Game: Pitstop

Thread: Re: Combining With Cafe Race Rules

garea37 — 2007-11-15T16:04:23+00:00

I'm the designer of Café Race.

Your idea seems really interesting.

Please, keep me informed about your developments.

Thread: Combining With Cafe Race Rules

pete284 — 2007-11-14T16:02:29+00:00

I've had this game for sometime now, and although the racetrack is great the game itself has something lacking. I've constantly been looking for another set of rules to utilise with the board and cars.

I recently came across a game called Café Race which might fit the bill. The rules are free on the that page.

Cafe Race is about walking downstairs with a cup of coffee and turning corners. Players bid (with a D6 called a thrust dice) for other pre-rolled dice (also D6 called speed dice) and the winner of the auction will move the distance on the speed dice he has won. If you end you movement on the stairs you have to roll 2D6 equal or greater than your thrust and spped dice combined. If you don't you spill coffee.

Looking at it you could use the Cafe Race rules on a pitstop board.

Replace the term coffee with fuel. If your car ends in a straight then you have to roll and if you fail your roll you lose fuel. If you end your turn in a corner you are safe and do not have to roll. Bidding for a 6 on a speed dice with a 6 on a thrust dice on the straight is extremely risky as you only have a 1 in 36 chance of not losing fuel.

I would also use the Variant 1 bidding in the rules from Cafe Creme which gives more strategy to the auctioning of the dice.

The only thing I haven't worked out yet is how many fuel points to start off with. Maybe it should be 2 fuel for every 7 straight hexes on the track.

The victory conditions would have to be altered for the fuel remaining depending on the number of fuel issued at the start of the race.

I look forward to playtesting this on my gaming friends to see if its workable.

Thread: Re: Where can I get this game?

underling — 2007-06-22T19:14:05+00:00

Gurantsu wrote:
I tried ordering it on Funagain, but they never ended up getting any more in. I've been waiting for one to show up on Ebay to no avail. Anyone have any ideas where I might find this game?

I'd like to pick up a copy also.
Kevin

Thread: Pitstop: Good System?

Weapon — 2006-06-12T05:56:20+00:00

From what I see, Pitstop has some great, great components, and I have been looking for a slightly less "sim" game than Speed Circuit, and not have the stupid long play time of FD, and this game looks good. But some posts said the system itself (fuel consumption and tires) is lacking, and the game itself is really hard to get. Is it worth trying to track the game down? Or should I just cave and get FD Mini and use some more advanced rules?

Thread: Re: User Review

craniac — 2006-06-06T17:11:37+00:00

How does it compare with Formula De?

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matmo — 2005-06-06T17:25:49+00:00

Montreal circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-05T11:04:55+00:00

Bahrain circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-05T11:04:55+00:00

Suzuka circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-05T11:04:55+00:00

Magny-Cours circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-03T04:10:33+00:00

Indianapolis circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-03T04:10:33+00:00

Monza circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-03T04:10:33+00:00

Spa-Francorchamps circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-03T04:10:32+00:00

Hockenheim circuit

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matmo — 2005-06-03T04:10:32+00:00

My homemade cars

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matmo — 2005-06-02T19:43:42+00:00

Silverstone circuit

Thread: Mini Pitstop?

MarkEJohnson — 2005-04-05T22:10:13+00:00

As much as Pitstop comes close to being the racing game I want (simple custom dice, meaningful tire/fuel consumption, many track options, non-micromanaged movement), it still falls a bit short. Our games have lasted a little too long, and the tire/fuel consumption has been brutal (esp. with soft tires).

A very simple solution for me might be just some shorter tracks. I've probably got just one more chance to try this game with my group before they give up...again. (*sigh* They prefer Formula De, like so many others--but not me.)

Hopefully this week I can devise some smaller tracks.

Hmm, I suppose another quick-fix would be to just bump up the speed ratings in the various curves...

Thread: Where can I get this game?

Gurantsu — 2004-12-10T21:06:50+00:00

I tried ordering it on Funagain, but they never ended up getting any more in. I've been waiting for one to show up on Ebay to no avail. Anyone have any ideas where I might find this game?

Thread: Re:Session Report

DarrellKH — 2003-07-27T16:55:56+00:00

MarkEJohnson (#4274),
I think Mark is expecting too much, really, when he looks for a faster playing racing game that still uses gear changes. If the average time increment is small enough to require the player to choose gears, then the game will take a while to play - no real way around that. In fact, both PitStop and FD empiricize the gear-changing issue by nearly an order of magnitude over real life. For instance, the average lap around the Monace GP in real life involves something around one hundred gear changes!

One of my bigger beefs with Pitstop is the way fuel is handled. It doesn't make sense that a car moving at higher speeds uses more fuel - the gearbox keeps the engine running at roughly the same speed. What uses fuel most is changing gears, not what speed you reach.

The components for this game provide the potential for a great game, but I think the execution lacks in places. And the only way to make a faster-moving game of F1-type racing is to bring the decision level up at least one step from changing gears.

Thread: Session Report

MarkEJohnson — 2002-11-10T18:58:02+00:00

Next up was my most notable new import. This is a car racing game, not well known despite being a fairly recent publication (from Essen 2000, I believe). It's from eg Spiele, an Italian publisher. The rulebook is in several different languages, including pretty good english. To save space they collect all of the diagrams at the front & back of the rulebook, referring from the text to these figures.

