Snow Tails

Although I bought a handful of figures and a few paints at MOAB over the weekend, my best purchase was this boardgame on the bring and buy.

Snow Tails is a game of husky sled-dog racing. I came across it when I was looking for games similar to Flamme Rouge, and  it was the one that struck me as potentially the most interesting. Sadly it was also out of print. So I was thrilled to find a copy on the bring and buy at a very reasonable price.

Yesterday evening Mrs Kobold and I gave it a go. I'll say from the outset that it doesn't work so well as a two-player game as Flamme Rouge. That has the advantage of bot players to add an extra challenge and actually works OK even if you don't use them. I think Snow Tails is probably best with four or five players. However it's also a game that takes a little bit of learning, so a two-player game gave us chance to do just that.

Like Flamme Rouge it uses tracks made up from module board pieces - straights, curves and hairpins. Whereas Flamme Rouge is about the ascents and descents, Snow Tails is about the corners.

Here's the very start of the game. My yellow sled has just moved, whilst Catherine's is about to.

Further into the game, and Catherine has a slight lead.

So how does the game play? Well, each player has a sled display in front of them, showing two dogs and a slot for the brake. Each player also has a deck of cards, with four each of the numbers 1-5. You have a hand of five cards and, on your turn, must play 1-3 of them onto your sled display, onto one or both dogs and/or the brake. The restriction is that if you play multiple cards they must all be of the same value; you can't play a 2 onto one dog and a 3 onto the other; you must play onto one or the other.

You then move according to your speed; a sled gets a movement allowance equal to the sum of the cards on the two dogs minus the value of the brake. If the cards on the dogs are the same then the sled is balanced and is entitled to a bonus move, which increases the further back in the race you are (a nice catchup mechanism). If the dogs have different value cards on them, then the difference must be moved as lateral drift because of the way the corners and hairpins are set up, creating drift is the only way to get around them, so the game is a constant battle between unbalancing your team to maneuver and then balancing it back up to run fast on the straights.

Here's an example sled. The left dog has a 5, the right a 3 and there's 2 on the brake. So the sled moves 5 + 3 - 2 = 6 spaces. The difference between the cards is 2, so 2 of those 6 spaces must be drift movement. You can do the moves in any order (so you could go DDSSSS, SSDSSD or any other combination, depending on the track conditions)

There are penalties for hitting the side of the track, hitting another sled or going into a corner or hairpin at greater than the designated safe speed. Most of these cause dents to the sled. A dent is a card you place in your hand that cannot be discarded, thus reducing your potential hand-size. If you take a fifth dent you can no longer hold any cards and your sled is wrecked.

Mrs Kobold and I got around our first race undamaged, and it was a close finish; we crossed the line on the same turn, but she managed to use bonus movement to just edge ahead of me.

We played a second game (unphotographed). In that she got into a tangle on the first corner, whilst I ran a smooth untroubled race and easily finished first. So one game each. I tried a solitaire four sled game after that, and it certainly played better with more racers on the track, partially because they block each other and also because the bonus moves you get are longer for sleds at the back.

The tiles are double-sided, which allows for left and right options on the curves and for some special obstacles on the straights. These include forests of saplings (which can be avoided or crashed through), a snowdrift which narrows the track and a chasm which narrows the track and forces some tricky manuever to get through it. But the rules advise that you get used to running the sleds properly before attempting these.

Like Flamme Rouge this game gives a fun and exciting race, and it's different enough that both games will see time on our table