Downforce

Downforce is a racing and bidding game where players are bidding for ownership of cars, and then betting on those cars, or any of the cars to win the race. The game has three different points as the cars move along the track where players bet.

Cars move around the track as players play down cards in turn order. Each card will have the cars moving some amount, and it might not just be your car that moves. A card might move the blue, green, and red cars, 4, 2, and 1 spaces respectively in that order. The trick is that the track can bottle neck in some places, and cars can’t go through other cars, so the order cars moves matters, either to block some cars or to get them through.

The winner is the player who has the most money at the end of the race. You lose money for how much you paid for your cars. You get money if they place and for your bets. We had people in the negatives in the first game and in the second game someone had $28 million. So massive range in scores.

What Doesn’t Work?

I like this game, let’s start with that, but I think out of the base box there is one thing that doesn’t work too well. And that is the car powers. The car powers are cool and something to keep track of. So players forgot them. But the issue I have with them is less remembering them more so the fact that there are six of them and six cars. That means that every power is going to get used. I want more powers, I want there to be eight to ten in the base box. If you use all, you can wait to bid on your favorite power. With ten, there would be question to which would show up.

What Works

This is a very light and fast game. I know there are bigger ones out there, but I like that this is a racing game that wants to feel like a race. A lot of racing games give you moments of adrenaline rush but this one, everything that happens matters and is fun to play around with. So I could see pulling this out, auctioning off the cars and then doing a few races, almost NASCAR style, see who wins the most money but also who does best overall in the races in an evening.

I also really like the card play in this game. The fact that you do every movement on the cards is great. And they have to go in a certain order makes it a puzzle. There are cards that only move one car 5, or the special card that allows for a movement of 8. But then there are cards that move all six cars from six spots down to one spot. So you can create traffic jams if the order is right.

I also really like the powers in the game. I just said that they didn’t work for me, but really, it is just the number of them that doesn’t work. What I want is more of them. So I will probably get the expansions, if they add them, but also for the added in tracks. But something that makes you feel unique is great.

Who Is Downforce For?

Honestly, this is a game for everyone. The game play is simple and fast. People who don’t get gaming will likely get this. The trickiest thing to understand is that you don’t only think about your own cars. In fact, I rarely bid on my own cars. But even when you are done racing, you still care about all the cars on the board. So this is just a great game in my opinion for families, or as a filler for gamers.

In fact, I think the idea of turning it into a cup, or series, is great for gamers. Add some more to the game, play on all the tracks and just enjoy it. It falls into that category of with Formula D and Pitchcar where since they are racing games, might as well do them a bunch. But Downforce is the most accessible of all of them because Formula D adds in more to keep track of Pitchcar is dexterity.

Final Thoughts

This is such a fun game and I had such a fun time playing it. I am going to be getting the expansions, I just want more maps and more fun for this game. I don’t think you need more maps, but I want to do a 6 race series just because that’s going to be fun. And really, my negative item for this game is barely a negative. It’s just, like I said, I want more. I wouldn’t even mind if the different color cars had a special ability, so a car ability and a driver ability or something like that, though, that might make the game more complex than it should be.

Last thing I’ll say is that Downforce isn’t so much a racing game as a betting game. Or maybe more it’s equal racing and bidding. And the bidding, especially early on is just luck. But maybe there is more than luck to what you are doing.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: B+

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10. Elves

They almost didn’t make my list, but they are good. I mainly find that the elves are annoying. They don’t lose a troops when they are killed in a battle, so you can run with elves the whole game. So it’s annoying to decide when to go into decline, because you’ll likely always be getting solid points from them. But they are annoying to deal with as well because you can’t kill them to get them off of the board. They can be a bit of a trap race if the combo is wrong because you get decent points each round, but not enough to get close to being in first. But you still keep playing them, because you get decent points.

9. Orcs

This might be higher on some people’s lists, because they can work really well in the right combos. Getting extra coins for taking over spots is always good. But they have limited numbers. Generally, you’ll see, I like the races with a lot of character tokens. But the orcs can be a nice, rush in there, get points, go into decline team. Even something like the special power stout with them works really well because you don’t have to waste a turn while they are in decline getting limited points potentially.

8. Dwarves

Dwarves are another race that has very few tokens. In fact, probably the fewest tokens of any race. But I don’t mind them because they are a good point getting race. The fact you can still get points while in decline is great. I like trying to hide one or two on mountain spots with mines so that I can quickly go into decline but still be collecting a few points a turn from them and put them in that harder to get to spot.

7. Trolls

Trolls are the ultimate turtle team. By that, I mean when you play them, you can possibly just only play them. If you have the right combination with a special power that is giving them some points passively. Merchant for example, which is a special power that I don’t love, but can work with a defensive race. Getting 2 coins, plus being able to more easily defend a location is great. If you can get into the mountains with the trolls, they are hard to get out of there. Plus their lairs stick around when they go into decline. That’s not that common and makes them, hard to move even when they aren’t active.

6. Giants

The next two are pretty similar, I just like the other one slightly better than the giants. Giants give you a discount when attacking down from a mountain. Anything that makes conquering a region easier is really nice. Plus they are coming down from the mountains which gives you better defensive position with them. That said, getting into the mountains in the first place isn’t discounted, so that’s why they are slightly lower than the one to come.

