Formula D - First Play!

3rd February 2023

Friday is here! I'm at the office in Woking for some after work gaming.

As the name might suggest, Formula D is a game based on Formula 1 racing - but with dice! It's also the spiritual successor to the fantastic Formula Dé, a game I played 'back in the day'.
How does it hold up? Let's see.

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What's in a game?

• Game board: The base game of Formula D comes with a double-sided 2-piece map. One side recognisably shows the famous Monaco GP circuit while other shows a fictional racetrack in fictional 'Race City'.

Super; the Monaco GP track.

• The road for each track has 3 'lanes' that have offset oblong spaces. Additionally, each track is broken up into 'straights' and 'corners'.
  Corners: All corners have distinct red lines to indicate where their entry and exit points are while alongside each corner is displayed certain information.
  • Stops: Each corner will be labelled with a 1, 2 or on occasion a 3. This is how many times a car must 'stop' in that corner. Thus corners are known as one-stop, two-stop  or three-stop corners.
  • Longest/shortest: The corner label will also display how many spaces the longest route through it will take as well as the shortest.
  • Arrows: Each space in a corner (And frequently spaces just before a corner.) will show some sort of arrow, these dictate which direction a car going through that corner may/must take.

This is a 1-stop corner, longest way through is 10 spaces, shortest is 5.

• Weather: Finally, a box on the map will contain information on possible weather conditions for the race. Generally, weather conditions are used with the advanced rules.

Weather for Monaco.

• Player board: This is a double-sided 'dashboard' that sits in a sort of plastic 'cradle' or 'holder'. It's filled with a grid of peg-holes and a sort of groove for the gearstick. 
  One side is the for the introductory game and shows a box of 18 generic wear points (WP).
  The other is for the standard side game and has 6 rows that represent WPs for the game's 6 resources; tyres, brake, gearbox, body, engine and handling.
  • Pegs & gearstick: Pegs are used to track resources using the holes in the dashboard. The gearstick slots into the grove and is used to track what gear the car is in.

• Player tiles: Made of thick card , there are 10 of these tiles which are used with the standard version of the game. They have 'notches' along one edge that allow them to slide next to a dashboard.
  The player tiles are double-sided, each side has the 'stats' for a different driver, one side for the F1 driver and one for a racer in the 'street racing' version of the game. Each side also features a portrait of the racer in question.

Some faceless F1 drivers and street racing characters.

• Cars: Formula D comes with 20 little plastic cars, 10 F1 cars and 10 sports cars. They have liveries which match the art on the player tiles.

We need cars... lots of cars!

• Dice: There are a variety of polyhedral dice included with the game.
  • Gear dice: There are 6 gear dice which come in 6 different 'sizes' and each size corresponds to one of a car's 6 gears. Thus the higher the gear, the higher the result on the die used.
    It should be noted that none of the gear dice have normal numerical distribution as shown below. A couple of the lower gear dice are numerically weighted to the higher end of their number range. E.g., the 2nd gear die only has one 2 and three 4's.
    1st gear: Uses a 4-sided die that goes from 1-2.
    2nd gear: Uses a 6-sider that is numbered from 2-4.
    3rd gear: Uses a 8-sided die that is numbered 4-8
    4th gear: Uses a 12 sided die that goes from 7-12
    5th gear: Uses a 20-sided die that has numbers 11-20
    6th gear: Finally, the 30-sided die that is numbered 21-30.
  • Black die: This is a 20-sided die that is numbered 1-20 and thus is a 'normal' d20. It's used when a random outcome is required like potentially overrevving or damaging a car. 

Gear dice on the left, normal 20-sided die on the right.

• Tokens: Formula D comes with a bunch of tiny tokens that fit on spaces on tracks and are used to track various conditions and hazards on the track.

Tiny tokens for hazards and weather conditions.

All of Formula D's components are good quality. The game board and player tiles feel sturdy, as does the player board.
While the cars are quite tiny, they are all well sculpted, colourful and overall look great.
I was a bit sceptical of having player boards with pegs and a groove for the gearstick but in practice works well enough and does away the need for pencils and erasers which were needed for the original Formula Dé.
Perhaps the only criticism would be for the tokens, which are a bit small and fiddly. However, there's no other way to fit them on the track so it's a bit of a necessary evil.

The player tiles feature some nice colourful art with F1 drivers on one side and street racers on the other side. The street racers have definite anime look to them.
But the standout artwork appears on the game boards which feature fantastic illustrations of their locales. A lot detail has been put into the art, you can even see crowds of people.

