Formula D - Tips & Strategies

This is certainly a fun game on its own accord, but adding the meta-game of a league structure really brings out the life of this game. If you can get 10 players on a regular basis, do yourself a favour and try a league.

I had someone request this from me on another site after experiencing some confusion. Although it’s nothing more than an explanation of the rules in layman’s terms, it seemed to do the trick for him, so perhaps it can be of use to others…

Rule and Gameplay Summary for Formula D
Advanced Rules in Italics

Corners
The track board should look simple enough, but the important bit is the corners. The rules say you have to “stop” so many times in each corner. Anyone that knows racing will hate the term “stop”, so I don’t even describe it that way, since the only stops a race car should be making are pit stops, which can be done in this game, but I digress.

I just tell people that the yellow number on each corner tells them how many game turns a driver must spend negotiating the corner. Simple corners may only require spending one turn in the corner, while complex ones may require more.

To the right of the yellow number, you’re going to find a number in red and one in green. The green one tells you just how many spaces you’ll move via the longest path or “line” through the corner. The red one shows you just how many spaces you can traverse the corner via the shortest route.

So, to review. Yellow = # of so-called “stops”, Green = # of spaces for the Longest Route and Red = # of spaces for the Shortest Route.

Gear Dice
This is pretty well explained in the rules, but upshifting in general will generate bigger numbers, while downshifting lowers the possible numbers rolled. Deciding to upshift and downshift, including skipping gears, will be one of the things players have to strategize about. Upshift too often and you run the risk of overshooting a corner. Downshift too often, and other players will overtake you easily. It’s this management of the gears and the wear points I’ll discuss in a minute that form the core of the game. The greatest risks can produce the greatest reward in a win, but take too many risks and your car will be trash.

You cannot skip gears when accelerating in the game, which could produce a stall in real life, but you’re allowed to skip 1, 2, or 3 gears if you need to drastically slow your speed down. For each gear you skip, you lose a WP in the base game. In the advanced game, this would come from your “Gearbox” WP and possibly “Brakes” and “Engine” points. 1 Gear Skipped costs 1 Gearbox WP, 2 Gears skipped costs 1 Gearbox and 1 Brakes WP and 3 Gears skipped costs 1 Gearbox, Brakes and Engine WP. Note that this is actually different from braking, which I’ll explain shortly, but is an excellent segue into Wear Points.

Wear Points
The game uses wear points as a means of tracking the wear and damage the cars accumulate during a game. I can’t stress enough that the game was meant to be played by people willing to use these wear points. Yes, in real life, car owners would be all over the drivers butt for constantly abusing their car, but folks that use their wear points, and use them wisely, without using them all, stand the greatest chance of winning the race, especially if the dice roll the players way.

In the basic game, rather than distribute points throughout the various different parts of the car like brakes, tires, body, engine, etc., you get generic wear points that you spend to survive various incidents and risky manoeuvres. If you run out of wear points (WP), your car is out of the game/race. In the Advanced Game, any car that is removed from the race is assumed to do so due to damage or engine failure and thus requires a damage marker to be placed where the car last was.

In basic/beginner game, the amount of spaces you overshoot a corner by is the amount of WP you deduct from you car. In you miss at least two “stops” that you were supposed to make in a corner, you overshoot by too much and are out of the race/game due to the resulting overshoot/crash that taking a corner too fast would be likely to produce. In the advanced game, this costs Tire WP.

So a 2 Stop corner requires at least one stop to stay in the game. If you miss a stop, and overshoot, you take WP, but you’re still in the game. Miss both stops and you’re out.

A 3 Stop corner requires at least 2 stops to stay in the game. If you make no stops, or only one, you’re out. Make two stops, but miss the last via an overshoot and you take WP equal to the amount of spaces you overshoot, but at least you’re still in the game. Coming out of a corner, you’re just concerned with finishing the corner and thus, you cannot change lanes on the move exiting a corner. If that move out of one corner takes you into another corner, which can happen as fast as some players will try to navigate a corner, then that does not count as a stop for the new corner. So the first “stop” in a corner must be made from a move that originated in a straightaway and not from a space within a prior corner.

Another use of WP in the base game is from braking. In the basic game, they come from the mass pool of WP each player gets in the beginning.

Anytime you roll the dice and get a result that is more than desired, such as rolling a “20” in 5th gear when you were hoping to roll an “18”, you can move the 18 spaces and the extra two movement points remaining are “eaten up” by the brakes at a cost of 1WP per space avoided. This comes in handy when trying to make that last “stop” in a corner after upshifting in anticipation of an upcoming straightaway. Breaking costs WP by shortening the amount you’d have to move via the roll, skipping gears during a downshift costs WP before you even make a roll because you’re wanting to get into a gear that won’t create a big roll.

