This genre seems to be fairly popular, and I can see why. Instead of just building a deck for the sake of building it (like in Dominion), adding a racing element makes the game more interactive, tense, and tangible. I’ve only played a few, and I’m interested in how Heat compares to for example.
I really enjoy Clank! and The Quest for El Dorado. I’d say Quest is the better game. It’s cleaner, has fewer rules, and more variety in terms of maps. However, Clank! can be more fun. All the weird cards, the fights, drawing from the Dragon bag, and trying to get out alive make it a more lively (but also more random) game.
Cubitos and Heat are both great. Cubitos more on the deckbuilding part, Heat on the other…
There is a Cubitos expansion currently on Kickstarter as a part of the AEG Expansion Extravaganza. 6 days to go.
In my opinion, Cubitos could use more engine building in it’s dice pool building.
Automobiles is a bagbuilder where you draw cubes from your bag and place them on the rack track to advance. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to find these days, I hope we get a reprint someday. The good news is that it’s playable on both BGA and Yucata.
In Abandon All Artichokes your goal is to simply draw a hand of cards without any artichokes in it so you are racing to cull and pad your deck to do this before your opponents do. Small box, inexpensive, fun art.
I love Clank in all its version. Even though I have not tried the Legacy version yet.
The Quest for El Dorado did not click with us, we thought its very similar to Clank but Clank is just better and much more fun.
We tried Heat at a meetup and found it interesting but ultimately not something we would add to our collection. Might also be related to the theme. I did find the mechanic of shifting gears and adding and removing heat from your deck interesting and at least on my first playthrough, difficult to manage.
What about something like Aeon’s End? Not racing on a map, but racing against a clock, because the big monster is going to destroy the world if you are too slow.
Awesome deck building, but an extreme sense of urgency.
There’s also Cubitos and, my fave, Robo Rally (which has deckbuilding in 2016—it’s a fun deck building where decks get worse and worse).
Clank! is probably my favorite board game, especially the legacy version, so I’m very happy to get the red of Quest for El Dorado 😬
I haven’t had the chance to play the Slay the Spire board game yet (my friends warn me against buying tabletop versions of video games) but it may be worth checking out if you like the genre.