5. Tritons

Tritons are, in my opinion, slightly better than Giants. Mainly because they only care about being next to the shore to get their discount. And most of the maps, you can navigate from shore to shore relatively easily, possibly without ever leaving a shoreline. That makes them a great race to rush a large number of areas. The big reason they are ahead of the giants is that the Tritons are less situational. For the giants, someone could be entrenched in the mountains and make it hard for the giants to get a foothold. For the tritons, they can basically always have a weak spot to start.

4. Skeletons

Now we’re getting into the races that I really keep an eye out for. Skeletons add in more skeletons the more you attack. They are one of two races which grow over time. And while theirs might not be as strong a good combo, something like the special power commando makes them hard to stop. Even without a great combination, you can really push them around the map. They are a good one to come in and squeeze a player who is doing well or wipe out a large group of a race that’s in decline.

3. Amazons

Much like the Skeletons, the Amazons can wreck someone’s strategy. I really like how theirs works in comparison to Skeletons. While with the skeletons you add more, the Amazons actually lose some when it’s not your turn. But then you get them back for attacking. Again something like commando is great for them. Pillaging Amazons is also a little bit crazy with everything that they can do. I will at times seek them out in the right combination over the next two.

2. Ghoul

Ghouls are fun because they are extremely unique. When they go into decline, you don’t take anything off of the board, and they spread like they are an active race. Now you lose your special power, but that’s okay. Being able to attack in multiple different areas keeps people from being able to focus as easily on your troops. And you can get some huge turns depending on who the ghouls are paired up with.

1. Sorcerer

I’m not sure if people would consider this the top race. But I do, for one main reason, they can deal with the elves. But beyond that, they can spread extremely fast. The sorcerers once per player per turn, can replace an adjacent single enemy character with a sorcerer from the supply. In a four or five player game, you can spread quickly. Give them flying or underworld and they can pop up almost anywhere on the board. And like I said, they deal with the elves who don’t lose troops when they die, but being replaced by the sorcerer, they go back into the supply container. It’s hard to find a downside to the sorcerer, unless it’s early game, then players haven’t spread out enough.

Now, if I were to add in stuff from the Underground base game/standalone expansion, and the Be Not Afraid expansion, I could probably change this up. But just the base game, there are a lot of fun characters to try out. What are your favorite races? What is your favorite race and special power combo? For me, I’d have to say flying sorcerers.

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In Blossoms you are trying to grow and cut the best group of flowers. There are four flower pots and six different types of flowers. You start your turn always by growing a flower, drawing a card and flipping it and adding it to a pot if you can. Otherwise you bust and the turn passes. Then you can push your luck and grow some more. You also have two cards in your hand that you can use to grow the flowers as well, if they match the right type. Finally, you can always use a special ability to reserve a flower and then also give yourself some ability. If you ever cause a flower to grow over seven cards tall, it breaks and your turn ends. If you decide to cut a flower, or if you ever try and grow a flower and it isn’t one of the four types out, your turn ends. You do that going through the stack of flower cards, and whoever scores the most points, based off of the number of flowers collected and how large they are wins.

This game is very straight forward. You are basically pushing your luck, deciding how many times you want to grow the flowers and hoping not to bust before you can cut a flower. However, sometimes the first flower you draw is the one that is going to bust you and end your turn before it even gets started. There is one of the special actions that can prevent you from busting once, but with that, you can’t do that before the first flip, which has to be the first thing you do on your turn. That too me isn’t too mechanically sound, but it does balance itself out somewhat over multiple games, if you decide to play that way.

The special actions are where the real decision making comes in. It helps you in two different ways, it might allow you not to bust, look at the top 3 flower cards in the deck and arrange them, draw another card, or play a flower from your hand onto a pile that it doesn’t belong on. But it also means that until your next turn when the token comes off the other player can’t cut down that flower. So you can possibly have two well grown flowers and protect one of them for a future turn, though, your first grow might bust that time. It is a bit of a bummer though that there aren’t more pots, which have the special actions on them, than the four that come with the game. They could have easily done six or eight pots total and ended up with a game that has more variety and strategy, because the strategy is going to generally stay the same between games because the special powers don’t change.

There’s another downside downside, that is basically you’re only real decision. Otherwise you are just pushing your luck, and if you push too far, you get nothing. Or, it might be that you and the person you are playing against do the mandatory grow action and bust several times in a row so you’re just burning through cards and nothing is happening in the game. I do think with the scoring though, it does encourage you to push your luck, because a stack of two flowers is worth a single point, but a stack of six flowers being cut at once is worth fifteen points. That helps create a bit of tension in a game that is otherwise pretty straightforward and just pretty to look at on the table.

Overall, this is a decent game. It doesn’t offer much tension or a ton of difficult decisions. It does look really nice on the table, and the card board pots and the plant cards are really well done. I like the nice big card size as well. They say that you can play without the special powers to make the game simpler, but it’s already quite simple, so I wouldn’t do that. It also is easy to teach, which means that you can play it with non-gamers easier than some other games as well.

Overall Grade: C+
Gamer Grade: D
Casual Grade: B

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