In the Advanced Game, after the driver has moved his car as many spaces as they’d like, or as possible, count how many spaces weren’t moved (In the above example, roll=20, move=18, for a difference of 2 spaces). 1 space costs 1 Brake WP, 2 spaces costs 2 Brake WP’s, 3 spaces costs 3 Brake WP’s, 4 spaces costs 3 Brake WP’s and 1 Tire WP, 5 spaces costs 3 Brake WP and 2 Tire WP, 6 spaces costs 3 of each, and 7 spaces eliminates the car from the race. (Place damage marker on track)

Collisions
Like a real life race, there’s bound to be the occasional bumping and fender rubbing. These are collisions. We’re not talking the kinds of crashes that result in cars flipping end over end. That is assumed to be what happens when either you miss 2 or more stops in a corner, or when you run out of WP.

Whenever a car ends its move on a space next to another car, a die is rolled to resolve the chances of tight racing producing a collision. In addition to the brightly coloured gear dice, there is a black 20-sided die in the game used both to determine whether each car suffers a poor start, normal start, or great start, but also collisions. Roll the die when you end a turn next to another car. 1-4 and there’s a collision and the driver whose turn it is loses a WP. Yeah, I know…the game punishes the driver that lost control and there’s no damage to the car that gets hit. This makes for a better game, but you lose a bit of realism. This also prevents the race/game from devolving into a demolition derby match where everyone is trying to knock each other out of the race. This can still happen if players plan right and block the entrance to corners right in front of a player who is obviously been taking a ton of risks and is travelling too fast. In this situation, the cars in front can cause players behind them to have to burn WP to avoid wrecks.

In the Advanced Game, you still roll the same black d20, but you only lose WP on a 1, not 1-4 and the WP comes from the Car Body section. The player would then place a damage marker where the move ended.

Motor Damage
The last way a player can have to spend WP is by motor damage. If you’re in 5th or 6th gear, and thus rolling the purple d20 or blue d30, and are lucky enough to roll either a 20 on the d20 or 30 on the d30, there’s risk of motor damage from the stress. Note, and this is really important…whenever a 20 on the d20 or a 30 on the d30 is rolled, everyone in 5th or 6th gear has to roll to see if they suffer engine damage. They each roll separately and each player that rolls a 1-4 on the black d20 loses a WP.

In the Advanced Game, the WP comes from the Engine section. When your last Engine WP is used, the car suffers an Engine Failure and is out of the race. (Place damage markers on track as required)

Pit Stops aren’t going to be an option in a 1 lap race, but if there’s anything related to them you have questions about, feel free to ask.

Advanced Rules

The main difference is with the WP. Rather than having generic WP to spend, it’s allocated between Tires, Brakes, Gearbox, Body, Engine and Road Handling (aka Suspension or Shocks). I’ll touch on these each briefly in a minute. If you look at the basic rules, the advanced WP uses are in red.

Driving Code
This is a bit more strictly enforced in the Advanced Game. The code for corners is the same and is basically about how many “stops” you must make in each corner and about not being able to make maneuvres while exiting a corner.

On straights, you cannot “zig zag” or return to the same lane within the same move after having already changed lanes.

Slipstreaming

This is only possible from 4th gear on. The car behind must driving as fast, or faster. To benefit from slipstreaming from behind, you must end your normal movement the exact space behind another. If this happens, the car behind gets an additional 3 spaces of movement to overtake (slingshot) the other car, including the ability to move from directly behind, to its side, then back in front of it, which isn’t normally permitted in the rules (returning to the lane you began in after lane changes). You must move all three spaces or use Brake WP to reduce the amount you move. If this movement brings you right behind another car, the effect happens again and you may move another three spaces. Note that finishing your movement next to a car requires a collision roll.

Damage and Road Handling
If a car passes over a damage marker left from Body or Engine Damage, roll the Black d20. If the result is 1-4, lose a Road Handling (Suspension) WP. If a car loses its last Road Handling WP, it is eliminated from the game.

We use quite a few minor adjustments, but the one I find to be most “necessary” is a pit lane speed. We play that you cannot enter the pit lane (any space) in 5th or 6th gear. You also cannot ever accelerate to 5th or 6th while still on a pit lane space. So, 4th gear is the maximum speed we use to help balance out the pit’s advantages.

When I play this game with my wife, we find the game much more fun when we use 2 cars each. If there are only 2 cars racing, it seems too much like a Sunday drive.

So Keep the pedal to the metal and see you at the finish line.

We don’t allow players to touch the board to count spaces. It’s frustrating when you are using your eyes and counting in your head to plan ahead, then Player 2 reaches out to touch every space, counting to 20, blocking your view. Strongly recommend a No Board Touch rule!

Replace Wear Points with shots!