Playing with handicap (beginners vs experienced players)

[Rejusama]

Hello !
First thanks for BGA adaptation, which is as great as the game truly is !

I don't know if it's the proper place to add a request, but anyway :

Playing with friends on BGA, but being quite more experienced, some friends are more and more reluctant to play Heat with me...
I would like to be able to select a handicap (-1, -2 or -3 Heat card from the start), just as suggested in the official rulebook (p3, top right corner of the USA map). Maybe we couldn't find this feature, but I'm pretty sure it's not implemented yet.

Being an official suggestion from the author of the game, I think this possibility should be offered on the BGA adaptation too. Maybe someone here can do something about it ?

Kind regards to the developper team,

Rejusama./

[Phoxtrot]

Anything with an handicap would force the game in friendly mode and I'm not sure that there are many people interested but you should create a suggestion, link it here and see if you get traction.

[Rejusama]

Well... I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean when you say it would "force the game in friendly mode". I can't figure the issue, because playing with handicap would be an optionnal choice allowed to a player, nothing mandatory based on official ranking... an option that the game designer put in the official rulebook.

And I would be pleased to create a suggestion, but as I said in the original post, I do not know where this should be proposed thought maybe it was in this forum but it seems not to be the case ...

[Phoxtrot]

Just saying that I think that playing for ELO (normal play) doesn't square well with handicap.
ELO is supposed to reflect how good you are and what your chances of winning against people of various ELO are. (It's very far from perfect, but that is the aim as I see it). If you play with handicap, then changing the ELO based on the result is rather pointless.

[cigma]

In order to make a suggestion, please fill out the form (and be careful to use the one for the game Heat): https://boardgamearena.com/bugs?game=1873
You'll have to give the number of a game table, but you may use any Heat game for this.

To get more votes on this suggestion, you might give us the link to your suggestion here afterwards.

[Rejusama]

Well, playing competitive for ELO ranking is a thing, playing casual with friends with different levels of experience is another thing.

I don't think that ELO is active when playing with friends : I played many games with friends, and my ELO stayed *zero* regardless of my ranking. My ELO evolved only when I started playing with random drivers on the competitive scène.

#Cigma : thanks for the tip. I'll try this.

[BaronMerlin]

If you're playing with friends that you want to give an advantage then ensure you spin out on the first corner. That way you'll have a heat/cooldown hill to climb and one or two extra stress cards to contend with.

Still not hard enough? Spin out turn after turn until you have the number of stress cards you want whilst simultaneously giving your fellow drivers a bit of a head start.

[PaulB-UK]

A less extreme method would just be to stay in 1st until they're sufficiently far ahead.

On the handicap side, it might be interesting to have a handicapped tournament - handicaps based on ELO with no changes to ELO but xp up for grabs

[Phoxtrot]

When I play live for the first time with someone or with kids, the one advantage that I give them is that I will point out the risks they take (heat/spinout) when their cards are revealed and they can change the cards they played if they hadn't realized. This avoids accidental spinouts because they missed a point of rule or had forgotten that they hadn't yet passed a certain corner line.

With gamers, you don't really need more than that but I'll also give a few generic tidbits of strategic advice here and there.

Like:
- if you can guess what your opponent will do, you might take advantage of it and position yourself to take aspiration. But it works both ways...
- It usually a bad idea to spend 1 heat for just 1 extra space unless you know what you need that extra space for
- ...