Board Games - Speed Circuit

With the Baltimore Grand Prix coming up on the first weekend of September it only seems appropriate to mention an old favorite of mine among board games. (If my LL campaign had crapped out I would have tried to get tickets to go to the race.)

Speed Circuit is a board game simulation of Formula 1 racing. The game has seen many incarnations over the years, though there isn't a current one. Wizards of the Coast/ Hasbro bought the Avalon Hill Game Company which I believe last held the rights to the game.

A couple years ago a number of us ressurected this game and ran a 6 race circuit.

I bought a set of Micro Machine Indy 500 collectible cars of a larger size than the metal, plastic or wooden tokens from the actual set, and one group member created scaled up versions of 6 courses in scale with the cars. We got together one weekend a month for three months and ran a circuit of 6 races, one on each of the tracks we had gotten upsized.

As we played, points were awarded based on the place each "driver" finished and total scores were used to determine starting positions for the championship race. Through the course of it, various players had their time in the spotlight and there were numerous blown engines, damaged brakes, spinouts, and even two crashes.

Here's a picture of someone else using cars from the same Micro Machines set of Indy 500 cars like the set that I bought being used on a home made track that the players of that game paid to have put on a plastic banner. I'm thinking of trying to get the files cleaned up and spending the money to do the same with my tracks for the purpose of longevity.

If you get some time you should definitely follow this link to the Board Game Geeks website and read up on it as well as looking through the photos people have posted. Some are pretty impressive, showing terrain and tracks made for the game. These folks take it just as serious as some of us take our fantasy terrain.

There is even a group of at times up to 20 players that races by sending moves through email, one move per day. Here's a picture from one of their races.

The game is a blast and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good beer and pretzels time killer.