned off in the same way, and any cards used to bid are returned to the player’s hand after each auction. There are rules around how many cars each player can have, but the end result is that every player will own at least one car. The cost of each player’s purchased cars is noted. The only advice I’ll give is to avoid buying too many cars. If you start off in debt to the tune of £18m, you’re going to need a lot of luck to get the money back in wings and bets!
There are three betting lines marked on the track. At the end of a turn on which a car crosses the first betting line, all players (secretly) try and predict the car they think will win the race. Players get another two pick when a car crosses the second and third betting lines. They can pick any of the six cars each time, or the same colour three times. The cars that finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd earn winnings for the players who picked them.
So on with the race. Here’s where it gets tactical. The more cars you own, the deeper in debt you are at the start of the race, but you have more chance to control their moves and could even – if you were so inclined – bet on other cars by holding yours back. You could earn up to £18m with lucky betting. On the other hand, if you only have one car, you don’t need to win as much to pay back its cost. Since the order of movement will be determined by what’s on the cards you play, you have more options at the start of the race, and that might be crucial in getting into the narrow parts of the track first.
Races last about half an hour – it’s just one lap of the track, but there’s nothing to stop the enterprising group making it a two or three lap race, shuffling and re-dealing the movement cards when at least one car finishes a lap. You can also ignore laps and simply continue until all cards have been played – the final positions are determined by which cars moved furthest.
Eagle-eyed readers will spot that I haven’t mentioned the Power cards yet. You can play without them, but these give specific powers to a car. One card will allow you to control where your cars move when another player is moving them; another card gives you +1 to your movement if your car is on the top bar of a movement card. If you use them, they are shuffled and turned over in the auction phase, so instead of bidding for a car, you bid for a car and a Power together.
That’s the base game – cost around £25 if you hunt around your favourite game stores. And, just to spice things up, you can buy extra tracks (there are two expansion sets, each with two extra tracks, costing around £13) that can spice things up with obstacles or crossovers or even ramps.
One word of caution here. I found the rules simple to understand, but playing it in my regular group did cause one person a little trouble. I’d recommend you hunt out a “how to play” video which may help if you’re new to it. Even so, after a couple of games, you’ll know what to do.