It is time to fasten your seatbelt, check your mirrors, and put your pedal to the metal. Also, do not forget to check your oil and water, especially before a long trip. Oh, and do not forget your antifreeze if it is coming up to winter. Also, check tire pressure. I appreciate that this does not make for an exhilarating intro, but it is important to think about safety.
Heat is a racing game. The first person across the finish line will win, unless more than one player crosses the line in the same round. In that case, the player who is furthest across the line will win.
In front of you, you will have a player board with your deck of cards, a pile of heat cards, and eventually a discard pile. First, I want to talk about the concept of “heat.” At times, you will need to pay for a number of heat. When you do, take a heat card from that section of your board and add it to your discard pile. You can also cool down heat at certain points. When this happens, take as many heat cards as indicated from your hand and put them back into your heat deck.
At the start of the round, players will simultaneously choose if they want to shift gears up or down, or not at all. Then, choose a number of cards from their hand of 7 to play. The number will be equal to the gear they are currently in. There are three types of cards: Speed cards that have numbers on them, stress cards that have no number but can still be played, and finally heat cards which cannot be played. In turn order, players will then take the rest of their turn taking the following steps.
First, reveal your hand of cards and move that many spaces. If you played any stress cards, then you flip the top card of your deck until you hit a speed card. Add this to your current speed and move that many spaces.
Second, if you are in last place, then you can move an extra space that adds to your speed. You can also cool down one heat.
Third, you can cool down heat if you are in first or second gear. You can also use the boost action. Here, you pay a heat, then flip a card from the top of your deck and move that many spaces. This adds to your speed.
Fourth, here you can slipstream. If you end your moves directly behind or next to another racer, you may slipstream by moving up to two extra spaces. This does not add to your speed count, but be wary of it taking you around a corner.
Fifth is the dreaded corner check. Each corner in Heat has a speed number next to it. If you cross that corner and your total speed is equal to or lower than that number, then you are all good. If you go through it over that speed, then you need to pay the difference in heat. If you cannot pay the full amount, then you spin out. Depending on what gear you are in at the time, you take one or two stress cards into your hand, drop into first gear, and move back behind the corner line that caused you to spin out.
Lastly, you can discard as many cards from your hand as you want, except heat and stress cards, of course. Then refill your hand back up to seven cards.
The next player will go on and so forth, and then rinse and repeat. The game will end on the round that at least one person has crossed the finish line. If they are the only one, then they win. If more than one person crosses the line in the same round, then the win will go to the player who is furthest across the line.
Just for a bit of context, one of the designers of Heat also designed Flamme Rouge, which is one of my favourite games and certainly one of my favourite racing games. If you have played Flamme Rouge and read the rules rundown, then you will know that the two have very similar base mechanisms. That is because Heat takes the simple card mechanism of Flamme Rouge and expands it to not only make it more strategic but also to make them fit the motor racing theme rather than bicycle racing. I will admit I was skeptical about Heat, especially when I learned that it was using the foundation of Flamme Rouge and adding other things to it. I was worried that it would make it too complex and fiddly and would also sap the fun chaotic nature from the game that I love. My first ever game of it was on Board Game Arena, and it was not the best of experiences, but I put that down mainly to it being a learning game and being turn-based. But then I played my first physical game with all the rules taught properly, and before you could say “Nigel Mansell’s moustache,” I was in!
As I said earlier, the card play system here has been taken from the designer’s previous game of Flamme Rouge. Rather than simply port that over to Heat and slap a motor racing theme on it, though, they have done their due diligence and crafted it into something that is similar but also altogether different… yeah, I have confused myself with that sentence as well. At first, the multiple steps you have to go through look a bit daunting and look as though they will draw the entire game to a grinding halt, which is the exact opposite of what you want in a racing game. That feeling is even more pronounced when you are explaining the steps to new players, and you can see the bemused looks on their faces. Give it a couple of rounds, however, and you will find that you will be flying through these quicker than me trying to get to the next services after a long, liquid-fuelled drive around the M25.
It is not long before the strategy in Heat shows itself. Obviously, the cards you draw into your hand are pure luck, but it is how you choose to use what you are given that makes the game purr like a finely tuned engine (yep, that sounds like something a car enthusiast would say). You see, Heat is all about planning ahead and clever card management. It is all too easy to want to slam the car into a high gear and go tearing around those long straights like a rocket-fueled road runner and then discard your lower speed cards. Why do you need them anyway? Going fast is too much fun. Well, that emerging low-speed corner is why.
You need to keep so many steps ahead to be competitive in this game. You need to keep an eye on your gears, the cards you have in your hand, at least the next couple of corners (if they are close), and also where your opponents are and if you can steal a cheeky slipstream from them. Every turn you have got so many potential things to think about above just what speed you want to go that turn, and I love how much it makes you think. What is more impressive is that despite all that going on, the game still feels pacey.
There is a really fun element of trying to second-guess your opponents. It is all well and good deciding how you are going to take a corner, but what about them? Are they going to make that next corner? If so, will they take it at a sensible speed, or are they going to push and take some heat to give them an advantage? Above all, are you trying to pre-empt that and drive accordingly?
