Rallyman GT Board Game Review

I’d be lying if I said I was a huge fan of racing in general. It’s not something that has peaked my interest in the slightest over my 35 years on this planet. I’ve played a few racing video games – I do enjoy the Burnout series, for example – but I’m still pretty indifferent to the entire sport. I’ve seen a ton of racing board games released over the past year or so, some using cards like Rallyman GT, while others use Dodo’s to create a racing experience. As my first real racing game, I was curious to see if Rallyman GT would scratch an itch I didn’t know I had.

In Rallyman GT, players will roll dice and move their cars along a track, attempting to be the first to win the race over a set number of laps. Players will play in order of what gear they are in, with the players in the highest gear moving first and the players in the lower gears after that. Player roll a group of dice that will allow them to increase what gear they are in, hold the gear they are in, or decrease their gear and begin a break for those corners and sharp turns. Certain parts of the track let you know what gear you need to be in to successfully manoeuvre through that space, and not doing so will result in some issues. The dice rolling and use is actually quite clever in my opinion, and with some mitigation elements – using tokens to avoid rolling dice, for example – not everything feels super lucky. To be fair, those lucky versus unlucky moments still exist, which is natural for any game involving dice rolling!

What I really love about Rallyman GT is the level of strategic decision making that needs to be made, although this takes a few games to perfect for sure. You might be tempted to go all out each and every turn, but playing strategically could mean more success in the future. For example, there were many situations were playing the long-game and only moving a short distance set me up for far better subsequent turns; the alternative was run and gunning it, and putting myself in a situation I couldn’t control – ultimately, I got passed and lost.

For the most part, we found that slow and steady was probably the way to have the most success in Rallyman GT, but in order to win you needed a few “all out” turns. These need to happen in very specific circumstances, some of which you’ll need to create yourself with clever dice use. And I love that about Rallyman GT. Running and gunning the whole race won’t work. Slow and steady the whole race won’t work. It’s strategic decision making at key moments that will create the best strategy, but for each player that will be different.

See, the dice you use and roll are determined by your car, your tires, and more – each player will have a different car and will therefore need to attack the track in slightly different ways. Sure, the core concepts are all the same, but using your specific vehicle won’t quite be the same as others, which keeps the game feeling fresh after a half dozen plays.

The downside to Rallyman GT, and ultimately the downside to any dice rolling, racing game is that there are opportunities for one person to just “run away” with the game. A few consequitive turns of solid rolling CAN propel one player forward by quite a bit, making the rest of the game pretty dull. Everyone else will be forced to move as quickly as possible which ultimately won’t work, while the player in front can, more than likely, play it safe the rest of the way and coast to victory. This happened within our first three games which was a bit of a downer for some players at the table. Ultimately, though, this can happen in any board game if you really think about it. I don’t generally hold something like this against a game unless it’s a chronic problem – that doesn’t seem to be the case here. That being said, if you only play your board games once or twice per year, it is possible that one of those games could be a “cruise to victory” moment for someone, which could be a bit of a letdown. In my opinion, if you plan to play Rallyman GT a lot, then that gets mitigated somewhat over dozens of plays.

We were also provided the Rallyman GT Team Challenge box for this review, and enjoyed the additional content included in that expansion. The expansion includes 6 additional cars for the base game, as well as a new game mode called, “Pursuit.” In this mode, cars are put into two groups, with one group chasing down the other. It wasn’t our favourite way to play Rallyman GT, but again, if you are playing this a lot, I think it’s a breath of fresh air that really plays to the strength of veteran Rallyman players. Additional track pieces also let you create new tracks to play on, including a figure 8 track that we found was a LOT of fun as cards criss-crossed each other.

For someone who doesn’t enjoy the racing genre, I was pleasantly surprised by Rallyman GT. It was an easy game to table and teach, and provided hours of entertainment with only a few unsatisfying moments. As with any game that includes dice, there are some luck elements. While some mitigation is possible, there will be times when you are just dealt a bad roll, and you’ll have to come to terms with whether or not that will impact your enjoyment of the experience. Still, over dozens of turns, those unlucky moments might balance out between everyone at the table, which is what we found happened in most circumstances. For those looking to get more out of their Rallyman GT experience, the Team Challenge expansion adds some nice depth and a new mode to keep things feeling fresh. For more casual players, you can probably pass on that additional content.

A copy of Rallyman GT and a copy of Rallyman GT: Team Challenge was provided to us by the publisher for this review.