HEAT: Tunnel Vision - Have We Reached the Boiling Point?

0:00 The latest and second expansion for heat is on our table. This is heat tunnel vision. Uh we've got it set up here. We're going to run through some of the things that this is doing, some of the things that it's bringing to the heat universe. Uh this probably has about as much as the last expansion, maybe a little less. I I feel like you missed an opportunity to say that we're going to race through all of the contents. I did miss that opportunity. First of all, if you're not if you're like living in the dark or don't know what heat is because this game has taken the world I think by storm. Living in the dark. Is that a tunnel reference? It wasn't actually. Uh this came out I remember being at PAX when Heat had just come out at Essen and everybody was trying to get their hands out. It sold out everywhere quickly. And I think honestly this has become one of the most popular racing games we've seen. Maybe Formula D is I think it's probably the most successful racing board game to date. Sure. Now, if you're a Formula D fan out there or Formula Day, depending on how you pronounce it, uh, come at us in the comments. Uh, we're not going to argue with you, though. I'll defend heat to the grave because of I the mechanisms that are in heat, the the way that you're managing your hand. And, uh, that's kind of being put to the test here. Uh because so one of the things every expansion so far has released, yes, you get another player, you get eight players. That was obvious this time, which is cool. Emily will be pleased. That's true. Uh but the

1:31 real key uh thing about the heat expansions are the maps. And this one does come with two maps, Espa and the Netherlands. Uh and with the Espa map being maybe one of the most technical mechanically technical maps we've seen for heat. Yeah. Yeah, I mean just even just in the turns alone, they've got some some chicaines that were introduced in the last expansion, but most importantly, they've got these tunnels. So, you see some tunnels here in these darkened spaces with obviously the tunnel mouths. Uh, one of the big mechanics there is you cannot discard in the tunnels. So, it makes, you know, it's keeping you in the dark, letting you uh or not letting you mitigate your next sort of set of cards as much as you would out in the open. Yeah. And I mean that's one of the key things that's to me going back to what I was saying about heat being such a a mechanically different game. The way you're managing your hand and getting ready for those turns like right if you've played heat enough you know that knowing when to discard cards if you've got really tight corners coming up you're going to want to discard your fours and fives and maybe hope you draw like a zero one or two or whatever. And vice versa if your hand's full of ones and twos and you see an eight coming up you want to ditch them and maybe you'll draw into those fives or whatever on that hand. Well, not only do we have these tunnels, we have some of these tunnels in and a lot of very very very tight turns. Like you've got some twos here. In fact, there are 11 corners on this map and a lot of them are twos and threes. Is that the most corners in any map? I it feels like it. I haven't checked. It's definitely more than than I think any of

3:02 the maps. I have to go back to looking at Heavy Rain. I think it's the most notice you're also only doing one lap on this one because uh this one is grueling. Like it's 109 spaces. It's 109 spaces. It's so many tight tight turns. And the fact that coming into some of these tight turns like coming in through this tunnel into this two turn and not being able to discard I mean if yeah if you end in here and you're discarding in here that could be tricky. I mean on the flip side coming in here and not being able to discard lower cards before you get Yeah. bigger ones. I mean the tunnels definitely are going to uh mess with your strategy. Like it requires a lot more I think future planning maybe having to just hold on to some of those ones or twos longer than you normally would because you know you're going to need them for like this is wild. There's the two there there's a three right after it. This chicane is four another three two like it is it's an insane map.

3:56 I think this map is it feels like Monaco honestly the the Formula 1 where they're just taking all those really tight turns through the city. Yeah. I think too, uh, obviously there's going to be a lot less card dumping when you're in the tunnels, but like you just said, I think there's going to be less card dumping overall because people are going to want to be careful about managing their hand. So, it's not going to be about like, oh, I got to get a big hand, got to get a small hand, got to, you know, it's you're going to have to have a nice mix. This this does not look like it's going to be a forgiving track. No, for mechanical mistakes, and I definitely would not recommend this, I think, for somebody's first track. However, the other side of this map, the Netherlands map, is the opposite. So, I think like that they've kind of included these together. This track is way more forgiving and maybe way more suitable for a newer audience because it gives you a lot of leeway. Look at this Netherlands map. It's small. You have some crazy huge straightaways. You do have one four and one three turn, which that's not that bad. And you do have one chicane, but other than that, it's pretty much all these open spaces. And you do race it three times, but this one seems like it just opens the door for just speed. Yeah, this is going to be a very different feeling experience than the other side of the map. I don't think it's going to be a wildly different experience than maybe some of the other maps. Uh this has got a fair amount in common with USA. Uh in fact, I think the the straightaway is is it not the same length? Uh it's a little This is a 29 space straightaway whereas we had a I

