Hey everyone, a couple of quick items before we get started. The first is an apology for the background noise in this episode. Real life was a spectator and we caught construction in what sounds like real car racing on our soundtracks. The second item is that in just two months and only four episodes, we've had over 2000 downloads from 43 different countries around the world. We all thank you for choosing to spend your time with us. And now on with the show.
Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by David and Paul for our fifth episode. We take Heat Pedal to the Metal for a spin. It is designed by Asger Harding-Gradrud and Daniel Schold-Pettersson with art by Vincent Dutre. It was published last year by Days of Wonder. Are you ready to start your engines? I'm ready. Sitting in pole position, let's go. By grab star's hammer.
Nice. All right, so Heat Pedal to the Metal puts players in the driver's seat of intense car races. In the basic game, you'll draw a hand of seven cards. The gear you are in determines the number of cards you're allowed to play. The combined value of those cards tells you how far you can move along the track. Every corner has a speed limit. If you pass the demarcation line for a corner at a higher speed than what is posted, then you must play heat cards from your engine equal to the difference.
Take a corner too fast or push your car too far, and you could spin out. There are several modules that can be added that include things like weather, car upgrades, and automatas. We'll get to those in a bit. What makes this a great racing game? What do you guys like? I thought about what makes any game a great racing game. And I came up with three things. First is decisions about your speed or your placement or both. Second is tension.
I think a great racing game involves frequently being overtaken by other players. And third is speed of play or minimal downtime. And heat has all three of these in spades. Yeah, I totally agree with that. That tension, being grouped in a pack and jockeying back and forth, it simulates what we see in a video racing game or actually racing if you've ever done any racing, where you're dropping into position, slipstreaming in this game.
Anytime you see that in a racing game anywhere, it just makes it for a fun, raucous sort of game. And what makes heat specifically a good racing game? I don't know if that was part of the question or not, but it starts to separate itself with the heat mechanism, which I think that mechanism of your engine getting hotter when you're pushing it to the limits and then learning when to cool your engine. This, as we'll get into more definitely here, it's not just a racing game.
It's a hand management, deck management game. And that's what makes this, I think, head and shoulders above part of the few other racing games out there. Todd, I would like to say that I think when Dave talks about deck management, he talks about managing which cards are actually in your deck to draw and which cards are in your discard. You can have a lot of control over that in the game of heat.
Right. Yeah, I'm using it as a slight differentiation from hand management, because your deck is not very large and half of it is in your hand or almost half of it in your hand at any time. But where that heat is, whether it's in your deck, whether it's in your hand, and how you, so it's not just the hand management. It's do I want to cycle through it with stress cards and push it back to my discard pile, or do I want to bring it into my hand so I can cool it?
And how many times have we played when we go, OK, here's your chance to cool in step four, and somebody says, I don't have any heat to cool. And I think that's when you didn't manage your deck as well. Right. Or even worse, you're on a portion of the track where you're going to be in a low gear and thus would be afforded the opportunity to cool. And then just for the weather tile you drew for that segment, there's no cooling allowed.
Yeah. Yeah. But that's part of the deck management that I'm talking about is parsing out the track, just like you would running practice laps if you're actually going to race. Where am I going to really push my engine to the limits on this track, and where am I going to take the opportunities to cool? And when you see, because of the track conditions or the weather I can't cool here, I'm going to have to plan somewhere else where I'm going to drop into first gear and make sure I can cool.
So I got to manage my deck to make sure I'm drawing all my heat before I come to that corner. That's sort of a second or third level of the game that I didn't start to see until after quite a few plays. Right? You know, you guys are reminding me of my favorite moment playing heat. And that was realizing just how overpowered the card wings is. Well, yeah.
We were talking about that segment of track where you're not allowed to cool, where I just used my wing card in that race to skip that whole segment by taking two corners in the same turn. To never stop there. Yeah, I mean, so we can talk about that. I can understand why that's your favorite moment of the game. We hated it. Well, it was so embarrassing because we all had a crack at that upgrade before you did.
And we all thought, oh, man, being able to upgrade the speed limit through a corner by three points for two heat, who's going to have two heat to spend? Oh, no, it's a terrible card. And you said, oh, I'm going to give it a shot anyway. And then you realized that the distance between the two interior corners on the UK track was something like six or seven.
And if you set up just outside of the first corner, you could be in second gear, get eight movements worth of speed, and blow through both corners for only two heat. It was an amazing realization of what you could do. And yes, you won that race and the championship series pretty convincingly as a result. Yeah, that leads me into my least favorite thing about heat, which is listening to the other players complain.
Seriously, it's easy to lock yourself into thinking you have no options on your turn. Dave was talking about this a lot. And sometimes, I think it's important, even though it's a race game, you have to think outside the box and realize that even though you're on a straightaway that's 30 spaces long, it might be best to take it in second gear so you can cool and manage your deck. Right.
Well, yeah, and not to spend too much time on that one particular game, but it was actually one of our, well, funnest and most disastrous games for some people. But to set up that taking two turns at once with that wings card that Paul had, not only did he have to cycle his deck to make sure he was holding that card at the right time, but he also in the straight, he and I were doing the Ricky Bobby shake and bake across the back where we're slipstreaming off of each other.
And then he dropped down into first gear. And I'm all, see you sucker. But he dropped into first gear on the straight, which I thought was, I didn't think it was foolish at the time. I saw what he was doing, but I thought, wow, that's super risky. But he was able to cool a bunch of heat. Well, I just blew by him in wherever I was third or fourth gear. But then he doubled past me in the corner because he had the heat to pay for that card.
And that was all that management we're talking about, to have that ready. So we're going to talk about the luck in the game. The more I play, the lower that luck number starts to get. That's true. However, I mean, there have been times where I've been in less than fourth gear on a straightaway, and it had nothing to do with planning or needing to cool. Because my hand was so jammed of cards that I couldn't play, I had to downshift.
And you don't want to have to cool on a straightaway when you're just opening the throttles wide open. There are a lot of moments in this game that I can look back on and say, that was a lot of fun, or that was an unfortunate hand that I allowed to get jammed up. There are a lot of moments that this game creates, and I think that's a testament to its quality. I agree with that. And I love the progression that I've gone through with the game. I don't know if you guys have done the same thing.
In the beginning, I thought, well, heat is a resource that I need to use to reserve, just in case I need it. And then that was maybe the first few plays when I wasn't doing that well. And then I start to realize it's the most powerful resource in the game. Use it and churn it. And then I start to see it on a different level there, using up that heat. Whereas the first time I'm like Yolo, in the way we're like, Yolo, be careful. You only live once. Be careful.
