Wacky Races is a hand management, racing game.

Title: Wacky Races

Year Published: 2019

Designer: Andrea Chiarvesio, Fabio Tola

Publisher: CMON

Players: 2-6

Game Time: ~20 mins

Set-up Time: ~5 mins

Ages: 14+

Theme: Wacky Races

Mechanisms: Hand Management, Take That

How to win: Win the race by using your powers to avoid traps!

Game Description

Wacky Races: The Board Game puts players in the “driver’s seat” with control of their favourite drivers from the cartoon series, including The Slag Brothers, The Gruesome Twosome, Penelope Pitstop, Peter Perfect, and more, each with their own car equipped with special abilities. They compete against each other as well as the game-controlled, moustachioed Dick Dastardly and his wheezy pup Muttley.

How to play Wacky Races: The Board Game

A quick how to play video for Wacky Races: The Board Game.

Theme

I LOVE the Wacky Races cartoon. Even though there are only 17 episodes each containing 2 races its a classic. “Sports” cartoons were a rarity and all the different characters made the show. Dick Dastardly is an icon and is synonymous with cheating.

Also, the question of why he didn’t just keep moving forward and win every race instead of getting miles ahead then setting a trap is one of life’s great mysteries 🙂

Setup & Rulebook

Setup is both very simple and yet quite a fiddley one! The basics are to layout the track tiles and put the cars in their spaces…

But the two halves of the track tiles need separating and laying out separately. There is a special tile that needs adding in, but only one of a selection. Cars have to be placed in a specific order etc Like I said, not difficult, but a bit fiddley.

The rulebook is fine.

Components & Artwork

These are great. The cards are OK and the tiles and other bits are nice. But the cars are beautiful. I have the deluxe edition with fully painted cars and while it’s an extra £20+ over the regular version, it’s worth it for me. I am not one for painting.

It’s cartoony artwork from a cartoon so it would be incredibly difficult to mess this one up.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

Quite simple…

Everything is very straight forward. There are some timing issues around traps triggering and certain events happening that don’t happen very often that you need to remember, but maybe don’t need to teach?

The game is of course accessible and everything except cards in hand is open information. Cards in hand are only terrain types, nothing special.

Wacky Races: The Board Game Summary

Obviously, there are quite a few racing games with Thunder Alley my fave right now. Apocalypse Road is on the way which is that game but with ramming and guns bringing it a tad closer to Wacky Races.

I’ve played a few Mario Kart style games which are closer to Wacky Races but they’re not worth mentioning really. Maybe Monopoly Gamer Mario Kart is the closest in terms of ease of play and take that?

While the game is simple to play there are some… actually no, it’s just simple. You do have to plan your turn and use your abilities to best use the cards you have but that’s it.

You can also use your (quite thematic) abilities to avoid certain traps and things like that.

Doing this puts the pressure on the cars behind you which is satisfying.

First Impressions

These are my first impressions of Wacky Races: The Board Game from the UK Games Expo 2019

Rating

Not amazing, but a decent enough game for a nostalgia hit.

I give it 6/10