Board Game Arena

Here are a few things that might help.

Read the rules
Goes without saying but it helps. Even the least useful bits like how exactly the legends move can occasionally be useful to know.
In particular, understand how corners, speed and aspiration work; do not assume that you know after just a casual read of the rules.

Catchup mechanisms and when to make your play
Adrenalin and Aspiration are mechanisms that help people get back into the race.

They are very powerful in a game with 6 veteran human players where the difference between the first and last players can be very small and aspiration is king.

In a game with just 3 players and some legends, this is much less true as legends tend to monopolize the last places and taking the aspiration on them is more difficult as you cannot guess accurately how the legends will move exactly.

The implication of this is that in a 3p game with 3 legends you can make your move early and try to stay ahead for almost the entire race.
In a 6p game, you might want to in the middle or back of the pack for a longer time.

Playing Stress Cards and memory
More often than not, stress cards are played on a big straight line.
Be aware of the opportunities to play them at no real risk, especially if you still have many cards to draw until the next shuffle or if you can shuffle while they are in play.

You also want to know what is in your draw pile which means that you want to remember what is in your discard pile so that you can compute what is in your draw pile by subtraction. Short of that, remembering how many stander 1/2/3 and 4 cards are in your discard is already very useful.

It is not rare, when there are less than 5 cards left in your draw pile to be able to play a stress card in a much more informed manner than usual. Like how knowing that there are no standard 3 and 4 left in the pile make a huge difference. If you can actually trust your memory that is...

Having no Heat left
Having no heat left in your motor does not in itself cause a spinout (that happens when you can't pay the heat you must) but it still has multiple effects.
Until you do some cooldown... :

• you can't jump shift gears anymore
• you can't boost (unless some road taken makes it free on a particular section)
• any overspeed on a corner will make you spinout
• your movements are more predictable (making it easier for players behind you to take aspiration on you)
• you are more likely to get a cluttered hand at some later point in the game
• you are more likely to have a very limited number of cards that you can choose from to play at some later point.

On what to spend Heat
Some generic stuff:

• Spending Heat should have a purpose. Spending a heat just to move one more space is rarely a good idea.
• Spending Heat on a big straight line for a boost is often ok even if it is not the last turn.
• You usually don't want to boost if there is any risk of a spinout: if you don't know what is in your draw pile, you basically have a 25% chance to draw a 1,2,3 or 4.
• What you do want to spend your Heat on is generally to pass a corner one turn earlier (but see below about corner sequences)
• When you enter the final straight line of the final turn, you very often want to have 2 Heat left: one to jump shift from gear 2 to 4 and one to boost. It is however almost always better to be there one turn earlier even if it means that your (first) final straight turn will be hampered.

Corner Sequences and anticipation
You should not consider a corner in isolation.

Italy:
- If you stand just before the 5-3-2 corners sequence, getting out of that sequence without spending any Heat and any special effect would take you 5 turns with, for example, the following speeds each turn : 5,4,2,4,3

Spending heat should aim at completing that sequence in 4 turns (or less), ideally with a gear of 3 or 2 the last turn so that you can go at gear 4 on the big straight line that follows.

UK:
- If you stand just before the 6-5-4-3 corners sequence, getting out of that sequence without spending any Heat and any special effect would take you 5 turns with, for example, the following speeds each turn : 6,5,4,3,3
- You can exit that sequence in 4 turns only require 1 Heat with the following speeds : 6,5,4,4 (or 6,5,5,3 or 6,6,4,3 or 7,5,4,3)

France and USA have a bit more distance between their corners so that corner sequences are less pertinent but you should still anticipate where you hope your car to be on the following rounds. (And how much you care if you play a Stress and get a poor result)

Of course, you have to take into account the eventual road condition tokens and the eventual special cards you can play.


Some thoughts on amelioration cards

First, do consider where those cards can be useful.
To have a card in hand for 5 turns or so because you want to play it on a specific spot (like the straight line) reduces the number of cards that you can choose from in the mean time which is an important issue.

• Small cards in general: Increase the chance of having small cards during tight corner sequences.
• Big cards: Nice in the big straight line. On some maps, also nice to go from one tight corner to the next tight corner without raising your gear too much (mostly France and USA)
• Multi-value cards (brakes): This is often a safe bet for beginners
• Aspiration cards (RPM and others): they are nice but often chancy. Do look at road condition tokens and the like and how many players they are and if you expect them to stay in a pack with you for a while and if there are any particular places in the circuit where the extra aspiration might be very welcome and enough to gain a round. Having big aspirations can make crossing multiple corners in one round much more realistic. Still, having 3 RPM cards is usually a bad idea.
• Small direct play cards (Small Gaz Pedal cards): These can be played in the reaction phase pretty much anywhere : in a pinch to get aspiration, to cross the corner line if you had to play a stress card and the result was too low to pass, just to move 1 more space without increasing the gear, in the straight line because 1 more space isn't that bad, or just played as a normal small card when you need one
• Big Gaz pedal cards: Often as good a big cards for less Heat. Also useful, in specific situations where you played multiple stress cards in a turn and want to ensure that you can get close enough to the next corner to pass it on the next turn.
• Small Gaz pedal card with "Accelerate" : Often overlooked by players because it looks more complex, this is basically a small Gaz pedal than can become big if you play it in reaction on a big straight line on a turn where you played 3 stress cards and a boost...
• Cooldown cards (Tires and more): What is not to like ? Do take into consideration which parts of the map you think you can cooldown.
• Discard Stress (Body cards): always nice. Maybe more so in Italy and Great Britain where you want precision during those long corner sequences. Probably works best on a speed 2 card as speed 3 cards are more often played in big straight lines where stress cards are much less of a problem. Does not combine well with the "accelerate" gaz pedal.
• Salvage (fuel): Can be nice but you might not have all that many good situations to play them and you have to shuffle after using them so it's not like you could always decide what you draw next.
• Come-again cards (suspension): The speed 4 one is very useful on long straight lines or successions of medium-high speed corners. The speed 2 one with a cooldown is quite useful in corner sequences like any small card. That card is also useful in medium length stretches between corners as it gives you an opportunity to cooldown at gear 3 or 4 and still ensure that you have at least one small card to play on the next round.
• Increase max corner speed (some tires and more. Beware that some also reduce that max speed...): those often cost heat to play so the gain is not always very big. And they only make sense at specific points of the race which is not nice. If you take one, you really should analyze the map to know your dream scenario. A speed 3 or higher one can have great niche uses, especially if you can cross two corners in the same round. There are also situations where it can help you cross a corner and position yourself better for the next one so that you don't have to spend heat on the *next* turn.
  • With a +2 max speed, there are a few specific spots in Great Britain where you can cross 2 corners in one round at low heat cost without the need for aspiration. There are no such spots in Italy.