Speed Circuit by Mail

I worked up some play-by-mail / e-mail rules for Speed Circuit earlier this year. I play tested them against my-self earlier this month, made a couple tweaks and I've now got a couple test subjects for my first real trial.

My biggest concern with this idea was that I did not want to have to go back to each driver after the plot to see how they wanted to execute the plot. So went into the current rules set I use and started taking out things that allowed for reactions and changes after the fact (like emergency braking). I also ended up taking out dice.

I did it for a similar reason, I didn't want to have people end up in unexpected situations that forced them to roll dice they hadn't planned on, forcing me to make them roll in the middle of moving cars, slowing down the whole process. Also, rolling dice is a suspense thing in games, really. But the suspense gets leached out for me when you're doing play-by-mail. So I took out the dice.

The result, I think, is that this will be a subtlety different game then in-person Speed Circuit.

I'll report back in a couple months when I expect this first race to be completed.

Taking Tiles out of Tikal

I suggested a while ago that a 2-player modification for Tikal might be to take some land tiles out of the stack. My hope was that this would create more competition for scoring resources by making the playing space smaller.

I was a little concerned about upsetting other play balance issues, so I took out 1 blank land tile from each letter group (7 total). I think it helped a little, but was too incremental a change.

It did make the board smaller. However, there were the same number of scoring opportunities so it did not force increased competition. I think it made it easier to poach some scoring chances because everything was closer together, but it did force you to.

On the other hand, it made the game go a lot quicker.

I think next time we try taking a random tile out of each grouping (excepting the volcanoes of course). That way we will be making scoring opportunities rarer and thus increase competition.

2007 Speed Circuit Report from WBC

33 drivers competed for 12 spots in the finals grid over three qualifying heats from Portugal (Estoril) to South Africa (Kylami) to Canada (Montreal).

Two first round heats were won by Seth Kirchner and Jim Fleckenstein. Franklin Haskell would pick up the first of his two third place finishes. All three drivers would qualify for the finals with these finishes.

Finals qualifiers from the second round included first place finishers Doug Schulz, Jeff Cornett (improving on his second place finish from the round before) and Doug Galullo, second place finishers John Welage, Mike Aubuchon, and Robert Kircher.

Qualifying in the third and final round were first place finishers Terry Schulz and Scott Cornett (improving on his second place finish from the first round), and second place finisher Dennis Nicholson.

The finals race at Suzuka in Japan had a full twelve car field of 7 first place finishers, 4 second place finishers, and the best third place finisher.

There was some significant bidding for pole on this track, with Jeff bidding 8 ½ for the pole and Terry bidding 6 ½ to gain the outside of row one. Row two was populated with Jim and Doug G who each bid 4 ½. Seth and Scott populated the third row. Doug S. and Robert qualified on the fourth row. Dennis and Mike qualified for the fifth row. John and Franklin took the last row.

This finals began with fireworks when Jim miss-shifted off the starting grid to lose precious space going into the first corner and Doug S stalled on the grid to fall all the way back to the end of the pack with a damaged engine to boot. On the positive side, Terry took command of the race early by exploiting his 100 start speed to immediately gain two spaces over row-mate Jeff and began his second finals race in a row from the lead.

Doug G and Robert found themselves in position to challenge early in lap one when Robert miss-plotted heading into the sixth corner of the race. The amount of wear and skill chips he expended to stay on the track greatly hurt his future.

Terry plotted an excellent first lap from his lead position and continued to put pressure on the trailing cars. Terry had a 3 space advantage over Doug G after ½ a lap. Doug G., who tangled with Terry last year, blew a top speed test on the front straight, then miss-plotted in the middle of the back straight as Terry gained greater separation.

Terry maintained at least a 4 space lead through the remainder of the race's check points with minimal wear usage. Terry had 5 wear left mid-way through the final lap.

