Rallyman GT

RRP: £49.99
Now £39.79(SAVE 20%)
RRP £49.99
Expected Restock Date 30/04/2024
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Late pledges for Rallyman GT will be available until April 15th! Visit the Rallyman GT Kickstarter page for the link. Start your Engines! Rallyman is a Roll and Move game with a simple yet exciting dice mechanic that invites players to push their luck and navigate the terrain as best they can. Will you take a risk and squeeze every last second out of the track, or will you play it c…
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Awards

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • Excellent replayability (so many track tiles!)
  • Great artwork.
  • Expansions add extra flavour and variety.
  • Components of high detail and quality.

Might Not Like

  • Lower player counts can make player interaction low.
  • Advanced rules and game components locked behind a finished Kickstarter campaign.
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Description

Rallyman GT is a 2020 release, but it’s a reincarnation of its predecessor, Rallyman. Holy Grail Games have had this racing game in the garage for a while, tweaking all manner of bits under the hood. It now provides tracks you can build yourself offering so much modular gameplay. Pick a real-life track, or build your own crazy design…

So, ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! Rallyman GT is a race, with push-your-luck and dice placement mechanisms. It has a fascinating focus token element, which rewards players that push their car to the limit. Fans of Formula D will love Rallyman GT!

To progress, a car has to either accelerate up one gear, or decelerate down one gear. You do this by placing gear dice on the track. There are six dice – one for gears 1-6. There are also dice to ‘coast’ (remain in the game gear). There are brake dice too, in case you need to slam your foot down and drop multiple gears. Like real life, you’ve got to slow down for those corners! Also, you cannot overtake a car that’s driving in a higher gear that you are, when you intend to pass it.

Players plan their turn, placing dice on the lanes they wish to advance. The catch is, some of the faces on these dice show ‘hazards’. If players roll over a certain number of hazards across their dice, they’ll wipe out!

They can roll dice one at a time, and decide when to stop, if those hazard symbols start to accumulate. Or, they could risk it, drive ‘flat out’, and roll the dice all at once! The reward for the latter? Focus tokens. You can use these chits later to guarantee safe passage – as in, you can spend them later on to not roll dice. This offers a wonderful seesaw of pushing your luck now, to gain an awesome turn later…

Player Count: 1-6 players
Time: 45-60 minutes
Age: 14+

I can’t lie, I love motor racing. So it’s no surprise I would want to play Rallyman GT based on the theme alone. What is a surprise is how deep and tactical the game is, making each turn feel like a well-crafted puzzle. That element is what had my friends gripped, wanting to play again as soon as we’d finished. We’ve even arranged to continue with a championship, having races take place every couple of weeks! 

The gameplay is simple: place dice for where you want to go, then roll them and avoid rolling hazards. You balance the risk by choosing how many dice you roll. Roll them safely, one by one, or all together “flat-out,” gaining focus for later on. As you play, you start to learn the importance of your position on the track and your speed. Both of these influence your next turn. To learn the rules in detail, check out the “How to play”.

The Mechanics – Pun Intended!

Rallyman is easy to learn even if the rulebook seems quite lengthy at first. Simply put, it can all be boiled down to “Speed > Distance > Position” and “Place Dice, Roll Dice”.  

Each turn, the order is decided by the player speeds. If these are equal, the furthest goes. If players are running side-by-side, the one on the inner line goes first. Place dice wherever you want to move. You can either roll them one at a time, stopping when you choose, or roll them all together. The dice have hazards on them – roll too many and you’ll crash out. 

The simple instructions allowed me and my wife to pick up the core gameplay loop within 1 or 2 turns. There is, however, a great amount of depth in this as the track also has speed restrictions on each corner. This, along with “Speed > Distance > Position”, means you can race to the corner and end up being behind coming out of it. It also means you’ll have to figure out clever ways of combining dice. Each can only be used once and you can only generally shift up and down gears one at a time. If you need to make an emergency stop, you’ll have to stack a number of brake dice on top. Be careful though as this can make a single roll possibly the most dangerous manoeuvre on the whole track. 

The risk vs reward mechanic is the hook to this game. Often you’ll be trying to work out the best path, only to be cut off the line you wanted. Or worse, blocked in! This encourages you to make bold moves that can feel amazing when they pay off. It can all go wrong very quickly though. During a game with my wife and a few friends, I’d pulled off a heroic move to take the lead. All with a complex arrangement of upshifts, downshifts and braking. There was a collective cheer when I pulled it off… which was followed by an even louder one when I then spun out on the following turn!

I ended up finishing last but enjoyed every minute of it. 