Now I'm more like, Yolo, let's take this corner. You know what, eight. Pay the heat and then cycle that heat back in. Yeah. So to pick up on something Paul was saying, he talked about speed of play. I think that's another thing that I like to see in a racing game. And I will say, with the considerations you have to make for heat, for deck churn, potentially discarding. You're trying to curate your hand to have a great straightaway run.
But if you're going to be able to get through your deck in the interior corners, maybe you don't need to hang on to that five card, because you should be able to see it again when you're going to need it. I think the speed of play can get to an acceptable point here with heat. But it takes several plays. And we still haven't really gotten it as streamlined as it should be and gotten the playing time down. What do you guys think?
Yeah, it still takes us a little over an hour to get through a single race, which I think feels a bit long. What do you guys think is the Mount Rushmore of racing games? Which four games would you prop up as being a great representation of the genre, and specifically car racing games here? Yeah, so I have two that I think are slam dunk, which are Formula Day and Pitch Car. Yes and yes. If you guys want to disagree with me, I'll fight you. The other two I think we can have some negotiation with.
Well, I think heat. Heat fits there. Yep. OK. But yeah, go back. I have never played Pitch Car. So I'd love to hear you guys make the case for Pitch Car. I mean, it looks fantastic, but go for it. Well, it's a dexterity game. So you literally have these great chunky pieces. And by the way, I have the original version, which is called Carabandi, but it's the same game. You have this great wooden track that you lay out. And it has silicone or rubber rails that you put into the corners.
And then your cars are wooden disks. And you are flicking them down the track and trying to get them to caram around the corners. There's even a jump that is possible to jump over a section of the track. And it's a ton of fun. I've never brought it out and had someone not enjoy playing Carabandi or Pitch Car. Is it just you flick, I flick, you flick, I flick? Or are there gears? Is there any positioning? I mean, obviously positioning, because it's a dexterity game.
But it's like a caram board, basically. You go, I go, you go, I go. Yeah, it's Croconol on a track. OK, all right. And the way you build the track forces you to, quote, shift up and shift down by the strength of your finger. It really does a great job thematically. OK. And so Paul, you said the other has-to-be-there slam dunk candidate was Formula Day. And I wanted to ask, do you specifically mean Formula Day? Or are you incorporating the re-release Formula D? I have a lot of Formula Day plays.
I only have a few Formula D plays. So my understanding is they're practically the same game. But I don't know. And if it's Mount Rushmore, I would put the first up there. I have Formula D. I've played your copy of Formula Day, Paul. And I didn't notice a difference. But I only played your copy once before I played, you know, three or four times Formula D. So it's definitely a quicker, less consideration. Like, go for third gear, go for fourth gear, let's go.
Take your turn, roll your dice, let's go. There aren't as many considerations as there are in heat. So the kids can play it very well and just jump in and start racing. Yeah, and taking damage or wear and tear is actually fun, just crossing the stuff off on your little notepad. Yeah. I think what Formula D adds, one, in current modern zeitgeist, it adds drivers with unique abilities. So it's got a little bit of power asymmetry in there.
And then it has these actually fun-looking status boards that you advance your pegs instead of crossing off the sheets that you did in Formula Day. So it's got a little bit of a higher toy factor to it and not the same disposable or consumable aspect of a paper pad. But other than that, they are the same game. I see. OK, I definitely pick Formula Day over D then. As soon as I said asymmetric powers, you were done, right? Yeah. All right, so we've got three out of four. And I would say.
What's the third? Oh, you guys are putting heat up there? We're putting heat up there. It has to be. From play one, heat was on Mount Rushmore for me. But if you want to make a case against it. You know, I can't really argue against it. I also put Thunder Alley or Grand Prix on there. I couldn't decide between the two. Perhaps Thunder Alley, because it's just so different from the other games. It's much more of a team-based racing game. It is.
And it's also more deck, not building, but deck controlled, right? Because you're drawing those cards a little bit like Twilight Struggle, where you're going to have the events that you're able to play. So it's a card-driven event game. But I would agree with that. I would say Thunder Alley goes up on Mount Rushmore with honorable mention to Downforce, because I do like the idea of there being a game that represents the gambling aspect and the betting aspect of racing.
But as good of a game as Downforce is, and I think it's pretty well designed, I would play Thunder Alley ahead of it. Is Downforce the reprint of Top Race? Yes, and I know Paul actively hates it. I hate that game. I know you do. But one of the things you said you didn't like about Top Race was there is a car switching places. Yeah, I can't stand it. Yeah, that power doesn't exist in Downforce. So what is it? Is it still a breakdown card or something like that?
Each round in Downforce, the players are revealing the car you're betting on and the power that goes along with it. There are six Speed 8 cards, one for each of the cars, and six powers. Just going through and looking at the power cards to refresh my memory, I didn't see one that said you get to switch places. There's a lot of when you play a Speed card, you get to ignore a color if it has all six colors or something like that, or you get to always move your car.
But I didn't see anything that said you get to swap places with another car. In Top Race, I don't know if it's swap places. One's a catch up, I think, where you get two colors together, the black and the yellow or something. And if you play it, you can either crash the front car or the back car catches up to the front car. But it's crazy overpowered. And it comes down to who draws those cards in their decks. You could not draw the card. There's no drafting or cycling cards or anything like that.
Either you get the card or you don't. And if you get two or three of those cards, then it's your game to lose. So that is a problem with the game. Yeah, I'm not sure that that's in Downforce. OK. I'll just tell you right now. You get dealt a hand of speed cards, and they don't have any powers on them. And then you're bidding on which power you're going to use.
And so if there are less than six players, you might wind up having won a couple of auctions and have two powers that you're allowed to use. But you have to choose which one you're going to keep. And it's not a put it in your deck and hope you draw a thing. So it sounds like there may have been some differences between Top Race and Downforce, where it got more streamlined and removed the things that Paul hates. We'll see. OK. Well, I'll give Downforce a try then.
Well, so Paul, if you're not going to put Downforce Top Race on there, what's your fourth game going to be? Are you going to put Thunder Alley and Grand Prix? I couldn't decide, so I just put Heat as number four. Wait, so you have Heat, Formula Day, Thunder Alley, and Grand Prix as a separate entry? No. Pitch card. I couldn't decide between Thunder Alley and Grand Prix as the third entry. So I ended up going with Thunder Alley as the third entry. There's four faces on Mount Rushmore. I know.
He has. And then Heat would be number four. He has Pitch Card, which is Carabandi. Oh, Pitch Card. OK. Sorry, I was forgetting Pitch Card. Well, I'll have to bring that to game night. We'll have to do another racing-themed game night. And instead of doing championship series for Heat, we can dip our toes in several different ones. That'd be great.
