Before you post or report a bug about slipstream...

[Phoxtrot]

Check Corner step says:
Speed = Sum of the values of all the cards in your Play Area, +1 if you used the Adrenaline Bonus
It doesn't mention to add slipstream value.
It also confirms Note on point 6:
Note: Slipstreaming does NOT increase your Speed value for the purpose of the Check Corner step.

And indeed, within the game, the speed is not increased by slipstream: see my example above.
But you do get a corner check if you crossed the line at *any point* during your turn. "Any point" includes slipstream.

In the game, "Speed" is a value used to compute how much Heat you get when you cross a corner and nothing else.
It does not determine whether you get a corner check or not, movement does that.

Another way to look at it is this:
- If you suddenly have to pay heat because you used slipstream, it is NOT because your speed was increased, your speed was NOT increased. It is because your speed has suddenly become relevant because you crossed the corner line.

[RicardoRix]

This is a minor complaint, but maybe something that will help with this problem:

I'm never sure exactly what phase we're in. I would perhaps expect a token or something across the top of the player board or something.
But anyway it's almost not really relevant since the game is driving (pun intended) the game state. So I can live with this. A pointless point that crossed my mind.

Maybe during the slipstream phase, the skip button actually said 'no, skip to the corner check phase'.
It would be good if it always said this text, even on turns where the player didn't through a corner, otherwise it becomes a (subtle) playing aid.
And hopefully bug reports will stop appearing.

[Sockettrousers]

> I'm still curious: How exactly are you interpreting that rule?

I think the following is how it should work by example:

Assume I'm 4 spaces away from the corner with limit 5. There is another car just beyond the corner i.e. five places in front of me. I play cards to give a speed of 4 and arrive just before the corner marker behind the other car. I now slipstream past the other car and around the corner.

Slipstreaming does trigger the corner check but "Slipstreaming does NOT increase your Speed value for the purpose of the Check Corner step" so, I check the corner at the speed from my cards + adrenaline which is 4 and I do not take any heat.

> given that it makes zero sense thematically. Is slipstream supposed to be some kind of magical inertial dampening system like in Star Trek? Ignoring that a vehicle traveled a greater distance in the same amount of time yet didn't increase its speed isn't already magical enough?

I'm not sure about arguing games rules from physics - especially as "heat" refers to engine temperature and is not really produced by cornering forces and friction on tyres. However, if you insist: slipstreaming is taking advantage of turbulent air from the car in front to reduce air resistance. This means there's less requirement for forward drive from the wheels and hence more friction available to counter cornering forces so you're less likely to spin off.

[Sockettrousers]

I'm also going to link to this BGG thread https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/318025 ... r-question where someone asks this exact question and the Heat designer pops up and says: "Correct. Slipstream is the only way to move on the track without changing your "speed" relative to the corner limitations."

[Meeplelowda]

I'm not sure about arguing games rules from physics - especially as "heat" refers to engine temperature and is not really produced by cornering forces and friction on tyres. However, if you insist: slipstreaming is taking advantage of turbulent air from the car in front to reduce air resistance. This means there's less requirement for forward drive from the wheels and hence more friction available to counter cornering forces so you're less likely to spin off.

"Heat" is one themematic part of the game (arguably the dominant part....it's even in the name), but so is "speed," which is the amount of distance traveled in a set amount of time. The set amount of time is what time your turn equates to, and slipstream lets you go a greater distance in that time so your speed has increased but it isn't counted for the corner check. But I accept your argument that this could still be thematically coherent if the corner check is not about speed per se, but speed that generated engine heat, which slipstreaming doesn't.

But the main point is that even if the speed check rule is there to check heat generation which did not go away just because you slipstreamed (as opposed to checking whether you lost control due to excessive speed through a corner, which also thematically makes sense), reading the rule as eliminating a speed check entirely is thematically incoherent no matter which way you look at it.

Not that all rules in games make sense in the physical world. Like the way animals reproduce in Caverna.

[zingano]

I think you're misunderstanding what Sockettrousers is saying. I was playing at the game he is talking about, and what happened is that his speed (from everything other than slipstream) was under the corner check value. Say for example his speed was 5 and the corner was checking for 6.

But then he slipstreamed, for a total speed of 7 as he passed the corner. I think we're all agreeing that in this case he should not get any extra heat for passing the corner.

However the board game arena implementation did a check, said that 7 > 6 and then gave him heat for exceeding the corner speed. Surely this is a bug?

[thoun]

If it happened exactly like your say, yes.
But I doubt it's what happened, or we would already have real slipstream bug reports.

[Phoxtrot]

> I'm still curious: How exactly are you interpreting that rule?

I think the following is how it should work by example:

Assume I'm 4 spaces away from the corner with limit 5. There is another car just beyond the corner i.e. five places in front of me. I play cards to give a speed of 4 and arrive just before the corner marker behind the other car. I now slipstream past the other car and around the corner.

Slipstreaming does trigger the corner check but "Slipstreaming does NOT increase your Speed value for the purpose of the Check Corner step" so, I check the corner at the speed from my cards + adrenaline which is 4 and I do not take any heat.

That is correct and it does work like that in BGA.

The other situation is this:
1. Suppose you are 6 spaces aways form the corner with limit 5 and there is another car just beyond the corner i.e. 7 places in front of you.
2. You play cards for a speed of 6. (This doesn't give any heat warning because you are not (yet) crossing the corner.)
3. Now you use slipstream and move your car ahead by 2 more spaces, effectively crossing the corner. BGA gives a Heat warning as you do that because of the point below.
4. Because you crossed a corner line, you have to do a corner speed check. Your speed is 6. 6 and not 8 because slipstream did NOT increase your speed. Still, 6 is too high for the corner so you have to pay 1 Heat. (Hence the warning at the previous step)

Again, this is according to the rules and it is how it works in BGA.

But many people seem to thing that you should not pay any heat in my scenario which is just plain wrong.
Observe how, in step 4, the speed is explicitly NOT increased by slipstream and yet, slipstream caused you to pay Heat.

[Phoxtrot]

I think you're misunderstanding what Sockettrousers is saying. I was playing at the game he is talking about, and what happened is that his speed (from everything other than slipstream) was under the corner check value. Say for example his speed was 5 and the corner was checking for 6.

But then he slipstreamed, for a total speed of 7 as he passed the corner. I think we're all agreeing that in this case he should not get any extra heat for passing the corner.

However the board game arena implementation did a check, said that 7 > 6 and then gave him heat for exceeding the corner speed. Surely this is a bug?

I have never seen that happen in BGA and believe me when I say that I have checked that attentively many times since the Alpha and have done so in as many different scenarios as I could manage to create.

I have seen people confused and report non-bugs because:
- they misremembered how many Heat they started their turn with
- they actually paid heat for shifting 2 gears and not for crossing a corner and got confused
- they failed to take into account speed limit reduction because of a road condition token or some special card they played
- they misread a 6 speed limit as a 9 speed limit.
- they used a boost after having passed a corner line and somehow thought that the extra speed wouldn't count
- they misread the rules in some other way

And, for a time, there was a bug where the amount of heat cards in your motor was sometimes incorrectly displayed and you had to hit F5 (or delog/relog) to see the correct amount. And people could very easily misinterpret that situation as a bug where Heat is incorrectly computed when it was in fact more like an incorrect display. This bug has been solved for a long time now.

[Sockettrousers]

Zingano’s an example is correct. I was awarded heat incorrectly due to a slipstream. I was in third place slipstreaming a legend to take second.