Performance Parts

The cars are small but intricately detailed and anyone that knows their cars will make out the inspiration behind them. There are a lot of tokens in the box; coloured gear tokens for each car, damage tokens and focus tokens which are the most abundant. Whilst playing with friends we managed to fill two jars full of them. But considering we hoarded piles of them during gameplay, the amount is probably justifiable. The dice all have a good weight to them. They are nicely coloured to help differentiate between the types and gear numbers. 

The track is made up of double-sided hexagonal tiles which are gorgeously illustrated and fit together modularly forming any shape track you’d like. Whether you’re careening past a grandstand, overtaking on a hairpin, or zooming down a wide straight before the finish line, the track offers plenty of variety. 

The fact that the game allows you to create any layout you’d like is one of Rallyman‘s greatest assets. This makes the game endlessly replayable and gives those that enjoy the setup a time to work with their friends bringing out their inner track designer. You can scale the length and difficulty of any given playthrough by placing more or less tiles. Run many laps on a short and easy loop or play a long and complicated circuit for a single “winner takes all” lap.  

With the expansions you can recreate many real-life circuits, but the fun is getting together with friends and creating your own complicated tracks. You can even use the game’s handy, dedicated app to mock-up a track before getting anything out of the box. 

Rivalries! Ford VS Ferrari Anyone?

Rallyman GT has several expansions: 

  • Championship & World Tour – adding extra tiles, real-world circuits (World Tour) and rules for multiple rounds scoring points as you go (Championship).  
  • GT5 & GT4 expansions – adding new cars, a green boost dice (GT5) (opposite of the brake dice) or an extra coast dice (GT4). 
  • Team Challenge – Tiles & extra cars for up to 12 players. 

I feel that as much as the base game is perfectly adequate to have a really good time, it’s definitely worth picking up one of the extra tile packs and the GT5 pack. This way you can make even more tracks, have a choice of cars, and the boost dice which is a fantastic little addition. The only thing I can say is that in the GT5 pack they have strangely opted to make the Ford GT40 the red car and the Ferrari blue! (Outrageous!) 

Also in the works and nearing release is the Rally-centric sequel “Rallyman Dirt”! It’ll play similarly to GT with the addition of a few extra mechanics such as jumping and drifting. Dirt’s “Rx” (Rallycross) expansion will make it compatible with GT meaning you can create hybrid tracks with all the tiles! You’ll also be able to shunt other players which was included in GT but only for early backers in the game’s Kickstarter campaign. It would have been nice to have the Kickstarter content in GT, but it doesn’t make the game feel weaker without it. 

The nearest comparable game to Rallyman would be Formula D as it also pits players against each other to move cars around a track. Key differences here are the core mechanics and that you only get two tracks in the initial base box of Formula D (a double-sided board). Rallyman trades a quicker setup for an immersive racing feel which, in my opinion, is a worthwhile trade for the amount of replayability it provides. Not that Formula D isn’t fun, but if you’re looking for a racing game with depth, value and replayability in the base box, then Rallyman GT takes pole position. 

Ace Rundown

Rallyman GT’s biggest selling points are its replayability, beautiful aesthetic, and depth of mechanics. Its rulebook can feel heavy at first but once you’ve played a round or two it’s actually quite simple. Having said that, the real highlight of the game is when a player gets to show their tactical guile. Leave your opponents having to pull off a daring move to catch up or compromise a manoeuvre to have the advantage of starting the next round in a higher gear. It’s almost like a game of automotive chess! 

The puzzle of movement and gearing is balanced with a need to manage the level of risk each turn. Attempting a “flat-out” role early on may be necessary to ensure safety nearer the end, but it could go wrong… This risk versus reward mechanic is where the game shines but, as Sir Sterling Moss once put it, to achieve anything in this game you must be prepared to dabble in the boundary of disaster. It can (and will) all go wrong at some point! 

Despite this, on some turns you’ll easily find you and your friends/family “Vrooming!” and “Screeching!” around corners blurting out the soundtrack to a movie franchise notorious for street-racing and “family”. On others, you’ll be intensely scrutinising the possible outcome of the current round and what opportunities that will leave you in the next. There is a surprisingly high skill ceiling for a game that can be simply broken down into place dice, roll dice, move cars, which is great! 

There are a number of racing games out there with other themes or ways to play but none of them really capture the ebbs and flows of excitement in a real race like Rallyman GT. It feels less like Mario Kart and more like a racing simulator. That may sound daunting, but trust me, it is still able to be a load of chaotic fun, especially at the higher player counts. Although you can play a two-player game (or even solo!) you probably wouldn’t want to. Best bet, grab a couple of friends, everyone pick a car and start your engines! 

