La Grande Epreuve ~ Practice

It’s time to practice! It’s time to put down rubber, are your ready to compete for the glory of the fans and participate in the hair raising high speed adventure of flying by the seat of your pants in a 4 wheeled rocket made of aluminum? 

It’s 1935. A time when racers drove their own cars to the race. Where having a smoke and a hangover were common in the fuel pits. A time when men were men and women were glad of it.

Next week: on May 1st,Tuesday and May 5th, Thursday at Rogue Robot (3 S. 4th Ave. West, Duluth MN)  I’m offering some quick practice races and an opportunity to familiarizer yourself with the game before we make the jump into the full campaign / season. We will play some test laps, try out some of the custom rules and if you are feeling confident enough in your skills let you take a 1930’s car and drive around for some laps. 

There are 11 races. I’ve still got some work to do on the tracks to get them printed up. I’m also altering the drivers and cars from Version 1 and this season's Version 2. But once we start I’d like to go uninterrupted as possible, this is a tall order but here’s a sample schedule with the Start date to be determined:

Races on Tuesday. Prep time at 5:30pm,Start your engine time at 6:30pm, 

Race Schedule: (If we started May 15th, and everything is subject to change)

Sweden May 15

Monaco May 22

Monza May 29

Budapest June 5

Nurburgring June 12

Donnington June 19

France June 26

Nice July 10

Barcelona July 17

Tunisia July 24

Spa July 31

If you wanted to see what you are getting yourself into Tom wrote some forum posts on boardgamegeek.com about a few of our races in 2016. I’ve included those links here. They include photos and should give you a taste of what you’d be signing up for.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1615232/nuvolari-back-top-1935-barcelona

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1594349/1935-french-gp

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1608060/louis-chiron-takes-nice-1935-campaign

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1571405/pics-our-new-1930s-formula-d-campaign-le-grand-epr

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1583772/8x8-nurburgring-track

Hope to see you next week for some practice runs.

Formula D with a 1935 Twist

Formula D is a fun easy racing game with gears and dice and cars. Possibly the best racing game ever made. But the cars are generic and there isn’t anything special about the drivers, in fact, there aren’t any drivers. Also it’s a game designed to play once and put back on the shelf. Very much a beer and pretzels game. Two things I really like. But I also like games that immerse you in history and create strong bonds between players and the game.

So I took the basic Formula D game and made a 1935 version complete with awesome classic race cars like Auto Unions, Delage, Bugatti, Alfa Romero, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz and others. I also researched and created profiles for the top drivers of the time like Rudolf Caracciola, Tazio Nuvolari, Louis Chiron and others, 40 drivers in all. To make the game complete I got monopoly cars, painted them team colors and each player is a manager of a racing team with a set of drivers and cars. Depending on your performance, and thus your income, you choose which car and driver combo to race each week. We will race 11 races and since the monopoly cars are bigger than the cars that come with the basic Formula D game I re-drew and in some instances, created from scratch, historic race tracks from the 1930s.

The is much more to the game too, like an economic system based on racer performance and “feats” accomplished mid race like performing a slipstream maneuver. There is a reward system for earning trophies (which are lapel pins) for driving this or that car and earning “sponsorship”, and there is set of special event cards that players get and can play during the race for small in game bonuses. But the real star of the weekly race are the tracks.

Participation in the campaign is limited but it is open to any available and willing players. We've got a few spots open if you want to check it out, see the post on the upcoming practice races.