It's natural to compare the game to Formula De. I've never really enjoyed that game (though I understand why others do), so was hoping this would be more to my taste. Like Formula De, the basic mechanic is rolling dice based on what gear your car is in, consuming tire points as your scream around the corners, hopefully not too far above the speed limit. Unlike FD, the outcome of your roll is less variable--you roll one die per gear (so, 4 dice for 4th gear), and each die has a single movement point on five of the six sides. One of those movement points also indicates a point of fuel consumption. Also unlike FD, the movement spaces are large, so counting isn't as much of an issue, and up to three cars can coexist in one space. Last, the game doesn't come with a fixed track, but rather track sections that connect together like Carabande segments or maybe your childhood slotcar track. They're thick cardboard, stay together pretty well, and you can build one of the real-life tracks depicted in the rulebook or make your own. Nice.

We ran into a couple disappointments in the game. First, Greg wiped out on the first circuit of the 2-lap race, the victim of his soft tires. I guess soft tires are better for speedier, less curved tracks, but who would've believed he even complete a lap? In fact, all of us found the need to stop in the pit after each lap to replenish fuel (maybe) and tires (definitely). I don't know much about car racing, but in games I like the idea that someone could push the envelope, skipping the pit and trying to stretch another lap when going for the win. Actually, I may have had that opportunity on the final lap, but we'll never know because I pitted like everyone else. Then I blew out those new tires shortly thereafter when I was too aggressively trying to get back into contention. Sheesh. So this may not be a problem, might just be an issue of experience. Can you take it easier on the curves to conserve tires, avoiding the pit...and will you come out ahead because of it? Hard to say.

The other problem was slowness of play. Again, this might be more a matter of experience. We were certainly going quicker toward the end of the game, when we both knew the game better, and knew the track. (And one player was knocked out.) Playing time is probably my main issue with Formula De, so I was really looking for Pit Stop to shine in comparison here. It didn't, at least not yet. I want to try again, though, and will select a speedier track.

In any case, Ryan won, Erin took second, while Greg and I failed to finish. (The finish order had no correlation to the starting position of the cars, which is always a good sign.)

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

If you like, you can keep in touch with the authors of the game using my personal e-mail address.

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Tried this game the other night and found it entertaining; it's like a streamlined version of Formula De without the need to buy separate tracks. The only problem we encountered involved the rules on drafting. They are maddeningly incomplete and unclear in the English rules, and when we attempted to decipher the German and Spanish rules for clarification, they seemed to be saying two different things.

Thread: User Review

BoardGameGeek — 2001-08-27T21:24:56+00:00

Finally got a chance to try this new contender in the auto racing genre, Pitstop from the Italian company Editrice Giochi. I ordered the game just based on the pictures I had seen at Boardgame Geek and at the publisher's website, without knowing too much about the gameplay. I've gotten to take it for a brief spin, and I'm not disappointed.

There's an awful lot of cardboard under hood in Pitstop. The game comes with cardboard straights and curves, enough to make dozens if not hundreds of different circuits from around the world (the rulebook has maps for six to get you started; another six are available at the aforementioned website). Together with the cardboard discs that delineate the speed limits in turns, one can put together nearly any track one can conceive of. This will help the replay value of Pitstop tremendously.

You also get six teeny-tiny plastic cars and six thick dashboards with plastic pawns to track your fuel and tire points, as well as your current gear. Also included are 12 custom dice and a rulebook in five languages, including a very good attempt at English.

The gameplay breaks out like this: Each turn, you roll special dice equal in number to the gear you are in. Four of the faces on the dice count for 50kph, one face counts as 50kph with a circle, and one face is blank. You total up the number of 50s and move that many spaces on the track. Then you can shift gears, up 2 or down 3. Simple, huh?

Well, yes and no. Every circle you roll consumes a point of fuel (you start with 16.) Also, before you roll, you may take a 'speed bonus' (stepping on the gas, perhaps?) equal to 50kph in gears 1-3, or 100kph in gears 4-6, which is then added to whatever your total is. More importantly, when you enter a curve, every 50kph by which you exceed the curve's speed limit will cost you a tire point for every space you travel in the curve. Again, you start with 16 tire points, and careful management of these will keep you out of the pit.

At some point, you're going to have to hit the pitstop to replenish your fuel and/or tires, and timing your stops in the three-lap race is where some of the strategy of the game comes in. My first game was with my friend Seth, who pushed his tires to the limit right off the bat. He was forced to take his turns very conservatively until he could hit the pit, but his play also garnered him a lead that I couldn't wear down in the succeeding laps (a slow pit team didn't help any either!)

There are advanced rules for soft tires, trading fuel for rerolls, sixth gear bonus, and drafting (this last rule is incomprehensible in the rulebook, but an AltaVista translation of the Italian website helped clear things up a bit.) I have yet to try these, but expect that they will add to the tactics and skill required for good play. It's not all about the dice! Good management of gear/speed and tire/fuel consumption plays a stronger role that the numerous dice rolls, which tend to even out over three laps.

Overall, I'm quite pleased, and can't wait to present Pitstop to my weekly game group on Wednesday! I'd like to try out longer races sometime too...