So let's talk about all the modules, because one of the things that Heat brings to the table here is not just a great base game, but there are lots of ways that you can tweak it. So Dave, why don't you give us a little introduction to some of your favorite modules or the ones that you think should be included or avoided, if any? Well, I do think it's interesting that it is modular. I guess we can take it as it's an easy way to dip your toe into the game.
But I think once you play with, say, the Weather and Road Conditions module, I don't know why you would play without it, unless you're introducing a casual gamer who's maybe going to struggle with it a little bit. But for me, a lot of these modules, they just become the base game. OK, so there are a series of modules in the game. And we'll just kind of take them one by one, because some of them I feel like belong in the base game.
Others, maybe depending on player count, maybe depending on what kind of game you're looking to play. But let's start with the Weather and Road Conditions module. And that one's going to make some modifications to the track. So the track is a little different every time you play. And by putting these tokens into the corners to maybe increase the speed of a corner, or maybe the track's wet or dry conditions, or you can cool or not cool.
And that variability, I think, it makes every game a little more interesting. It's a new puzzle that we all have to solve. We have to deal with this problem or this take advantage of this boon somewhere else on the track. And I think it just makes it more exciting. For me, that should just be part of the base game. I don't see any reason to keep it out, as I was saying, unless you're teaching grandma how to play, who's maybe going to struggle with that.
But even any new player, generally, it's not that complicated. It's very easy to just work it in as part of the base game. You guys agree? 100%. Yeah. The map, as a standalone, could become less interesting to play again and again and again. So the Weather and Road Conditions module breathes new life into it. Yeah, I agree. The replayability that it introduces is fantastic. There are constantly new challenges. And there are some times where you get the extra slipstream.
And so you're like, OK, I got a plan for that now. And I want to be close enough to the pack, but not out in front. So that way, I can get the extra distance. I think it adds a lot more decision making and is essential in every play. Totally agree. And just a lot more fun. And then, so next up would be the Legends module. And I used to think this is just a slam dunk. You put that in every time. The Legends module helps you control the number of cars in the field.
So whether you're playing with one or two players or whether you're playing with four or five players, you can fill out that field up to six cars. And like we were talking about early, in a racing game, having jockeying position, where you are in relationship to the other cars, that's a lot of the fun. Now, he doesn't have as much blocking. So you can't gum up the works trying to get through tight corners or something like that as much.
But even so, other cars on the track always makes it for more fun racing. What we are starting to find, though, is that when we are adding power cards to our decks, whether it's sponsorships or garage, which we're going to talk about next, we're finding that maybe we're kind of blowing those Legend cards out of the water. And typically, they perform very well if you're just using the base deck. They're in the running, in contention for winning sometimes.
But the last time we played, they were half a lap behind. So I'm starting to change my mind maybe a little bit on how essential Legends is. Yeah, the game has a catch-up mechanism called Adrenaline, which can only be used by the last car or the last two cars. And the last time we played this game, we basically called the AI Legends Adrenaline Hogs, because they would just block the player in fourth place from using Adrenaline, but they wouldn't use it themselves.
Well, we had another name for them. Hey. Family-friendly pod guys. Yeah, yeah, right. All right, so that's Legends. What's another one? Actually, I do want to talk about the Legends a little bit more, because I did post about this on BGG, and a few people came back with, well, maybe you guys are playing wrong, because every time we play, the Legends are in the mix.
So I was saying, well, when we start using power cards, when I'm running, one card's taking me eight down the straight, or Paul's taking two corners on one turn with the wings card, the Legends just couldn't keep up with us. And I don't know if, I mean, these people were saying they played Heat a lot, and the Legends were always in contention whether they were playing Advanced Garage or not. So I don't know. Maybe we got lucky on a few games, and maybe they would turn out to be.
No, I think those people are just playing it wrong, and they're not managing their Heat properly. We're just better than them. Well, I didn't want to say that. Yeah. I didn't want to say that, but that's the way it felt like. It felt like we are just completely outperformed the AI cards, even when they're able to go 19 on the back stretch or something like that. We're just blowing them out. I mean, hey, it'd be nice to think that we're better.
Or maybe they're just playing more conservatively on lap one. And at the end of the game, when we're all groaning, that we don't have enough Heat in our engine to open up, do a double shift, get up to fourth gear on the final straightaway, they're managing that better. The difference is, because we've gone so fast in the first couple of laps, the Legend cards have already been blown out.
So I don't want to say that we're better than those other folks, but we're definitely playing tighter, or at least closer to the red line in our races. You're saying, I don't want to say that we're better than them. I just want to point to the data. That's it. Right. So I think the jury's still out on Legend. So one, two, maybe three players, I want to bring in the Legends.
It was four and five where it started to, that's where they become the adrenaline hogs, where they just fall far behind and take that catch up mechanism out of the game. But one or two players solo, of course, you're going to need them in the game. They fill the field very well and make it a very fun game. Yeah. OK. I agree. I think four players is the cutoff when you stop using Legends. That's what I'm thinking, too. And then the next one is the Garage Module.
This one gets into what I would like to see more in the game, and that's more of a deck construction part of the game, where going into the race, our cars are different because we've tricked them out in different ways. And I don't have a ton of experience with the Garage Module, just in how we've used it with the Championship Series, which is a little bit different.
So when you use the Garage Module by itself, you draft three cards into your deck right from the start, and you just do that with the race. So in other words, you like asymmetric powers. Well, yes. In this sort of game, maybe I do. And that's when we talk about expansions or upcoming expansions, that might be something that I want to see in this game. I don't know. I'm afraid I might be changing as a gamer. I liked it in Lost Ruins of Arnak, and I want to see it in this.
I'm kind of ashamed of myself, I've got to be honest. Turn in your OG card. I know. These are the kinds of things I typically hate. But in this kind of game, it would be interesting to say, my driver can corner well, but is terrible on the straights. Or this guy's a hot rod who can just fly through the straights, but doesn't corner as well. And where you've got to play them a little bit differently. I'm curious. I'll just say I'm expansion curious. That's fair. All right, so keep going.
So Garage Module. OK, so in the Garage Module, yeah, that's a little more deck construction, where we're going to start the race where our cars are a little different. Because we've got suspension, tires, gas pedal, or various things. And that gives us something to work with. As we're introducing those, that's something where you've got to just get to know the cards. There's been a couple of times where while we're drafting the cards, we didn't realize how powerful this one was.
