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Days of Wonder had a fine reputation at bringing out a yearly game of magnificent quality. In recent years those releases had tapered off a little bit in quality, until now. Heat has been nearly unanimously praised and with good reason. This racing game set in the 1970s brings the excitement and danger of racing to the cardboard track.
On Fire
On opening Heat’s box you will notice two immediate things. Firstly this is a box full of content… with some strange gaps in the insert! It seems as though there are plans for an expansion as there is spaces for two more players in the existing insert. This will annoy some for sure, but given the amount of other content I like the planning for future content to fit in the current box!
Heat comes with the components for 1-6 players to race one of four maps right out of the box. You can do this in one off races or play a season. Thanks to a fantastically simple bot deck you can top up any race with ‘bot cars’ meaning you can always have 6 cars on the track. I highly recommend this too!
Each player will take a deck of speed cards, a certain amount of heat and stress cards depending on the track or mode being played. They will add three upgrade cards to this, for your first game it is advised to use the suggested ones, a 0 speed, a 5 speed and an extra heat card. Managing heat is the name of the game here as you push your car and cool it down at the best times. Or at least try too.
Cold Snap
Players also get a gear stick, car mini, and player dash. The gear stick and the car are plastic pieces nicely done, while the player dashboards are somewhere nearer card than paper but definitely the weakest part of the package. They have places for your deck, heat and discard piles as well as ‘gear’ spaces to track your current gear.
Managing heat is a key concept here. Generally you will start with 6 heat in your middle heat deck. Certain actions cause you to add heat to your discard pile which eventually work their way to your hand. Once there they will clog your hand no end as they cannot be played or discarded. While your hand is a generous 7 cards large, even a couple of heat cards can severely limit you options.
Stress Head
Stress cards represent your driver getting distracted and add some unknown chaos to your planning. Perhaps the flames licking from your vehicle are putting you off slightly? Just like heat cards they cannot be discarded, but they can be played. When you resolve your hand stress cards draw from your deck until you hit a playable speed card which is then added to your speed.
It can be a lot of fun to play multiple stress cards and throw your chances to the gods of the cards. To play a round each player chooses which gear to use. This can be their existing gear or one or two gears higher or lower. However playing two gears difference adds a heat to your discard. No heat in your heat pile? No double gear change!
The gear you are in dictates how many cards you can play. You will all simultaneously play your speed cards facedown and then take turns resolving them, starting with the front most car and working your way back. Bezzing down the straights as fast you can is a good idea but you will need to watch our for corners. If you pass a corner line at a speed faster than the line dictates then you will have to pay heat equal to the difference. If you can’t you will spin out.
Add to these base rules slipstreaming, bonus moves for the back cars, and the option to spent heat to boost (the same process as using a stress card) and you have an excellent racing game. Every time I play it the races are exciting with lots of twists and turns and usually no run away winner. The bots are excellent at providing excitement and a challenge too.
It’s Getting Hot In Here
And all the above is just the basic way to play the game! You can draft upgrade cards so that everyone is rocking a unique twist on their deck, play seasons, add in weather and track effects. Despite the small gaps in the inserts clearly left for expansions Heat is packing a whole lot of content.
Speaking of expansions one has already been announced and there are plenty of maps on BGG that can be downloaded and printed onto neoprene to add even more variety. Some people have 3D printed extra cars and used the bot rules for up to 12 cars racing at once!
The absolute best thing about Heat is the way playing it feels. You are invested. Races are exciting with multiple position changes and more than any racing game I’ve played it evokes the theme. Things make sense, and while there is some luck in the draw and shuffle of your deck, ultimately you put any heat you draw in there!
Heat is earning a lot of praise, and in my opinion it is well deserved. This is a game that will remain in my collection as long as I have one. There is loads of content in the box and a clear intention to carry on supporting the game, and the fan support too. I’m sure it won’t gel with some, but so far that’s been precisely no-one that I’ve played with!
