(this is a re-post of a review that disappeared when the game entries were merged)

Racing games generally have a balance between two different aspects, pushing the envelope barely keeping yourself and your machine under control, and mastering the course gaining slight advantages with better lines. Race the Wind is definitely on the more subtle side of the equation. And ‘subtle’ is the one word I would use to sum up this game if I only had one word to use. With no movement dice or cards, and boats usually moving 0-2 spaces a turn, there’s not much opportunity for “whoa, I can’t believe you made that corner!”, but once a boat’s line becomes clear to the other racers there may be “oh, good show old chap” and a tip of the cap in admiration.

The way the races play out is, again, subtle. Shortly after the start it inevitably seems that one boat is far in front and another far behind. Since you’re moving such short distances each turn it feels practically hopeless, yet, once the boats hit the turn around buoy, or the wind changes, or the one boat hits a sweet spot of bonus wind tokens… the boats have a tendency to group back up, or at least be in contention again. It almost feels a bit like magic, you look up one minute and suddenly it’s “How did you get up there, you were so far behind and we kept making fun of you?” and they’ll just giving a knowing nod and a wink back... they know what they’re doing. Now, a particularly skilled sailor could certainly ummm… “sail” away with the game, but then the other players just need to spend a bit more time figuring out their moves, or, at the very least they’ll be able to say “I do not think he is using the same wind we are using” a few times during the game. Since the game is rather fixed in its movement options, unless boats are side by side going into the final stretch it’s quite possible that the winner of the race will be clear a dozen turns before they cross the finish line. This is not a spectacular finish to a racing game. But remember, this game is subtle, not flashy. The winninglosing move often isn’t made in the last turn, but rather 20 turns ago when you moved then turned instead of turned then moving, it just may not be apparent at the time. And to go off on a defensive tangent here, many games of all types are often decided a long time before the final turn of the game, but in a racing game it’s represented much more clearly so it may feel overly anticlimactic.

Though I’ve watch an America’s Cup race or two on TV, I’m not a sailboat racing fan by any means, however I am a big racing game fan. I tend to enjoy most racing games and Race the Wind is no exception. So far, it’s taken us a little under an hour a lap. The rules suggest three laps, one would probably be good for most people, and I think two laps is the sweet spot for an enjoyable race with enough opportunity to make up some ground if you fall behind. I believe fans of boat racing, nautical themes in general, and more subtle racing games like Bolide or Turfmaster will enjoy this game. I’ve had to wrestle a bit with the rulebook, but I’ve enjoyed the game enough that I find I really want to make sure I’m getting everything right. I also want to point out that Ghenos Games has given me GREAT customer service. I’ve exchanged several emails with them now trying to figure out a few rule points, and they been very patient with me and also very prompt in their replies!

Components
The board is eight boards that fit together jigsaw puzzle-like (same as Bolide if you’re familiar with that game). The board is covered with lines running in both directions at one inch intervals. The intersections of the lines are the ‘spaces’ where you can place your boat facing either along one of the lines or diagonally. The boats are about three inches tall and are super cool, you have to apply stickers to them though (one sticker per side of the sail). However, cool as they are, the boats may be a little oversized for the board. If there are several close together you may have to offset them a little to the side and you have to be careful not to knock down other boats. It will happen though, so you just have to be careful to remember what direction they’re facing and what space they’re on. Also, if the board isn’t perfectly flat the boats can have a little trouble staying upright around the intersections. It’s a minor annoyance but you do get to say “caution, rough seas ahead” or “whoa, that was a big swell” a lot, which can be either fun or annoying, depending on your politics. There is a bunch of little blue and yellow tokens you have to punch out, some of mine ripped a bit during the punch out process, a slight upgrade here would’ve been nice. You also get one 8-sided die with the major and minor points of the compass on it for wind direction changes, 3 pyramid shaped ‘buoys’, 2 wind direction flags and 1 little yellow ‘competition boat’ (basically another buoy, but it’s nice flavor) and a wind direction arrow. What would be nice to have are individual ‘wind shadow’ tokens for the players in their colors and player aids summarizing the movement options, but oh well. The rulebook is short with several example pictures, but I found it to be a little ambiguous in parts. I had a list of questions after first reading and playing the game. However, and I can’t stress this enough, I received answers to my emailed questions within hours and they have been very patient with me as I try to understand one of the concepts of the rules. I will post a summary of my Q&A with Ghenos Games separately.
And I want to reiterate, those little boats are sweeeeeet.

Rules Overview
On your turn you move your boat according to its orientation compared to the wind at the start of your turn.
Briefly:
If you’re sailing at 45 degrees facing the wind you can-
Move forward one position, or rotate 45 or 90 degrees.
If you’re sailing perpendicular to the wind you can-
Move forward two spaces, move forward one space then rotate 45 or 90 degrees, rotate 45 or 90 degrees and then move forward one space, or perform two rotations up to 180 degrees.
If you’re sailing at 45 degrees in the direction of the wind you can-
Move forward one space and then you may perform one rotation of 45 or 90 degrees.
If you’re sailing exactly in the same direction of the wind you can-
Move forward one position, or rotate 45 or 90 degrees .
If you’re sailing directly into the wind (due to a wind change, you can never turn yourself into the wind) then you may only rotate 45 or 90 degrees.

You can also unfurl your sails at any point to not move or maneuver.

Race the Wind is in effect a perfect information game. Those are the options that each player has on their turn so you could figure out not only your best line but everyone else’s best lines as well. The rules state that you should limit turns to 2 minutes, and I could see how this could come into play with some crowds. However, since the individual turns are so quick with short movements, in the games I’ve played, it’s been more of a casual approach and people take their turns without spending too much time to try to figure out what everyone else is going to do.