The first time we played, Al had a card that gave him three stress draws or something like that. And we thought, that sounds interesting. Well, he used it to just completely annihilate us. Or the wings that Paul drew. So we're starting to see some of these cards are a lot stronger than the other cards. But it's playing through them and being exploratory to kind of figure that out. Right. So that's the Garage Module. What do you guys think about it?
You know, I'm not a fan of the Garage Module in an individual game. I really liked it as part of the championship series. And we'll talk about that one here in just a bit. Yeah, I'm just concerned that the variance between the Garage Cards is too high. So one person's going to get lucky and just have a much better deck than somebody else. One person's going to get lucky, and the other players are going to leave them the best card so they can draft at last. Well, that's different. Yeah, right.
Like Todd was saying, if you use the Garage Module on its own, one person can just luck into the deck that automatically wins the race. Yeah. But in the championship series, the higher you score, the later round you pick, right? Yes, that's right. Because they're going to draft from back of the pack to the front. So we have no one to blame except ourselves, the fact that we left wings for you when you were already in pole position. Right. So I do totally agree with that.
As much as I do want to see deck construction and driver powers or team powers or whatever it is, I am concerned about balance in there. So I would like to see that better balanced. And that does bring us to the championship series, which I do think balances that better. So the championship series, you're doing multiple races. There's an event in each race, which is somewhat like the weather conditions, where it might affect the weather.
Or it might be this race is one lap longer than usual or one lap shorter than usual, different things like that. And then it adds the press corner and the sponsorship. So that, I think, is a really fun sort of garage module type. Because then you can pick up a sponsorship card. First of all, you've got to earn it by just hot dogging through the corner somehow to get the press excited, to get your picture on Formula One magazine. And so you get those sponsorships.
And then you get a one-time powerful use card. And so it's not going to throw your deck out of whack as the garage module might. But it makes it a lot of fun trying to figure out how I'm going to hot dog in that corner and then see what kind of prize I'm going to get out of it to use later. Yeah, I like those as well. So you either had to slipstream across the demarcation line of press corner, or you had to exceed the speed of the corner by at least two.
I believe those are the two criteria that enable you to earn a sponsorship card. And then it goes into your discard pile. It goes directly into your hand. It goes into your hand. The issue is some of us were forgetting to remove it from the game when we played it. It's a one-time use card. You play it and lose it. And we were finding it showing up in people's draw decks. And it shouldn't. Well, unless you could discard it at the end of your turn. So it could come back around in your draw deck.
But when you play it, it's out of your deck. I'll say that more than one person made that mistake. I know I did it once or twice. But you guys caught me on it. And you were like, no, Todd, you got to discard that. And I was like, OK. So I never used one twice. Well, in that last game that we keep talking about how Paul was using wings to take two corners, well, one of those corners was a press corner.
So not only was he taking the two corners, in order to take them both, he was exceeding it by two heat and also picking up a sponsorship card. So just an unexpected combo. By two heat, he was exceeding it by like four. The press loved it. So let's come back and talk about the championship series a little bit more. But I'll quickly mention tournament mode, which we've talked about, but we've never actually used. It doesn't seem as important because we're not playing the game that way.
But in tournament mode, you put your cards down. You hide them into a stack so you can't tell how many cards are in there. And you don't shift gears until it's your turn to go. And then you reveal how many cards you played, which reveals what gear you shifted into. And that just takes out looking onto other people's boards. If we're neck and neck, are you in third gear? Are you in second gear? And trying to use that to make my decision. And it takes that out of the game.
And I don't know what gear you're going to be in until after you move. It's a good idea, but we're not playing the game in such a way where we maybe need that yet. I mean, split streaming is so important that I can totally understand why it's needed. Yeah, sure. I mean, I look at it as the big question is when we come around the last corner before a straightaway, if you are in first, then obviously you're not getting up to fourth.
If you're in second, then I'm checking your engine to see if you have enough heat to do a double shift to pull away from me. So I agree, Paul, with slipstreaming, maybe that's important to take into consideration. But there are so many low cards in there. We've done crazy things like taking tight corners in third or fourth gear because, oh, I've got a pair of ones in my zero. And I'm going to be able to maintain my gear through that corner without really moving a painful number of spaces.
Yeah, that's true. I might look over and see you're in third gear and then think, I don't even really know what that means because you might have your zeros and ones or that might be two fours and a five. My point was about straightaways. I don't think tournament mode matters much in the corners, but it makes a big deal in the straightaways when you want to know what gear the person in front of you is in. Yeah, that's fair.
Like the example I gave earlier where my hand was jammed with heat cards and I only had two or three playable cards. And so I was downshifting because I didn't have enough cards to support staying in fourth. So if you knew that, that would be a competitive difference. Yeah, so it's a really good idea. We just haven't been using it. I don't know. We just want to get out and race and have fun.
So we'll see if we feel like we start to need it later if people are peeking onto each other's boards a little too much. Yeah, winning's not important. It's just the goal. Right. That's what the good doctor says. Now, in the championship series, I'm finding that that's my favorite way to play the game. It takes an entire evening, but the way the garage is metered out, the sponsorship, the events, the point system per race, that to me is the complete game experience.
And I enjoyed it a lot more at that level than just a one-off race. But what did you guys think of the championship series? I am not sure yet. I need to play the championship series more to know whether I like it or not. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I loved the press corners and the sponsorships, the reintroduction of the garage because we had played it on single races and decided that we didn't like it in single races.
But the reintroduction of it as part of the series, I thought, was interesting. And I do think it self-regulates if we understand the cards well enough, which just takes more place, right? Become familiar of what do those cards mean, and not just the card itself, but what does it mean within the context of a given track? Not all tracks have those two interior corners the way the UK track does. So maybe Wings isn't as overpowered in a different scenario.
But for that track, when Paul earned that or drafted that improvement, it was hugely powerful. So there's a lot of exploration that we can still do. And as long as we can get our playing time down, I would love to do the championship series again and then look at the different seasons. Yeah, I agree with that.
And it brings kind of a campaign mode to it with some legacy where you're able to, based on your performance in the race before, carry something over into the next race like you would in any sort of campaign game, and being able to, if you can do three races in one night, which you should be able to do if we don't spend too much time shaking our heads and crying in the corners that we lost a thing and that. Because it's definitely a game where you can feel downtrodden.
But if you can kind of just get out, rip through those games, play three games in an evening, I think that's my favorite way to play. All right. Let's move along to the prompts now. So the first one is weight or complexity. So on a scale of one to five, again, no decimals. How complex of a game do you think Heat is? I give it a two out of five. There's just four different kinds of cards, only a few movement rules. And it's pretty intuitive.
