Formula D – A Love Letter to Corners and Dice

🕑 8 min read

This a board game review of Formula D. There will be a Game Night blog post up, very soon. Enjoy!

I grew up playing games like Dark Future from Games Workshop, released in 1988, and Car Wars from Steve Jackson Games, which came out in 1981. Both games were full of cars, weapons and generally trying to destroy the other people around the table. 

The problem was that all my friends were much more interested in blowing me up.

They wanted to chain-gun my tyres out, melt my bodywork with a turreted heavy laser, or generally make my carefully designed car into a smoking wreck.

Those games were not roll-and-move though; just roll-and-shoot. And I just wanted to race.

Fast.

I spent most of my time building more agile cars, racing the corners and picking off worse drivers with simple machine gun fire. I've always been much more interested in the actual racing than simply turning up with the biggest gun and seeing who could survive the longest.

Ever since then, I've managed to accumulate a fairly large collection of racing games. I'm always looking for that feeling of speed and, more importantly, that feeling of outmanoeuvring the person in front of you.

I discovered Formula D around 2015. I managed to get it out to the table quite a few times and, in terms of hours played rather than actual number of games, it is probably one of my most played board games.

The problem is that a game of Formula D is long.

A minimum of two hours isn't unusual and three to four hours is quite possible, particularly with a larger group. Keeping everyone's attention around the table for that long can be difficult.

There is also the problem that if you fall too far behind during the first lap, you can end up in a horrible position where you're effectively expected to crash trying to catch up during the second.

So why do I keep coming back to it?

Well, Formula D, or Formula Dé as it was originally called, has long been touted as one of the best of the "car" racing games. It was originally designed by Laurent Lavaur and Eric Randall and released as Formula Dé in 1997, before being reworked and released as Formula D by Asmodee in 2008.

If you read enough reviews, though, particularly reviews that aren't simply written by people who already love the game, you will find quite a lot of dismissal of it.

The biggest criticism is randomness.

And I completely understand that criticism.

Almost every racing game I've ever played has an element of chance and risk involved. It wouldn't really be racing without it. However, a game of Formula D is long enough that, over the course of a race, you will probably experience a fairly equal share of good and bad luck.

The problem is the variance.

Especially in the higher gears.

I've been an exasperated victim of some truly awful rolls, and only a minor beneficiary of a few really good ones. There are times when you can be doing everything right and the dice simply decide that your evening is going to be slightly less enjoyable.

But this is also where Formula D gets its hooks into you.

The feeling of winning a race through technical driving, defending well, or pulling off a last-corner dive-bomb is insanely powerful.

I can honestly say that I've never felt such pride in a board game experience as I have when I've managed to catch a race leader on the final corner because they made a misplaced, over-confident downshift and left the door open.

Just an inch.

I slide by.

You get this feeling in other racing games, but in Formula D it seems to mean something. It feels like the whole race has led to that moment.

And then there is the basic mechanic.

Dice.

As in Formula D(ice).

If you've never played it before, the basic idea is incredibly simple. You choose a gear, pick up the appropriate dice, roll it, move your car and make vroom noises as you go.

The higher the gear, the higher the values on the dice.

The obvious question is therefore why you don't just go straight into top gear and cane it around Silverstone at 220mph.

Corners.

Far from being party poopers, corners are probably the most important part of Formula D.

You have to stop a certain number of times in each corner. Some corners require one stop, others two,
and the really technical ones can require three. If you don't make those stops, you start taking wear on your car.

Keep pushing and eventually you can destroy it.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that the game has player elimination?

Roll-and-move AND player elimination.

Sorry Eurogamers.

The aim is to try to land your car in exactly the right place in the corners, while also setting yourself up for the best possible exit. A lot of this decision-making comes from selecting the right gear, and therefore the right dice, and then rolling it.

This is where the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan.

You will sometimes feel like you are constantly struggling against the corners rather than flowing through them because of a cascade of poor rolls. However, that isn't really the whole story.

