Heat: Pedal to the Metal
热力狂飙
Race cars with a hand of cards: shift gears, push through corners, and manage your engine’s heat.
- 1–6 players
- about 45 min
- Easy to pick up
- Strategy
- Cards
- Family
- Racing
The goal
Be the first car across the finish line after the agreed number of laps.
How it plays
- 1Everyone shifts at once: one gear up or down is free, two gears costs 1 Heat. Then play face down as many cards as your gear number.
- 2Front car first, reveal and add up your cards. That is your speed, and you move exactly that many spaces. A Stress card is replaced by flipping cards off your deck until you hit a normal speed card.
- 3Then use symbols. Cooldown moves Heat cards from your hand back to your engine. Boost costs 1 Heat and flips one more speed card. Right beside or behind another car, you may slipstream 2 extra spaces.
- 4Crossing a corner faster than its speed limit costs 1 Heat per point over. If you can’t pay, you spin out: back up to before the corner, take Stress cards, and drop to first gear.
- 5Discard any normal cards you don’t want (never Heat or Stress) and draw back up to 7.
How you win
The first car to cross the line after the last lap wins. For a first game, race a single lap.
First time?
- Heat is your budget for going fast. Count what you have left before each corner.
- Low gears cool your engine. Dropping down for a turn to recover is often worth it.
- The car in last place gets an adrenaline bonus, so falling behind is never hopeless.