Yeah, I also give it a two out of five because it's very simple. But at the same time, I think people make a lot of mistakes along the way. So I am constantly telling the other players, probably annoyingly so, follow the steps. Here's where you cool. Here's where you can slipstream. And do them in this order. It's very simple.
But if you try to intuitively do them and cool and pay your heat in that and pay your heat as you're going through the corner rather than the end of your turn, that's where you kind of start to make mistakes and lose some of it. It starts to feel fiddly. But there's a very easy to follow track right on the top of your player board. And if you follow that step by step, this is a very simple game. Although, confusingly, the facts says adrenaline can be done in step four or five.
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's got to be in the rule book. And I missed it. But yeah, we found that a few plays into it that you can do that, which kind of blows my mind a little bit. I also gave it a two. On the surface, it's a very simple game. There is extra consideration needed for things like turning the deck, knowing when to discard, and then curating your hand for the straightaways. Those bump it up an extra point to two. But otherwise, I think it's a pretty simple game to understand.
All right, strategy. Do we want to talk about how much opportunity there is for strategy here? Same scale, one to five? Yeah, I give it a three out of five. I think that the hand to deck management are very important to winning. Deciding what to discard and planning out when you think it'll come back into your hand later is a far-reaching decision that allows you to map out up to four or five turns ahead. Yeah, I definitely agree with that, that it's a three.
And when I first started playing the game, it felt like a two, because somebody could boost and then pull their four and blow right by you. And I thought, you got lucky. But the more we play, the more we see ingenuitive play and interesting decisions that help mitigate that luck, I'm starting to see that I think in the end, the best driver is going to win and not the person who just drew the best cards.
Well, if our game results are any indication, the best driver has been winning and has been winning fairly consistently, or at least placing in the top two. Oh, you mean Al? Al is undefeated. He's won four, oh no, he is two for two. He won two games in the same night. And then he never came back. I mean, drop the mic and finish with a career batting average of 1,000, why not? Yeah. So I agree with the three on strategy.
I'd say the base game is a two, but once you've added the garage and weather, it bumps up to a three. More planning is needed. And knowing how the garage modifications are going to interact with the track and with the weather is important. I would say that that makes it a three when you're playing the full suite of modules or a championship series. Now, Luck, how much you think luck plays a factor in this game?
And Dave, I'm interested to hear your answer because you mentioned the more you play, the lower this score gets. Yeah, it keeps moving down. I think on our first play or two, I probably thought the luck was a four. Like, I drew great cards into the straight, and I drew my low cards in the corners, or I didn't. You're just at the mercy of your deck. And every time we play, that's come down. So I'm putting this at luck at a two. I mean, there still is some luck.
That is going to happen because you're drawing cards from a deck. So that's part of it. But at the end, the better player beats the luckier player. I give it a three out of five. The card draw can be planned for, but especially when boosting, you're really just rolling the dice. I won a game with a perfect boost draw of a two, which got me across the corner. And when I took the risk, I thought I knew where all my high cards were.
But on my next turn, when I drew the cards, the next card I drew, which was the last card the deck, was a three. And I just realized, oh my god, if that had been the card I boosted with, I would have spun out and come in last. So that's why I give it a three out of five on luck. Wow, we have a difference of opinion. And I get to cast the deciding vote. So I'm with Paul. This is a three.
There are a fair amount of things that you can do to mitigate your luck, like discarding cards and turning your deck, to get your heat back into your hands so you can cool it and all that good stuff. But there are times where you're going to watch all of your heat get discarded due to a boost, or for me, what seems more likely, a stress card. And all of that heat goes into my discard pile. And I'm going to have to turn my deck all over again to try to get an opportunity to cool.
Or as I've mentioned, you have to downshift on a straightaway because you don't have enough playable cards. I mean, there are just times where Lady Luck is going to take the wheel, and no amount of mitigation is going to save you from that draw. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't consider a high luck score to be bad. And three is right down the middle. So for me, it's a three. You guys might be convincing me. I mean, definitely there's those times when you're boosting in the straight.
And if I draw a four here, then I'll catch you. And there's plus one slipstreaming here. So a four is going to move me seven. So here I go, and my stress gives me a one. And I go one instead of seven. So yeah, it's definitely a factor in the game. Right. I remember the first few games we played, everybody would have a turn where they just played three stress cards. And they'd say, I call upon the Recing God. Right? How much do we think theme has been integrated versus pasted?
And because I think this is an easy one, I'm going to go first. For me, it's a five. More so than any other racing game I've played, I feel like this captures the feeling of racing. And part of that is because the mechanisms are simple, and they just start to blur for me. I stopped thinking about this as being a board game. And clearly, I'm not driving a car. It's like, OK, I'm planning ahead. I'm going to have to take this corner just so. And I want to be in this position.
And I've got the cards to do it. Or maybe I don't. Now I'm stressed out. And I'm going to play a stress card and hope that I get a good draw so that I wind up through the corner the way I hope I do. For me, I think the theme has been really well integrated. I gave it a four out of five. I don't think the heat cards are that thematic. I think they're shoehorned into the theme. But the heat cards are the source of all the interesting decisions in the game. So I wouldn't take them out.
I just think they prevent me from going all in on the theme just a little bit. I guess that's fair. I give it a five. Even the theme of the heat cards, I see it. You're pushing your engine to the limits. But yeah, I agree with Todd. It's a five for me. I mean, the way the corners feel like, you know, chess match of positioning.
And then when you come out of that last corner in third gear and you're able just to open it up, it's like you can practically feel the wind through your hair as you're just flying through that final stretch as things get aired out. And then we jumble up again into the first corner. It just, the theme, it feels like when I'm playing a good video game racing game or I used to race motorcycles when I was a kid.
It does capture some of that with the way, you know, that jockeying and that kind of I'm out here by myself and here's where am I in relation to the pack. And some of that feeling is just captured so well. And so it's a five for me, 100%. Nice. Favorite player count. What is it best played at? I think it plays best with four, maybe five players if you're not using legends. I think I'd have to go with five being my favorite count without legends.
If you really want to use legends, then probably three player. Yeah. I think I agree with that five. Six also is great maybe in theory, but it does start to run a little long, not much longer than five, but a six player race, you know, everybody has to make their individual moves rather than just cycling through them with legends that there's actually six people making decisions.
So it can really drag the game out a little bit, but again, six is that full bodied experience, but I think five just hits it perfectly. Interesting. Now I had six. I think max players, championship series, garage sponsorships, all the works. I think that's probably the best experience you're going to get from this game. And I would love to be able to do that consistently. Given the number of people that show up to game nights with our group, we're going to be at something less than that.