All the iconography on the track are numbers and arrows and are easily understood. The colours/shapes of the gears are also easy to understand.
However, the icons used on player tiles could be a little clearer, I think more stylised icons would have been more helpful.
Finally the positioning of the resource tracks on the player board could have been done differently to improve usability. Specifically, the gearbox, brake and engine tracks could have been put together, since these are spent when skipping gears - more on skipping gears below.

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How's it play?
Setup
The setup and rules description here are for the standard version of the game using the F1 setup

• Players: Give each player a player board, holder and associated pegs and gearstick. Put the standard side of the board into the holder.
  Then give each player a player tile and the F1 car with colours that correspond to their player tile. Position the tile alongside the holder. Place the pegs in their corresponding positions as dictated by their player.
• Game board: Put out the game board with the F1 side-up.
• First player: Determine the order on the starting grid and place each player's car in the relevant spot.
  This can be done by players rolling the black 20-sided die.
  Alternatively, the game has rules for getting qualifying times which involve each player doing a lap in the fewest number of moves and shortest time.

On to play
Formula D does not use a traditional turn order, instead a player's position on the track determines when they take their turn in the round. Whoever is in the lead goes first and becomes the active player, whoever is 2nd goes second and so on, until the last player has had their turn.
Then a new round begins and any changes in position will be carried over to the player turn order.
During a player's turn, they must perform the following.

• Start: This actually only occurs for each player's first action of the game and determines if they get a good start or not.
  The player rolls the black die, a bad start means they only move 1 space, a flying start means they move 4 spaces, in either instance they end their turn in 1st gear. If they got an average start, they move into 1st gear and roll the 1st gear die.
• Change gear: Other than the race start, at the beginning of every turn, the active player must decide whether to stay in the same gear or go up or down a gear. The gear they are in will determine which die they roll for movement.
  Change up: The active player may go up 1 gear.
  Change down: The active player may go down 1 gear, or possibly more.
  • Skipping gears: When going down gear, a player may choose to skip gears, i.e., go down more than one gear. E.g., skipping a gear allows a player to drop from 5th gear to 3rd by skipping 4th. A player may skip up to a maximum of 3 gears, allowing them to go from 6th to 2nd gear for example.
    However for each gear skipped a resource must be spent, they come from gearbox, brake and engine.
• Roll and move: Once the active player has settled on their gear, they must roll the pertinent die and move their car as many spaces as the die rolls according to the following rules:
  Full move: The active player must use all the movement for their car.
  Traffic: The active player's car cannot move through other cars' spaces, they must go around them instead.
  Arrows: If the active player's car moves on to a space with an arrow, they must follow the direction(s) of that arrow when moving on.
  Straights: If the active player is moving their car along a straight, they cannot zigzag to use up movement. Furthermore, they can only do 2 lane changes and cannot go back into a lane they were already in during the current turn. Essentially players should move their car along the shortest route possible.
  Having said that, players can change lanes to avoid other cars or hazards.
  ​Corners: When a car enters a corner, it must end or 'stop' a number of turns in that corner as determined by the corner's details. Thus, a 2-stop corner requires the player's car to end 2 turns in that corner.
  • Overshooting a corner: If a car is in a 1-stop corner (Or only has 1 stop left in a 2 or 3 stop corner.), then they can go through the corner's exit and overshoot the it to some degree.
    For each space a car overshoots the corner, they must spend 1 tyre WP. Additionally, brake WPs can be spent to lessen movement and thus move less spaces.
    If a car needs to make 2 or more stops in a corner and it overshoots, then it is eliminated from play.
• Additional rules: The description above covers the gist of the game but Formula D has numerous situational rules. Many of these are resolved by using the black 20-sided die.
  Contact: If a car ends its movement adjacent to one or more other cars, there is a chance they will make contact. This costs body WPs
  Overrevving: There's a chance that cars in 5th & 6th gears will lose a engine WP when any car in 5th or 6th gear gets a maximum result on their gear die.
  Debris: Certain events can leave debris on the track, if a car has to go over the debris, there's a chance they can loose a handling WP.
  Pits: In a race with more than 1 lap, there are rules to pitting, which allows a car to recover all their tyre WPs.
• Advanced rules: There are a number of optional advanced rules that can be applied to the game. Mostly these are to do with 3 lap races and running a championship.
  ​Custom cars: Instead of having WPs assigned to a car as per a player tile. With these rules, players can assign WPs to the resources as they see fit.
  Tyres: With these rules, just F1, players can choose different types of tyres, such as hard, soft and wets. They can each have an effect on a car's performance, they are also effected by weather.
  Weather: There are rules for different weather conditions such as dry and rainy or changeable weather. Different weather conditions will effect cars differently. Furthermore different types of tyres will behave differently in differing weather conditions.
  I think that's pretty much it for the F1 rules.