5:27 think a 32 in the base game in uh in the base game. I think the US was like a 23. So it's a it's like right in the middle as far as length, but you have this one long straightaway, but you also it's followed by this long straightaway, too. So they're just broken up by this little four. Otherwise, you're zooming ac like you're going to be zooming past this. Yeah. This is probably the closest you're going to get with official maps to like the Indy500. Yeah, like an opal race. It almost feels like that. I mean, you do have some curves to match. It's still going to be an interesting map. I think this is a good lighter map that doesn't maybe challenge your brain as much, but gives you the freedom. There's still a lot of mechanical complexity in hitting those big big uh areas because you don't want to hit this with like a bunch of twos and threes in your hand. No, like you need to build up uh with your cards. Which speaking of cards, this expansion, just like the last expansion, does introduce some new cards. Of course, it introduces everything you need for your purple player. Um, but it also introduces a new type of sponsorship card and a new type of garage card that are going to get uh shuffled into those decks featuring a new mechanic called drafting. And you might say, "Wasn't drafting already there?" Slipstream. We had slip streaming, which is slip streaming is if you get up behind somebody, you can get some free movement right in front of them. Drafting is a very similar icon.

6:45 And what it does is after you've moved, you get this movement as bonus drafting movement. So it's movement that does not count as your speed. If you're asking why that matters, draft movement does not count against your speed limit coming around a corner. So you could come around a corner with a five and have two draft and actually get to move seven. And if that ends you up like if you end up in a location where you can slipstream, then you could get even more. You could get a lot a lot of movement off of just a simple five turn which is like slip streaming. Slip streaming doesn't count. Also, it's similar to the slipstream. You don't have to be behind a car. They don't consider it slipstreaming because it doesn't benefit anything you have that gives you bonuses like weather conditions might give you bonuses to slipstream or penalties to slip streaming like doesn't affect these does not affect the draft card. So, you've got some that are going to get shuffled into the garage deck that you can draft.

7:34 Yeah. The front wing. There's a variety of front wings here that have various different drafting values from like one to three here as as well as some other icons on there. And then all the sponsorship cards are the same. They're just going to get mixed in and give you a higher chance of drawing them when you earn sponsorship cards, which again you earn sponsorship cards primarily through playing through like the the campaign uh the championship race which like puts out the press boxes and stuff. And yes, these these two boards do have cards that will allow you to use them. They've got event cards. They've got even a couple events for USA and Great Britain as well as events specific to these two new maps. Yeah. So, this should give you a lot. I mean, if you're a fan of heat, I this is a must own. I mean, it brings in just of course just getting the two new maps. People are so hungry for maps. I see people printing maps off on Etsy and having them printed like, you know, and and whatever. Like, people are dying for new maps. So, it's always exciting to see some official new maps. And now we're finally, I think, full with eight players. Yeah, I don't know. That's the question I was about to ask. Ryan is the bigger Heat player than I am. This does bring it up to filling the base box in terms of cars and players. It's up to eight players. Where do they go from here? Do they go any Is this it? Is this complete? Well, you might notice if you're one of us diehard Heat fans when they first announced Tunnel Vision even, they changed some of the maps to go from eight to actually 12 places for cars to start. M. And there's been no official ruling as to like how to play with 12

9:05 cars. Obviously, there's only eight colors, but they do give you. So, the fact that they're going to print and even this map right here, you can see in the Netherlands goes up to 12. So, theoretically, you could have 12 cars racing on this map. So, they're doing some planning ahead, which they weren't necessarily doing to begin with because one of the things the aggressive uh legends here, this one has icons that make the legends behave a little bit more aggressively and they actually suggest to go back on the original boards and add those chevrons. You can if you want to use this when they get a little close to some of these chicanees, it actually the if you're using the aggressive mode, they can go through multiple turns in one go, which really those chicanees slowed them down. This allows them to kind of speed through and make them a little bit more competitive and a little harder on those maps. So, they are saying, "Yeah, you can go back to some of your older maps and just draw those in if you want to do that. If you want to do that on the five and six, so you could use that mode with the older maps as well." I mean, that's that's kind of cool. Let us know in the comments below whether or not you're going to go back on your old maps or if you'd never touch a Sharpie to a board game when it's an official mandate. A mandate. I don't know about a mandate.

10:12 Felt like more of a suggestion. It's a suggestion from the designers. They say you can use this system. I really do like I think if you've never played heat with the legend system, even playing like three players to get it up to that eight total play count, two players, even solo. Oh yeah. And you may very playable solo. It's an incredibly good system for playing this at any player count. You can play effectively at a full player count. Uh but enough about heat. if you have any questions at all about these two maps or if you know things about these, if you've had more experience playing them than we have, particularly Netherland, because this map we're struggling to figure out like what is the really unique aspect of this. Is it the two longer straightaways? Is it the thing the fact that it does feel maybe a little closer? Not quite an oval obviously, but closer to that sort of experience. Let us know in the comments below. Until next time though, make sure everyone has fun at the table and we'll see you then.