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games” is something I heard Ernest Hemingway once said… well in this case Motorsport actually IS a game! There are no boulders or bulls in Rallyman GT, but there are cars, corners, crashes, and champions!

Rallyman is to racing games as Formula 1 is to motorsport. You’ll need to have the right strategy to come home on the podium. But there’s a chance that risking it all on one heroic divebomb can result in crashing out, needing to race your way back up the standings.

Drivers To The Grid

The Rallyman box contains modular hex tiles with sections of the circuit printed on both sides. One side is usually a harder difficulty version of the same shape track piece. These can be arranged either into “ready-to-race” circuits found in the back of the rulebook or as players choose, adding as many hairpins or straights as you’d like. 

The cars are each uniquely coloured and moulded to resemble their real-world equivalents. Each has a set of their own double-sided tyre dashboard cards (rain and asphalt) and gear markers. Dice representing gear, braking, and coasting, the round marker and pit-stop tile. A large number of tokens and a draw bag make up the rest of the box.  

Determine the number of laps and starting weather conditions (wet or dry). Pick a car and which tyre to start on, placing the corresponding dashboard on the side matching the weather. To make up the grid, use a single gear marker from each player and draw one by one assigning first through to last. Players take their starting positions and place the “0” gear marker alongside them, all on the white or black side matching the round marker.  

The Lights Are Out And Away They Go!

The order of play follows a nice simple rule: “Speed > Distance > Position”. 

Each round the player with the highest speed starts. If multiple players have equal speeds, the player furthest along goes first. If multiple players are neck and neck then the player on the inside line for the next corner starts. Easy enough! 

The player turn is also quite simple in principle: “1. Place Dice, 2. Roll Dice”. 

Place gear and coast dice along the track, avoiding any spaces with another car. Change up or down gears sequentially with coasting maintaining the speed of the previous space. In order to overtake, you’ll need to be travelling at or above your opponents’ speed. The racing line is always the fastest line around a corner (the marked spaces), but you’ll have to take note of speed limits or conditions on them. Coming in too hot will lead to an instant loss of control. Using the red dice allows a player to drop right down the gears, each dropping a further gear but increasing the chance of crashing! 

Once you’ve optimised your path, decide which way to roll the dice. Each has a number of hazard symbols on them that you’ll want to try and avoid. There are two options, either cautiously roll the dice one by one choosing whether or not to travel the full distance; or, go “flat-out” pushing your luck and roll them all at once. Going “flat-out” increases the risk but guarantees valuable focus tokens for each space dice were placed, which can be used to secure moves in later turns. 

Focus tokens can only be used when taking the safer option, but have the caveat that they can only be spent on unrolled dice and increase their cost per dice banked (the first costing 1, the second 2 and so on…) meaning a hefty supply can dwindle as the race goes on. 

It’s a fine line between being in control and losing it! Roll as many hazards as you have on your dashboard and you’ll spin out, potentially picking up some damage. Check the difficulty of the track section and the speed you crashed out at against the table on the dashboard. See how many damage tokens you’ll need to draw and whether you’ve spun on or off the track (gear “0” or “00”). Rallyman damage tokens come in the following forms: 

  • Losing dice from your available pool, akin to losing gears or brakes failing, can only be repaired by heading into the pits.  
  • Causing a yellow flag preventing players from overtaking each other until you get moving again.  
  • Changing the weather conditions flipping everyone’s dashboards, leaving everyone scrambling to decide whether it’s worth pitting and changing tyres. 
  • Pulling out a green flag (if you’re lucky!) and face no consequences for the audacious move you tried to make… 

If you have taken damage or need to change tyres, you can choose to pit. You’ll have to slow to first gear along either edge of the track (not on a marked space). To change tyres, you’ll need to assign the “0” speed marker, flip your card and move the car to the pit lane tile for that turn. At the start of the next turn, you return to the track and take your turn as normal.

If you need to repair any damage, you’ll have to place the “00” marker, return all accumulated damage back in the token bag and move the car in the pit lane (you can also change tyres when doing this!). For your next turn, you’ll have to replace the “00” marker with the “0” marker and wait until the following turn to return to the track. If the space is blocked by another player when trying to re-join the track, you’ll have to wait another turn! 

The winner of Rallyman is the first player to cross the start/finish line after the agreed number of laps. Start spraying the champagne and play the “Prelude to Carmen” at full volume! 

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • Excellent replayability (so many track tiles!)
  • Great artwork.
  • Expansions add extra flavour and variety.
  • Components of high detail and quality.

Might not like

  • Lower player counts can make player interaction low.
  • Advanced rules and game components locked behind a finished Kickstarter campaign.