Road Kill Rally

Road Kill Rally is pretty much how it sounds – maybe worse. Like a board game version of Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000, racers score points not only for being in the top three finishers, but also how much damage they did each other en route, and – wincing muscles at the ready – how many pedestrians they killed.

Yes, despite the vibrant colours and plastic cars, the theme is pretty dark here. The race itself takes place over a series of tiles, with the cars activating from front-to-back in terms of race position. On every turn you 1. draw up to five rally cards if you have less than five 2. adjust speed and apply movement and 3. engage in combat with any drivers unlucky to be in your field of vision and reachable by your weapons.

The rally cards all have actions and can be played for them, usually on your turn but sometimes reactively. But they also double as a kind of economy: being spent or discarded in various ways that help keep you on the road. Adjusting your speed is simple: on your player board a marker tracks how fast you’re going, and how many spaces along the road you must move as a result. You can go up one gear (or down two gears) for free – if you want to accelerate or decelerate any further, that costs you in discarded rally cards. Once you’ve adjusted your speed, you move your car: hopefully without crashing. As the road weaves and turns going faster is dangerous, as you’re forced to roll damage dice, for instance:  coming to the end of a straight at high speed, you hit a hairpin turn. The road borders and car gears are a handy colour reference for when you must roll, and how many dice. If you roll damage (blood spatters) you must discard cards from your hand. You may also be giving and receiving damage to and from the other players! Each car is set up with accessories that include weaponry: if anyone’s in range, you can discard cards for ammo and roll damage dice to attack. If they take damage, you get a 10pt bonus and they must give cards to you!

The issue with all this shedding/grabbing of cards is that you may (more likely will) reach a point where you are meant to give up cards and you don’t have enough to do so. This causes a wipeout: your turn ends, you begin your next turn in miserly first gear and pick up a wipeout token, worth minus 20 points at the end of the game.

In the midst of the carnage you’ll be mowing down unsuspecting pedestrians too – you can target them with your car, or your weapons. The official rule is you can do this whenever you pass a pedestrian, but we have a house alternative (see Sam Says). At the end of the game the top three racers score points for finishing and everyone gets points for damage dealt and pedestrians… dealt with. Aside from a couple of things such as pit stops (re-customize your car) collisions (deliberate or otherwise; they’re high-risk!) and the playable actions on the cards (which are all fairly obvious) that’s pretty much Road Kill Rally.