5 Board dads playing board games

7 Wonders
Azul
Dominion

Great Western Trail

Root

Pandemic

Sabotuer

Winners Circle board games

Wing Span

Gizmos

Viticulture

Great Games - Winner’s Circle

The more I play board games with my friends and family, the more I realize that people have quite a wide range of reasons why they would rate a game as a great game.

If I were to pick traits that make up a great game, depending on my mood, I would probably highlight brain-burning, number crunching, analytical puzzles with lots of decisions to be made during each turn.  Those decisions could be a strategic and enduring execution of a game plan or a tactical mitigation of a good turn of a card or bad roll of a die.  Give me decisions to make that matter over and over again!  And a handful of my friends have the same mentality.

Others are looking for experiences.  Get all of us on the edge of our seat, with the game in the balance, winner take all, all on this play.  Let’s load up resources all game to go for The Ultimate Combo in the last round for the win.  Bet it all!  Against all odds!  So they can say, “I made it happen.”  So what if that play only comes through 1/20 times?  IT CAME IN TONIGHT!

Another group just wants to hang out.  Let’s relax.  Less rules, please, and if it’s longer than an hour, then it’s too long.  Let’s play three one-hour games instead of one three-hour game.  The other night, one of my friends cut me off 5 minutes into a game-teach, asking to play anything that we’ve already learned.  “We work all day.  Can’t we take a break from work?!?”

Well, forget Agricola and Troyes.  Inis?  Great Western Trail?  Too many rules.  Let’s go thematic with Spector Ops or Quacks.  No, too random.  How about Wingspan?  With 5 players?!?  Too long.

Sometimes, you can’t satisfy everyone.  Correction:  You can’t satisfy everyone, but Winner’s Circle is the one game that usually satisfies all of my friends and family almost every time we play.  

Winner’s Circle is a horse racing game designed by Reiner Knizia for 2-6 players.  The game consists of three races where players place bets on 1-3 of the seven horses entered in a one-lap race around the board.  During the race, players alternate moving all of the horses in rounds until the winning horse, the runner-up, and the 3rd place horse complete the lap, after which payouts are made based total bets -- just like at the horse track.

Is that it?  Doesn’t seem very special.  Well, of course, the game design imbeds simple but interesting rules to follow that make each race strategic, tactical, exciting, surprising, and climatic.

During a race, horses move when players roll a custom six-sided die and choose a horse to move.  The custom die has one of four icons on each face:  3 horse heads, 1 jockey helmet, 1 saddle, and 1 horseshoe.  Each horse has an associated card which indicates the number of spaces the horse will move for each of the icons on the die.  All horses have different values for the icons.  A player rolls the die, chooses a horse to move, moves the horse, then flips the horse’s card over.  The die is passed to the next player who rolls and moves one of the other horses that hasn’t moved that round.  Once all horse cards have flipped, a round of rolls is complete and cards are turned right-side up for the next round.

The variation in play comes from a few places.  First, each horse card is different.  The horse head die icon (most probable) on the horse’s card has a high value (between 5-7) for steady and reliable horses, whereas some horses have huge gains for one or more of the other 3 icons (8-12 and up to 15-20 spaces!) at the cost of a crummy horse head value (as low as 1).  Who will win?  The steady 7-space-per-turn reliable horse or the 15-space horseshoe longshot?

Next, horses can not end movement in a space with another horse.  If a horse is slated to move 4 spaces and another horse is 4 spaces in front, then it moves 3.  And if there is another horse 3 spaces in front as well, then it moves 2.  If there are horses in all four spaces in front of that horse, it doesn’t move at all, and its card still gets overturned.  Oh boy, what a move on that one horse all of your friends bet on that you didn’t!

This placement rule extends to the start of the race.  Horses #1-7 are placed on different spaces pre-race, with Horse #7 placed 6 spaces behind Horse #1 and all the rest of the field in between.  That creates a unique betting trend that more bets (and eventual winners) come from horses in post-positions 1-3 and less from positions 5-7, but it also sets up for possible longshot opportunities for Big Dreamers looking for a Comeback for the Ages who bet on horse in the back of the field without the friendly help of a fellow better sharing the horse’s good rolls.

There are tough decisions on most rolls.  Do you move a horse you bet on its reliable 7-spaces when you roll that horse head, or do you waylaid your friend who bet that 15-space jockey helmet longshot with a 1-space move?  Do you slow down the leader so your heavy bet can get lucky on someone else’s roll?  Who did the player to your left bet on?  He’ll move your favorite since you both bet on the same horse, so you can help one of your other horses place.

Betting contains hidden strategy, too.  Bets are made with 4 chits placed upside-down:  one 2-chit, two 1-chits, and one 0-chit, which is a bluff.  Players can see the four horses that other players have placed bets on, but which one is the double bet?  Which one is the bluff?  Can I count on getting help from this guy to move the horse I put my double bet on?  Maybe, maybe not.  And half-way through the race, which one is my double bet again?!?  Oops!  Can’t look if you forget!

There are times that a horse or two breaks out with well-timed big rolls to take away a lot of drama, but more times than not, things really get interesting about half-way through the race.  Gotta slow down that leader.  Can’t let #3 get top 3.  Must get my double bet into the top 3.  No, no, make that top 2.  Let’s move the horse no one bet on just to stop that other horse from placing.  If this horse finishes third instead of that one, I can keep my money lead.  If I can only get a jockey helmet this roll!!

It all turns into a perfect combination of planning and reacting to the actions of the other players and the luck of the die roll.  Each race lasts maybe 15 minutes, then you make the rated payouts for win, place, show (plus a pay penalty for finishing last -- another juicy rule for tactical play!) and it’s on to the next race.  And to keep it interesting, the payouts are doubled for the third race, so you’ve always got a chance for that miraculous comeback.

So the puzzle solver loves the high volume of high-impact decisions to be made, the thrill seeker loves the 20-move longshot win from post-position 7, and the laid-back player knows that he can compete with his friends without getting dusted by an unfamiliarity with the rule book.  Everyone wins with Winner’s Circle.

Dave Quinn

4/08/2021

Scott

39 year old father of two.  College baseball coach.  Beneath the jock exterior lies a bespectacled calculator-carrying, pocket protector-wearing nerd - like Clark Kent hiding behind a baseball jersey.  

Favorite games:  Inis, Agricola, Azul, Quacks of Quedlinberg, and Winner’s Circle.

Favorite game moments: Gene’s jaw hitting the floor when I got the badger the first time playing Indian Summer, Winning Root with the Woodland Alliance by grabbing 25 victory points in the final two turns, dodging errant shots in Flick ‘em Up, anytime someone forgets where their 0 chit is in Winner’s Circle, and watching Dave agonize over every move.

Signature style:  reconsidering what move to make while in the midst of making a move - then immediately reversing course.   Maintains that everyone does this, but he did it first and he does it most, so it is henceforth known as, “pulling a Scott.”

Dave

42 year old father of 4

Teaches high school physics and coaches high school track

Favorite games: Agricola, Root, Great Western Trail

Favorite board game moments: Ruling as King Ware Rat in Betrayal, hearing Jim feverishly call dibs on Ursula in Villainous, watching Scott fall asleep only half way through the intro mission to Mansions of Madness, getting punked by a 1st grader in Don't Get Got, begging for rats in Wingspan, losing 5 straight raider truck pillages in Wasteland Express Delivery Service

Loves teaching new games

Known for mistakingly forgetting to teach one or two critical rules for new games, incidentally *just* enough to win

clubs