So that may be an unattainable goal, but I would say six if you can. All right, least favorite player count and keeping in mind that the game currently supports one to six, what would you say is? Yeah, one player. All right. Yeah, I'm going to say one, but with the legends, I mean, the one player championship series, I've done it as you know, solo campaign evening. It was a lot of fun. And it was with just me and the five legends, they were definitely in the running.
Even when you had your deck all tricked out in the third race? No, I did win that third race pretty handily. But I needed to. The thing is, from the races before, I needed to win that race and the black card needed to come in third. And I can't make him come in third. But yeah, I did kind of win that last one. By the time I had three garage cards in my deck and a sponsorship that I carried over from the second race, yeah, I was kind of blowing past them. Now, I'm going to say two here.
I think one with the legends to fill out the other five, that's a great solo experience. And Davey just mentioned it was really enjoyable for you. I would think, too, if you're going to play with the legends, it would feel a little bit jammed. There's a possibility that they are hindering one player more than the other. But if it's just the two of you, then it's more of a duel and that's not a lot of fun unless maybe you throw some house rules on it and come up with team racing.
And each of you are going to control more than one car. And based on whose car finishes first, that team wins. But as the game stands today, I would say two. Yeah, you're probably right, Todd. I think I'll change mine to two. Yeah, you've convinced me. Well, that was easy. Well, now get out your crystal ball. Because as we know, the box insert has room for eight cars and eight gear shifts. Is that going to be a team play? We don't know.
I mean, maybe it's going to be shake and bake Ricky Bobby team play where you've got two cars on a team. Or like Thunder Alley does that. Right. Or is it going to be a field of eight and it's going to take us all night to do one race? I hope not. So yeah, but do you want to play it at eight? The good news is we don't have eight players in our group. Yeah. Speaking of all night, what's the actual playing time? Right? Boxes lie, man.
So the box says this plays 30 to 60, which based on our data, we're nowhere near that. So I'd say playing time is 90 minutes. And we're actually going past that on a couple of our games. 90 feels about right for our group. Really? We went past 90 minutes on one of our games? Yeah, about like four or five minutes. But hey, it was more. I had no idea. I felt like we had been doing most of our races under 70 minutes. No, BG stats recorded it.
One of them was like an hour 29 and one of them was an hour 43. I'm in shock. Yeah. We need to play faster. Well, my thinking is 20 minutes per player, though the solo mode was taking me about 40 minutes per race. And I'm not exactly sure why that was. I'm controlling the AI. I'm controlling my own deck. It feels like it should have gone faster. But I did three races and each race was almost exactly 40 minutes. Well, yeah, I just looked up my BG stats.
My average playing time of this game is 88 minutes. Right. I did the same thing. Ouch. Yeah. But it shouldn't be. I would love this game if it played in 60 minutes. I agree. I think we're overplaying it. I think we should be playing it in 60 minutes. Just put your cards down and let's go. But I think there's a lot of fretting and a lot of rethinking. And it's just it's not that kind of game. Just put your foot on the gas. Let's go. Right. Expansion.
So there are no expansions yet, but there is one that is getting play tested out there. Do we want to talk about that at all? Tell me more. Well, expansions, I don't know if this is a good place to talk about it, but there's a ton of fan made content already. There's maybe 10 tracks in the board game geek files section that you can print. Really? Yeah. There's Scotland and Japan, Belgium, Nuremberg, Monaco. And they look great. Very well done.
And if you want to go through the trouble to print them out, they look like a lot of fun. And people are also making custom series, so their own event cards, which really, to put it together a championship, it's really just a collection of event cards. And we didn't even really talk about it. With the championship series, the game comes with three pre-designed ones, 1961, 1962, 1963. But then there's also just shuffle them up and deal out three or four cards, and then that's your series.
So you can randomize it as well. Fans are putting together custom championship series and custom maps. So there's a ton of fan made content out there, and the game hasn't even been out for a year. But there's a bunch out there. Do they have weapons yet? Well, we talked about the Mario Kart. Blue shell. Yeah, let's re-theme it as Mario Kart. I'm so in. I'll be dropping bananas left and right. So what we do know about the upcoming expansion is that there'll be new tracks, Japan and Mexico.
There's going to be at least one new player color. And how exactly that's integrated, meaning does this go to seven? That we really don't know. And then new championship series, new upgrade cards. So just really splashing more things into the deck. But also some innovations on the track that I saw. So the Japan track has some water areas. So maybe plus one heat if you're going to upshift or downshift through this area. So what it sounds like is not just modified by the road conditions deck.
But permanently, this part of the track is kind of sunken or swamped or something. So you can't downshift here or upshift. And also of note, and I don't even know what to think about this. On the Japan track, there are 12 starting positions. I don't want to play this with 12 unless there's some sort of werewolf variant and we're killing each other off as we go. But I don't know. I mean, that's got to be a team game. Well, that sounds like my ideal expansion. But we can get to that in the prompt.
Right. It sounds like an overlord scenario, right? Where you need two copies of memoir to be able to play it. Yeah, it could be. I mean, this is Days of Wonder. They have precedence. Yeah. And maybe that's where they introduced team play then. You have 12 cars, but you have six teams. That's what it sounds like. And then obviously with the second game, you would have two cars of the same color. With a second copy. Yeah. That's my wish for the future.
Yeah, if I can control two cars in the same race. Right. So that's all we know. And it's just being playtested now. Who knows how far off it is. But I mean, with the insert, when you bought the game, they pretty much told you this is the beginning of a series or what's to come. Right. All right, let's move on to the comparisons. What's the highest ranking game that reminds you the most of Heat? I went into the weeds on this. I understand if nobody agrees with me.
But for me, this feels similar to Quacks of Quidlinburg. I relate the Heat cards to the Garlic in Quacks. And basically, Quacks is like Heat. If in Heat, you had a hand size of one. You want the Garlic or the Heat until you have too much of it. And then you spin out. OK. Yeah. That really describes how I feel about the game strategically. Yeah. You had me raising an eyebrow until that description. But now I get it. Yeah, I hear it. Dave, what do you have? Well, the obvious comparison.
I'm going to leave the obvious one. I'm going to say Quest for El Dorado. OK. Because you're building a deck. And it is a race as you're moving through the various levels of terrain. And you're building your deck and using that deck to get through those levels of terrain. So that's my most recognizable one. All right. And so the easy answer was Flamarouche, right? Because it was a previous effort by Asger Kranrood. I haven't played it.