Endgame
The first car to cross the start/finish line after completing the prescribed number of laps, wins! Second across the line finishes 2nd and so on.

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Some additional info
​Basic rules
I'll briefly touch on the beginner rules for Formula D.
Fundamentally, the only difference is that players in the basic game only have one catch-all resource track called 'Wear Points' And all tyre, fuel, engine etc usage is taken from this track which starts with 18 WPs.
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Street race rules: As someone who very much enjoyed Formula Dé in the past, I've not much attention to the 'street racing' aspect that has been introduced in this iteration of the game.
It features elements such as narrowing streets, jumps and even people shooting at the cars! Additionally, the characters on the player tiles are very unique and each feature a special move or ability  and seems a bit 'video-gamey'.
It feels very much like an attempt to jump on the bandwagon of a famous movie franchise and I have little interest in the street racing side of the game, of course, your mileage may vary.

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Overall
I'll start by mentioning that while not part of the base game, there are 6 map packs for Formula D, each providing 2 additional tracks to the game. generally each pack features a street racing track as well as a real-world inspired circuit.
​It should also be noted that Formula D is almost identical to earlier iterations of the game, this means the game is fully compatible with all the racetracks from those previous games. This is fantastic, because if like me, you have a bunch of tracks from Formula Dé, it greatly increases the longevity of the game.
I'm sure it was deliberate on the part of the producers of Formula D and was a wise move.

I've seen Formula D criticised for being too luck based but without that element of luck, there's no risk and risk is at the heart of what makes Formula D so good.

You see, as a racing game, Formula D is not really a 'simulation', I mean how could it be? However, one thing it does emulate very well is the feel of having to 'push the envelope', how racers try to take it to the edge, how they take risks and how players in Formula D will also need to take risks, or more precisely, when to take risks
Unlike many games, playing too sensibly or prudently is a sure way to finish second in Formula D!

This all ties in with what Formula D is all about - which is managing corners, specifically the gear and consequently the speed of a car when it goes through corners.
This is not quite as simple as it sounds though: ​Ideally, players will want to be in as higher gear as possible for optimal movement at all times. However, players will need to be mindful of their resources, overshooting corners by too much or too often (Especially early in a race.) can have ramifications later. Sometimes overshooting will have an advantage, sometimes it won't it'll just be a waste of WPs.
This is all contextual of course, depending on a car's position relative to a corner, players will need to adapt their tactics to racing through that corner, even the position of opponent's cars can effect the players behind.
Players will also need to be wary of 2 or 3 stop corners and resist the temptation entering the corner in too higher a gear and too fast: In real racing, sometimes going into a corner slower means coming out faster, this can hold true in Formula D too.

Another time a player may take a big is when an opponent is ahead in a corner.
E.g., if that opponent ahead exits the corner in 3rd gear to avoid overshooting, the player behind may want to risk taking going up a gear and exiting in 4th. It's a real advantage to exit corners in a gear higher than your rivals. If you look at the distribution of numbers on the dice, the maximum speed on a gear die is generally the lowest speed on the next highest die.

In terms of negatives, player elimination is a thing here (I'm not a fan of player elimination.) and players can crash out and be sat twiddling their thumbs. Although this sort of thing generally only might occur when approaching the end of a race and back markers push hard to try and get on the podium.
Playing time can also potentially be an issue. Races can last 1-3 laps and you can expect a race to on average last 1 hour per lap. If you decide to play a full race, don't be surprised to lose an entire afternoon or morning to the race. Which is not necessarily a bad if that's what you want.
Also, with it's small components and 6 resources, Formula D can be a little fiddly.

Quibbles aside, Formula D is a fun, game and it's satisfying when you manage pull if risky manoeuvres and manage to fly from corner to corner. There's also a genuine, palpable surge of pleasure when you go into 6th gear, roll that 30-sided die and blasting down that straight.
Formula D is mid-weight game that fits it theme well and presents players with conundrum of when and how much risk to take. Who would have thought roll-and-move mechanics could be so well implemented.
Formula D is a game I have played a lot in its various iterations and I've always enjoyed it. If you want a racing game with a strong thread of push-you-luck running through it, then this is one to try.