Our games have had a small player count so far, but I do wonder how things may change with more players. Blocking has been useful at least once to force a player that had lost control to automatically take another minute at gear zero. Going flat out has also been strategically useful and it's fun to roll a bunch of dice all at once. We will see what other interesting strategies we can discover soon. Cheers!
Hey, just wanted to say thank you for helping me discover new fun games and mechanics. I really like the analyses that you write and this one got me to try Rallyman:DIRT. Had some fun playing this with my brother and wife and we already scheduled another rally.
As a side note, both Rallyman GT and Rallyman DIRT are on BGA. Rallyman GT is also still in print (??) and available in many locations. They are different games that use the same core mechanism (i.e. "flat out"). Very different feel to each. GT seems to work best at higher player counts and is all about player interaction and blocking. DIRT is against the clock and other players really don't matter much, if at all. I think I enjoy DIRT more if you include all the advanced rules in the physical copy.
I haven't played the newer Rallyman, but in the original one the fixed dice pool did create some issues. Namely, after playing for a bit, the players would learn the odds of getting good and bad outcomes on different die combinations. There weren't many possible dice combinations, and even less of them actually mattered from the risk-reward perspective (as lower speed risks were negligible). This lead to game only having 2-4 distinct states, all of which were focused on dice. The board didn't matter much, you just knew which number of dice made sense for which speed limit (and maybe risked a tiny bit more if you're behind).
My takeaway from that is that probabilities should mostly be determined by the game situation, rather than fixed by core mechanic itself (example of this would be drawing zombie cards in After the Virus, or busting in Mystic Vale, Living Forest, Cubitos etc). Otherwise, the whole risk management part can become rote, and also divorced from actual in-game situation. It's fine to fix outcomes/rewards by core mechanic, but probabilities should preferably stay more dynamic.
Another thing I've noticed is that risk aversion usually pushes players to avoid the risk, unless they see the potential reward beforehand. So it generally makes sense to fix rewards and show them up front while hiding/obfuscating/backloading the odds, rather then frontloading probabilities and backloading outcomes.
That's an interesting observation about Rallyman: GT and presumably it would apply to Rallyman: DIRT as well. I haven't seen this, but that could just be a function of me not getting it to the table with the same people that often. My total play count is pretty low, even though I'm actually playing it with some friends tonight. :)
I do agree that if the probability is too obvious, then it really isn't much of a choice anymore. A "clear answer" appears and it just becomes boring and routine.
Our games have had a small player count so far, but I do wonder how things may change with more players. Blocking has been useful at least once to force a player that had lost control to automatically take another minute at gear zero. Going flat out has also been strategically useful and it's fun to roll a bunch of dice all at once. We will see what other interesting strategies we can discover soon. Cheers!
Hey, just wanted to say thank you for helping me discover new fun games and mechanics. I really like the analyses that you write and this one got me to try Rallyman:DIRT. Had some fun playing this with my brother and wife and we already scheduled another rally.
That's great! Thank you for sharing this!
As a side note, both Rallyman GT and Rallyman DIRT are on BGA. Rallyman GT is also still in print (??) and available in many locations. They are different games that use the same core mechanism (i.e. "flat out"). Very different feel to each. GT seems to work best at higher player counts and is all about player interaction and blocking. DIRT is against the clock and other players really don't matter much, if at all. I think I enjoy DIRT more if you include all the advanced rules in the physical copy.
I haven't played the newer Rallyman, but in the original one the fixed dice pool did create some issues. Namely, after playing for a bit, the players would learn the odds of getting good and bad outcomes on different die combinations. There weren't many possible dice combinations, and even less of them actually mattered from the risk-reward perspective (as lower speed risks were negligible). This lead to game only having 2-4 distinct states, all of which were focused on dice. The board didn't matter much, you just knew which number of dice made sense for which speed limit (and maybe risked a tiny bit more if you're behind).
My takeaway from that is that probabilities should mostly be determined by the game situation, rather than fixed by core mechanic itself (example of this would be drawing zombie cards in After the Virus, or busting in Mystic Vale, Living Forest, Cubitos etc). Otherwise, the whole risk management part can become rote, and also divorced from actual in-game situation. It's fine to fix outcomes/rewards by core mechanic, but probabilities should preferably stay more dynamic.
Another thing I've noticed is that risk aversion usually pushes players to avoid the risk, unless they see the potential reward beforehand. So it generally makes sense to fix rewards and show them up front while hiding/obfuscating/backloading the odds, rather then frontloading probabilities and backloading outcomes.
Thanks for the comment!
That's an interesting observation about Rallyman: GT and presumably it would apply to Rallyman: DIRT as well. I haven't seen this, but that could just be a function of me not getting it to the table with the same people that often. My total play count is pretty low, even though I'm actually playing it with some friends tonight. :)
I do agree that if the probability is too obvious, then it really isn't much of a choice anymore. A "clear answer" appears and it just becomes boring and routine.
Good call out!