So for my choice, I went with Formula D, and specifically the re-released. Because although you're rolling dice, instead of managing a hand of cars, it has little painted cars and has its fun little shift box with its gear shift handle. And the way it requires you to try to manage your speed through the turns feels similar to me. Yeah. All right, less recognizable comparison. So what's a less obvious game that makes you feel something similar to the way you feel when playing Heat?
I went back to an old favorite of mine, Ave Caesar. Oh, good one. Honestly, I always put Ave Caesar on the Mount Rushmore. But it's a chariot game, not a card game. And it has the same mechanic of play a card and move that many spaces. However, Ave Caesar is about blocking, getting to a space that other players cannot pass you by versus Heat being about managing your speed in corners. So given that Ave Caesar is over 30 years old, it could be considered an inspiration for Heat. I don't know.
Yeah, that's a good one. Good choice. I have Cardahena. OK. So that's a race game. I considered that one, yeah. Where you're looking to get your pirates out to the boat. It's a card-driven race game. You've got to play the cards to move to the next space you're going to move to. And in a way, the way you pick up cards is you drop back a little bit.
So you have to be in a position where you can fall back, which is, in a way, like the slipstream mechanism that where you are in relation to the other players, and that's how you're going to build your deck and play them. So I was actually surprised because when I was first looking through it, I thought, well, there is Cardahena. And the more I thought about it, I thought, yeah, there are a lot of similarities there. Nice. I love that game. That's a good one.
So for me, I'm going to riff off of the hand management slash deck building aspect of the game. And there was a little known game by AEG. And I'm not saying that facetiously, but it was called Automobiles. So it was part of their planes, trains, and this was the third one, Automobiles series. Although that game was more of a bag builder. So you used cubes instead of cards.
And as you were adding cubes into your bag, you were pulling out different colored cubes that told you which lanes on the track you could be in. And the farther up the track you were, the farther you were allowed to go for each space. You were drawing where cubes that would gum up your hand. And so you had to come up with ways, pit stops. Purple cubes allowed you to get rid of the where cubes. So it didn't handle corners the same way. You didn't have to try to downshift to a certain number.
But the idea of developing your bag and controlling the cubes that were in there for your subsequent draws, that made me think of heat pedaled to the metal. And Automobiles is also playable on BGA. I have never played that game. Me neither. We should give it a shot. All right, house rules. And Dave, we know how you feel about house rules. Are there any house rules that you would apply to try to improve this game?
Yeah, I was thinking that maybe helping the Legends out when they fall too far behind would make that module more playable. Maybe giving them an extra turn if, I don't know, I haven't thought too far ahead. But keeping them from always hogging the adrenaline and letting other pillars slipstream off them would make the game more fun with the Legends involved. Yeah, that's exactly what I had, especially for the championship series.
If you're playing with the Legends drivers, then you need to tack on some distance for them. And I don't know what the right answer here is. Maybe it's adding two spaces to them, or maybe it's one space per player ahead of them, or one space per race in the series. So by the third race, you're giving them three additional movement points each round. But I definitely feel like the Legends need some help in the championship series. Yeah, I think that's pretty good, actually.
And maybe something like if they're a full corner behind, then they just move up to the next spot, where they're in the position to take the next corner. Or maybe they have to be two corners behind, or something like that. But because on the straights, that's where they can pull 19s and 18s, and the cards are there where they can build up. But it's when they get stuffed out of a corner and we jump two corners ahead of them, that's when we just don't see them again.
So if they fall too far behind, they move up to that. There's that line where once they're past this line, they try to take the next corner, just bump them up to there. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, did you have anything else other than that, Dave? Yeah, so because as you know, I don't like house rules. So I've been taking this question to mean more like things that we're going to do as far as like in this game, what I'm getting at in this game, fast and loose. That's the house rule.
I'll even get out hourglass timers. Oh, nice. Play your cards and let's go. It's a race. You don't have time to sit and contemplate this turn. Put your cards down and let's go. Love it. This isn't the kind of game where it needs to be drawn out and agonized over each thing. Let's go. All right. I look forward to the sand timers, but please make sure that they all time out to close to the same amount of time. Right, right.
All right, so a new category that we're adding, if this game is being played at game night, what do you want to play afterwards? What's the double feature game that goes along best with Heat, Pedal to the Metal? So for me, the double, they triple feature would be Heat, Heat, Heat. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Through the championship series? Well, and from experience, we did this the other night. We did the championship series and then we rolled right into Raw. I think it just happened to be that way.
I don't know if I would say Raw is necessarily, I couldn't make a case that that's a good one there. But my answer here actually is Heat, just pick it up and play with the basic decks as one race. That to me is the second feature or a palate cleanser to a bigger game. So rather than thinking it as Heat's the main event and then what game do we play next, I'm thinking about we just finished a heavy Age of Steam and we've got another hour. How about let's run a quick Heat race?
OK. Yeah, I like that. I stayed to the idea that Heat was the main feature, whether we're doing the championship series or a single race. So to wash it down, I would want something a little lighter and I would want something that focused more on the betting aspects of racing. And so it got down to two candidates for me. So the one that I really like is Royal Turf or Winter Circle. Yes. Right. So that would probably be the preferred one.
But if I wanted to stick to car racing, then I would go with Downforce because there is more betting in that one. And theoretically, that game can be played out in 20 minutes, whereas Winter Circle takes 40 to 60. I like the Winter Circle. I don't know if I want to go from Heat to Downforce. It's they're too close and I won probably as clearly better than the other. I think it, I don't know. I'd try it. But I do like the Winter Circle option because I love Winter Circle.
We don't get that one out enough. Yeah, it's a great game. So if you like fill in the blank, then you're going to like Heat pedal to the metal. What do you guys have for a good indicator that you might like Heat? For me, I said if you like Dominion and Formula Day, you'll like Heat. And I'm taking it out of board gaming.
If you like video games like Gran Turismo or something like that, or if you just like motorsports in general, because I think the theme captures it so well, this is going to be interesting. Because we have a friend who does not like race games, which I think is a weird thing to just race games. I don't like race games. But it does put into mind that racing is a thing. Either you understand and enjoy racing or you don't.
Either you can spend an afternoon watching NASCAR or that sounds torturous to you. And I think if you like motorsports, if you like racing, any sort of racing, you understand it in a different way than people who don't. And if that's your thing, then this is going to scratch that itch. I like your call out to the racing video games. I think that's on point. Right, yeah. And ironically, and we don't share our answers to the prompts ahead of time, I had the same thing.
If you like just racing games in general, because this does such a great job of capturing that theme. I mean, if you love trying to keep up with the pack, trying to find your spots to make your move, trying to make it to the next turn without overheating your engine, all of those things, then you're going to enjoy this game. I think it does a great job of embodying that dynamic in a board game format.