At the start of a race you set up the board placing the ‘competition boat’ piece and one of the pyramid buoy pieces on the south end of the board and then place one the other pyramid buoy markers towards the North end of the board (or place both of the other buoys for different courses). Though there are general guidelines in the rulebook on where to place the buoys there’s no specific ‘recommended setup’, which I would really like to have. I’ve been placing the starting line and turn around buoy around 10 spaces from their respective edges with about 8 spaced between the two starting markers and that seems to work out well.
After the buoys are laid on the board you randomly scatter a lot of blue and yellow tokens on the board. The blue and yellow tokens go onto the intersections and act as wind gusts and wind falls respectively. If your boat ends its movement on a blue token you may take one more forward space. If your position to the wind allows you to move then rotate you can use the bonus gust to move forward after you’ve rotated. If this bonus move causes you to land on another blue token you may take another bonus move. So getting in a line with several blue tokens in a row can be a huge advantage! However, if your boat crosses a yellow token it stops immediately and cannot move nor rotate any more that turn and the boat also loses its next turn. And therein lies the game. The tokens cover a large percentage of the available spaces so you’re always trying to figure out the best way to avoid the yellows while lining up a nice row of blues.
Place the wind direction arrow somewhere on the board so that all players can see it (on the wind compass seems a logical spot) pointing in a Southerly direction so that the boats will be sailing into the wind at the start of the race. Then take the two wind change markers and place them towards the side of the board along the route. When the leading boat is in line with one of these flags the wind direction die is rolled causing the wind to shift to be blowing from the direction on the die. (This seems a bit drastic to me so we’ve modified it that the wind moves one step around the compass in the direction indicated by the die, or staying the same if the wind is already blowing in that direction and having the rolling player choose which direction to step in if the die result is exactly opposite the current wind position)
Once the board is set you place your boats in their starting positions. Unlike most racing sports where the competitors toe the line and start from a dead stop, boat racing is a bit different in that it’s more of a running start, and that’s represented here. You place your boat on any space that’s either at least three spaces ‘up course’ of either the competition boat or starting buoy, or at least eight spaces behind or in line with the start line. Whether you’re above, equal to, or behind the starting line you have be outside of the area between the competition boat and buoy extending to the North and South sides of the board.
Turn order isn’t quite as clear as personally, I’d like to see it. In most racing games you go from the front to the back each turn or, in a few, you go clockwise around the table. However, neither is explicitly spelled out here. In a ‘match race’ between two players the ‘challenger’ is to go first, but in a ‘regatta’ with more than two boats that doesn’t really help. It seems that consistency in turn order is the important thing so either going clockwise around the table, rolling initiative at the beginning of the race, or alphabetical order of the nationalities of the boats probably won’t matter so long as you keep it the same.
Now the game starts but the race doesn’t quite begin. There are seven turns for the boats to get themselves in the best position behind the starting line before the race officially starts. (We use the wind die and move it around the points of the compass to count down the turns) On the eighth turn boats can cross the start line and the race is on!

Boat interaction during the race is a very crucial but also confusing (for me anyway) aspect of the game. Each boat casts a ‘wind shadow’ in the spot directly leeward (on the side of the boat opposite where the wind is hitting it), if at anytime, during any player’s movement, another boat is in that wind shadow then a temporary wind fall (yellow marker) is placed two spaces ahead of the boat in the shadow. The boat has had its wind stolen and must maneuver out of the way or come to a stop. Again, this can happen to any boat during the course of any player’s turn. Keeping track of these can be a bit troublesome. Ideally, there would be several tokens in each player’s color since this temporary dead spot just applies to them. So far we’ve been keeping a few yellow tokens in reserve and stacking two of them together to represent one of these dead spots and just keeping track of who it applies to in our heads (boats typically maneuver out of the way in which case the temporary spots come off the board as the boat is no longer in the shadow of the other boat).
The other part boat interaction is priority on contested spaces. Again, this can happen during any player’s turn, so even if your boat is already on a space, it may not have priority for that space and will be given a penalty (a penalty is having to perform a 360 degree rotation paid in 4 moves and has to be completed at least 2 spaces away from any boat or buoy). The basic rules for figuring out priority are:
The boat with starboard tack (the wind is hitting the boat on the right side) has priority. With equal tacks, the leeward (boat further away from the direction of the wind) has priority. With equal tacks and both on the same wind line then the faster boat has priority. If both are the same on all the above points, then priority is given based on the order of turns. There are many situations where your boat could be directly in front of another boat and you have to keep moving forward to avoid a penalty until the boat behind you changes direction! It’s a tough rule to get a good feel for, but it’s very important that all players have the basic idea before play starts (you can be a little forgiving with redoing moves if a tough to see penalty situation comes up with new players).
So you have to be careful when moving your boat in tight quarters to make sure you have priority over a spot and will keep it. If a boat is in a spot they don’t have priority for then they receive the penalty and the other boat must maneuver around or unfurl their sails and not move. The designer said that 1-4 penalties per boat is not uncommon, though the penalties feel rather extreme to me, especially since the boat already in the lead isn’t likely to receive one.

The rules state that the first boat to cross the line is the winner, but unless turn order is determined by front to back position that doesn’t feel fair if two boats are neck and neck. So we’ve played (though it hasn’t come up), that ties are broken the same way priority is determined- starboard tack, then leeward, then faster position, and if all those are equal, then the boat crossing closer to the competition boat.

In conclusion, I’d like to finish with a quote from the greatest sailor of our generation: Sea Captain from the Simpsons “Arr, I hate the sea and everything in it.”.