With this year's champion racing off into the sunset, Scott and Seth fought a tight battle for second through the last two laps. Side-by-side coming out of the last corner, Seth achieved greater speed to gain second by a space. Jim and Mike passed Doug G. and then dueled to the end for the final plaque. Mike led Jim most of the race up to the end of the last lap when Jimmy out accelerated Mike for fourth coming out of the last corner.

John managed to escape a raucous back marker fight to claim 6th place and the final laurel for the race. Despite nothing but pride on the line, the final three cars of the field fought tooth and nail for position on the final ½ lap and stayed in a tight knot through multiple spins and stayed on track through multiple naked-chance rolls. Jeff crossed the line just ahead of Doug G and Franklin who had been stymied in his come from behind strategy all race long.

It was a particularly sweet victory for Terry, who had been close several times before and had lead the finals race in the second lap of last year before tangling with Doug G and eventually retiring.

Speed Circuit Tracks for WBC

I'm ready to announce the four tracks I will run for speed circuit at the WBC.

The qualifying tracks will be Kyalami, Estoril, and Gilles Villeneuve. Gilles Villeneuve (Montreal Grand Prix) is a new track. I'll run that one Saturday. Haven't determined running order for the other two.

The finals track will be Suzuka.

Play Testing Speed Circuit Rules

I had a practice run last night at the new speed circuit rules that I will be implementing for the WBC in a month's time.

In the end, there really wasn't much to it.

The slipstreaming from 0 mph mod is one of those things that seldom comes up and was less noticed being ruled out then when we had to deal with its existence last year.

The passing table was not actually rolled on last night, but its more of a re-ordering-for-integrity then a rule change.

The order of movement tie-break change went over very well because of the track markings. The fact that there was a rule tweak on that end might have caused confusion, but because no-one really needs to know the rules anymore the rule effectively becomes find the grey border to the track and that side goes first. That worked real well.

The first corner sprint rule seemed to make sense to people, but did not seem to have an impact in this particular race. We had an 8 car field, which is probably on the lower side that I'll see at WBC. The fact that the spaces go away after that first corner also did not seem to confuse any body this race.

More on these rule revisions (and the over all WBC rule mods)

The WBC

Last Speed Circuit Rule Change of 2007, Promise

Last week I alerted Speed Circuit fans to the mods I plan to make for the upcoming WBC tournament. Well, I have an update.

I've got a small change to the last order of movement tie-breaker. I long ago replaced the old inside-of-the-track rule with an inside-of-the-upcoming-corner rule. Well, I thought of a mod to that. Now we will use an inside-of-the-corner-you're-in-or-the-upcoming-corner rule.

We will use the inside of the previous corner to break ties for movement until the last row of spaces with an arrow from that corner. If two arrows from different corners overlap, we will use the upcoming corner.

This may all sound very confusing, but it will not be because of my other great idea. I'm adding a gray bar to the side of the track that gains the tie-breaker to the tracks we will run at the WBC. So you really don't have to know this rule, just stay next to the gray bar and you can go first.

Tikal

Lots of people know and love Tikal, its really a very good game and a classic example of modern German game design with the whole 10 points to spend on differing actions every turn mechanic.

As usual I will not bog myself down in describing the game, other people can do that:

Rainy Day Games

Board Game Geek

I've never played the auction variation because I play rarely enough that I feel I like I should just do the basic version. I've also not felt like I needed something extra with the strategy. That said, I have found that the 2-player version of the game can be a little lacking.

The problem with 2-player is that you aren't forced to compete as much with your opponent for temples (and treasure to a lesser extent). I think this happens because two people can very easily use all their expeditioneers to simply cover "their" half of the board. When there are 3 or 4 people you are almost forced to try to steal control of temples from others.

What's the fix for that? Making the board smaller seems like the obvious play. However, if I take tiles out of the mix (thus reducing the size of the board) I will also be reducing the the length of the game. I'm not sure what affect that will have, but it should be worth a try.

I'll keep you all informed.