The real skill in Formula D is knowing when to take the risks.

Take the risk when it is going to affect you the least. Let your competition make the bad mistakes. Sometimes you make your roll and get away with it. Sometimes they make theirs and catch you.

Timing is everything.

When do you press the chase? When do you punch out hard and risk a fast entry into the next corner just to stay one corner ahead of the car hanging off your gearbox?

That is the bit I really enjoy.

The rules are simple. The game isn't really about the rules though.

There is a very much hidden, but also completely in-your-face, element to Formula D which is where I think it destroys a lot of other racing games.

You only have to look at the designer credits to realise where the magic is.

Have you guessed?

The tracks.

I'm not going to lie, I think there are other racing games out there with more modern board game mechanics. There are certainly games which can simulate a Formula 1 race better.

Formula D isn't really about the mechanics though.

It is about how those mechanics interact with the track.

And there are a lot of tracks.

Close to 50, I think, if you count the 25 double-sided boards.

Both designers appear to have had a hand in many, if not all, of the published expansion tracks, and they must either have been fans of Formula 1 already, or very quickly became fans of the circuits themselves.

Each track represents a different challenge to overcome, but there was also a genuine attempt to make them resemble the actual circuits.

You can learn about the turns of a Grand Prix circuit before a racing weekend by playing Formula D.

That, to me, is the absolute genius of the game.

I've been playing quite a few games of Formula D recently, and a good portion of those have been online. There are some absolutely crazy challenging tracks available through Board Game Arena, including tracks created by the community.

When I get talking to other Formula D players online, they are always full of advice about which tyres to choose, how to customise your car for a particular track, where you can take risks and where you really shouldn't.

And it all makes a difference.

This is why I think the track design is so important. The dice might decide exactly how far you move, but the track determines where that roll matters.

Formula D also comes with both an advanced ruleset and a beginners' version.

I played the beginners' rules for probably 90% of my time as a Formula D player.

I was wrong.

The experience is so much flatter using the basic rules that going back to them now feels like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

Sure, it looks fun, but you probably should be shot for it.

No more judgement from me though.

The advanced rules take about fifteen minutes to teach. Players who have never played before will know what they need to do to get started, although questions will come thick and fast once the first few corners are behind them.

There is no expectation that a first-time player is going to luck their way into a win. If anything, the
game gives them plenty of opportunity to learn what the experienced players are doing.

If you are the veteran, however, the weight on your soul to NOT screw up is incredibly heavy.

Almost unbearable.

Everyone knows you should know better. You know you should know better. And then you roll the bloody dice.

If the game wasn't so much fun, that might actually be enough to make you leave it on the shelf for a few years.

Don't do that though.

This game deserves the attention. It deserves the constant laughs, the dice clattering around the table and, yes, the inevitable vroom noises.

Unfortunately, Formula D, and Formula Dé before it, are out of print and have been for years.

You can find copies on eBay or Facebook Marketplace for anywhere from about £20 to £100, depending on whether the seller has any understanding of what their game is actually worth, whether they live on the Moon, or whether they are including a load of beautifully painted race cars in the box.

I'm currently on a bit of a journey to amass a few more tracks and add them to my collection. It might take some time, because I'm not paying £100 for a piece of cardboard just because somebody has decided it is now a "rare collector's item".

But I'll bring the game back to NoBoG as soon as I find some reasonably priced tracks.

Because despite the randomness, despite the length of the games and despite the occasional feeling that the dice are personally conspiring against you, I still think Formula D is one of the best racing games I've ever played.

Not because it has the cleverest rules. Not because it is the most realistic. And certainly not because it has the fairest dice system.

It is because the tracks, the dice, the gears, the damage and the decisions all come together to create those moments where you genuinely feel like you have just won a race.

And when you've spent two hours chasing someone down, only to get past them on the final corner because they left the tiniest gap...

That's why I keep playing it.