So the flip side, if you don't like fill in the blank, then you're not going to like heat or you may not like it. So did you have different answers for this one? No, just what Dave already said. We have a friend who doesn't like racing. So there it is. Right? Yeah, for sure if you don't like racing. But I also have in here, if you don't like the chaos that it can bring, if you don't like to throw in your fate into drawing off the top of the deck, even though I did say it was low in luck.
But if you can't handle that, then you're not going to like this game. Man, you need to get out of my head because that's exactly what I had written. If you don't like losing to top decking. And to be fair, look, I'm terrible at this game. And in our play so far, the winner has always been out in front. I'm talking about that lucky draw your opponent had that cost you a spot on the podium. Right? Race for three laps and you draw one with your boost. And he drew a four. That's going to happen.
And sometimes Dempster breaks. But if that kind of play for an hour and then lose to a lucky top deck draw is an anathema to you, then Heat may not be your cup of tea. Agree. Did this game replace a previous one for you? Not yet. But this game, Heat might replace Ave Caesar for me. Wow. OK. A family racing game. It's a little different, but it's something my kids can have fun with. So yeah, we'll see. For me, I had Thunder Alley. I mean, I enjoy Thunder Alley, but it's a lot thinkier.
But I'm not excited at the thought of bringing Thunder Alley to the table anymore. And every time we play Heat, I'm like, oh yeah, sure. Let's play Heat. Sure, we've got an hour. Let's bring it to the table. And Thunder Alley is more of a time commitment. It has a longer play time on it. It is. Good two hour commitment, yeah. Well, and I've got this one. Usually it's kind of theoretical as to whether this canceled another game.
But in this one, almost quite literally, I had Flam Rouge on my wish list for years, probably since it came out. Because it was out of print, it was hard to get. I really wanted Flam Rouge. And then when Heat came out, I thought, well, as long as I can't get Flam Rouge now, because it was out of print last year, I'll try Heat, this new one. And now I've taken Flam Rouge off of my wish list. Makes sense. I still want it. I would love to play it.
But I don't see it getting to the table over Heat in our group, a game that we already know we can jump in and play. But Flam Rouge, not that I'm super into the Peloton or anything, but the game always looked really good to me. Yeah, that makes sense. Rating. On BGG scale 1 to 10, no decimals, how would you rate this game? For me, it's a 7. If somebody recommends it, I will sit down and play it happily. Yeah, and as I recall, Paul, on our first play, you were not that enamored with it.
Have you changed on that? Would you originally have given it a 4 or a 5? I don't remember. This is one of those rare games where I can't decide how I feel about it. Yeah, I also give it a 7. It might be climbing if we play fast. And with that, because the championship series, that got me a little more excited about the game, because it was a more fuller, fun experience. So it was pretty solid at a 7, but I could see it climbing. Yeah, I had it as an 8 because of the championship series.
I really enjoyed that. I don't see it going much higher in its current form. I tend to rate things a little more optimistically. Maybe with the expansion, if it adds teams, it might be able to climb to a 9, but otherwise, it's a pretty solid 8 for me. Nice. So is this game replayable? And if so, how often would you want to revisit it? You know, it's funny. I keep talking about how I don't know how I feel about this game.
I don't know if I think it's replayable, but I want to play it more to figure out if I think it's replayable. So it's a paradox that makes it replayable. I'm not sure I want you to stay, but I don't want you to go. Right. I got to play it more to see if I want to play it more. I like that. For me, it's super replayable. It's on wash, rinse, repeat right now. I mean, if anybody wants to bring it out, let's bring it out and play. And I'm quite a few plays in, and I'm still seeing layers to it.
That's the next level where I am right now, starting to look at the track and say, I want to be in first gear around this corner, where I used to take that stuff tactically. And you still have to manage it tactically. But being able to before the race say, here's where I'm going to spend my heat. Over here on the track is where I'm going to cool. Can I make that happen just based on analyzing the track before we go the same way a driver would take practice laps?
And so starting to see the race as a whole before it starts, that's starting to get a little more interesting to me. Yeah. I think it's also replayable. I mean, I could play this game every week. I could play it more often if it was available somewhere online. And there's probably a mod someone's made that works on tabletop simulator.
But I prefer the implementations on board game arena, where the rules are being auto enforced and how the components are being manipulated is done for you, as opposed to trying to make it a video dexterity game. All right, so are there any other items that you guys want to talk about before we wrapped up this podcast? We've been talking about it more and more, but we always forget to do it. But I've got a nice speaker system in the office where we play.
What kind of soundtrack do you want playing when you sit down to play some heat? What kind of music do you want? Are we going to get out some good old boy NASCAR music? Are we going to get in? I have some very specific answers for other games. But for heat, I don't know. Maybe when I think of old racing movies when I was growing up, they would play music by Vangelis or Hans Zimmer. So maybe some of those. But these days, it's more like the Pixar Cars movies. So I don't know.
It would probably be a very wide, eclectic assortment. Next time we play, I'll just blast life as a highway, see how long we can handle it. Oh, gosh. Well, there's also the Formula 1. It's a tradition in Formula 1. On the podium, they play Carmen by Buzze. Buzze, yeah. Yeah. So we could play that. I don't know if I can handle that for a few hours, but that's the traditional Formula 1 song. Just go on Spotify, look up car racing playlist. I'm sure you'll get a bunch of hits. For sure. Right.
There was a 2013 movie called Rush. It had Chris Hemsworth in it. I would be interested to take a look at that movie soundtrack, perhaps, because it's Formula 1 racing. That was a Hans Zimmer score. See? There you go. He did Days of Thunder, then he did Rush. Throw those on back to back, and we're covered. I'll throw a specific one out there, get a little off the beaten path.
But there's a band called Southern Culture on the Skids, and they have an album called Dirt Track Date, which is just one of my favorite albums anyways. And it's a good old boy rock and roll. I'm not a big country fan. It's not country, but it's some Atlanta rock and roll. So I put on some Dirt Track Date if you got Spotify ready when you're going to play this game. Nice. I like it. All right, guys. Well, with that, I think we've crossed the finish line. We've got a checkered flag.
Thank you for being available today, and I'm looking forward to our next podcast, which is going to be a throwback. We're going to go back and hit a classic on that one. OK, I'll be doing donuts till then. I'll see you in the winter circle. Nice. Thank you for listening to Replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. Thank you for your support. You can find us online at replayable.fm, on Twitter as replayablefm, and on Instagram as replayablefm. We're all new to this.
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