‘Welcome to Rallyman: GT! Take to the track in your own supercar and push your driving skills to the limit as you race to be the first across the finish line!
Rallyman: GT uses an innovative Dice mechanic that rewards both strategic decision making and risk taking. Plan your trajectory to tackle dangerous turns and long straights using a mix of Gear, Coast and Brake dice. You can drive carefully to avoid mishaps, or throw caution to the wind and go flat out!
But of course, you’re not alone on the track. Other racers will try to out-manoeuvre you and cut you off, so it’s up to you to make the split-second decisions that will lead you to victory!’
3 words to describe this game: ready, steady, go!
Gameplay:
In this game, you will be taking part in a series of rounds, alternating between black and white, until one player crosses the line after a predetermined amount of laps. Turns are played in order of priority thus meaning that it is possible for one player to have two turns back to back. The player who is in the fastest car goes first in the round. If two players tie for speed then distance round the track is used. If there is a tie then inside position starts first.
During a turn, a player will choose their dice and then roll their dice and move their car. On your dashboard is indicated how many of each type of dice you have access to. You have black dice 1-6, white coasting dice and red braking dice. On your turn, you plan out your race. You must use the black dice in ascending or descending order, the white dice act as coasting dice as if you are staying in the same gear and then the red dice are brake dice and allow you to slow your speed quickly particularly helpful for tight corners and spaces where particular speeds are indicated. As well as looking carefully at hazards on the track indicated by numbers and ! in triangles, you need to pay attention to your opponents. Overtaking your opponents will require you to be at the same speed or higher as them and this is something you are going to need to be aware of.
During the move phase, you can choose to play in one of two ways. You can roll each die individually and have the ability to stop before getting to the point where you have too many hazards indicated on the dice causing a loss of control. Alternatively, you can race flat out, picking up all your dice and rolling them together. You will gain focus tokens for each dice in a successful roll. Focus tokens can be used to mitigate die rolls when you roll die individually to stop from losing control of your car.
Losing control of your car causes you to spin off either in the space or off the board and you will need to miss a number of turns. You may need to pick some damage tokens from the bag and this will give you various negative effects including changing the weather and removing die.
Race to the end and the first to cross the line wins.
Components:
1 rulebook - the rulebook for me over complicated what was a fairly simple game - my advice is watch a play through and look at the gaming aids and you will be good. I went back through the rulebook after playing a couple of times to refine my understanding of the rules and it made much more sense then but initially was a little overwhelming
6 gaming aids (these are ideal for handy hints during gameplay)
12 dashboards and 6 driver cards
Each driver has a dashboard and a driver card in their colour. The dashboards indicate the rules for loss of control depending on certain conditions and also the tyre and dice selection. There are different sets of tyres you can use and you can also change these in a pit stop too.
31 double-sided Track tiles and 1 pit stop tile - I love the idea that you can create different tracks using these modular boards. They are all slightly different and so every game can be different. You can set the length of the game by how many tiles you use.
1 round marker
160 focus tokens - cardboard chits awarded to you for going flat out which you can use to mitigate dice rolls on future turns
6 cars - everyone is happy in our house as all our favourite colours are represented
48 gear markers - these are in player colours and allow you to leave your current gear on the board at the end of your turn
11 dice (6 black gear dice, 3 red brake dice and 2 white coasting dice)
1 damage token bag
42 damage tokens (minus one black dice x 6, minus one red dice x 6, minus one white dice x 6, 12 green flags, 6 yellow flags and 6 weather tokens)
Overall thoughts:
First of all, we already have Formula D and more recently we bought Downforce. I have to say we used to love Formula D. Downforce changed our minds a little bit because it just was a better gaming experience and more fun and easier to teach. We were kindly gifted this copy of Rallyman GT and I was worried it may just be another racing game and wondered would it warrant a space on our board game shelf. Now I had heard a lot of good things about this game and lots of people who talk about it as one of the best racing games out there. I was eager to find out for myself.
The modular boards allow you to make all sorts of tracks and this means there is a huge amount of replay ability and so much choice about how long you want races to be. Shorter tracks will mean a shorter play time, and longer tracks or multiple laps will add to the play time. I love that this is an option and you can decide with your fellow gamers about how long you want gameplay to be. I’ve also heard you can make tracks similar to ones in real life so this excites me. The manual has some tracks that you can use but you can also make up your own.
The way you use the dice to move up and down gears is interesting and does make you feel like you are racing. In formula D, this concept is created by using your gearbox and dice with different amounts of sides. Rallyman GT’s system is so easy to use and takes a lot of faff out of that in the Formula D. The other element that makes for surprising game play is the choice you have to make between going flat out and rolling the dice individually. You are rewarded for going flat out if it pays off but you are also more likely to gain hazards and lose control of your car. You have to be strategic and watch the track and your opponents.
It was great fun and so streamlined! The track tiles look so cool and you do feel like you are racing much more so than in some other racing games. I really want to play with more players as so far I’ve only played two players but I think that a 4-6 player game would be epic. So glad this one is now in my collection and it’s safe to say this might be my favourite racing board game to date!
Thanks to Holy Grail Games for sending this copy out for review.