Tech Race Review with Graeme - Tech Up & Money Flows

0:10 Hello everybody. This is Graeme and today we're looking at a game called Tech Race. Now in this game, players take on the role of running a brand new startup. You'll be hiring employees, training them, developing new technologies, and winning customers to hopefully buy your products and be the most successful company around in your regions. Now, the game basics are kind of straightforward. Each round, you're going to new employee tokens, which you can either use to hire new employees into your company or discard them to train existing ones. Then, you'll be using all these employees to do kind of various things at your company, like researching new technologies, getting potential customers in the regions you're in and selling them goods, opening up new headquarters to kind of expand your reach, and marketing regions to generate interest in your technology. And of course, at the end of the round, you're going to have to do payroll. Now, when I first saw this game, I actually knew nothing about it, but thought the theme would be maybe an interesting one.

1:02 A simplified version of running a company that ramps up the more options the further the game goes. It also throws in some policies for players to vote on, which can help or hurt your company. So, making sure you always have, you know, a couple coins left over to vote can be kind of important part of the game. So, will this game be like the trendiest new shop on the block, or should it just stay shuttered up? Let's get to the table, see how it's played, and come back for my final thoughts on Tech Race. Each player has a company board and a random CEO card, which will give them a special ability during the game, and they get a number of coins based on their turn order. The main board is placed on the appropriate side based on their player count. Here, I'm showing the two to three player side, and cubes are randomly dropped from the bag and placed in each region based on the number beside that region. and the rest of the cubes are then removed from the bag and placed beside the board. The board is made up by a number of regions and each region has customers who want different technologies based on their color. And there's going to be spots for players to build one of their HQ so they can sell in that region. There's also a resource board with three random award tiles, a round tracker, and the supply of faceown resource tokens with five randomly placed up. The award tiles are a first come first serve and are worth 10 points. Once it's been claimed by a player, no other player can claim it.

2:14 There are policy cards based on the player count split into period one and period 2 piles. All the coins and employee tokens are placed to one side. A player's company board is split up to the employee section with new hires and train employee spots. A place to track your payroll which must be paid at the end of each action phase. A place to store your customer cubes called the revenue zone and a staging area called the bench. And finally, a research area with the three trackers. At the start of the game, each player will select one region to place their HQ and gets a bonus from that spot. Then each player will advance one of their research markers one step. There are nine rounds to the game with each round having a staffing and action phase. And starting in round three, there's also going to be a lobbying phase. During the staffing phase, each player gets two employee tokens plus one token for every HR manager or HR office manager they already have. These tokens are either going to be used for hiring more staff or training existing staff. When used for hiring, place the token on the entry-level position you want. If you want to train someone and you can't train someone you've just hired, you discard an employee token and move the existing token to the level two position. And once an employee token is on your board, it's there for the game unless you fire them during this phase.

3:22 Once you've used all your tokens, any that you didn't use are returned to the supply. And remember, at the end of the action phase, you must pay for all of your employees. The cost is at the top right of each employee spot. We then go to the action phase, and in turn order, players will use all their employee tokens. For each level one HR token, you'll receive an additional HR token during the staffing phase. For each level two HR employee, you'll receive one employee token, and you can open up a new office building. You can only have one office building per region, and there must be a level two HR manager to support it. If you fire a level two HR employee, and you now have fewer level two HR employees than headquarters, then you must remove headquarters so that they match. For marketing, you can add up to two customer cubes to the board wherever you like. There's a limit to 20 cubes per region, but beyond that, there's no restrictions. The finance officer allows you to increase revenue, that is, you get two coins every round, or you can increase your valuation by one every round. That is, you get one victory point every round. The level one sales rep allows you to take one cube from the board where you have an HQ and you have at least a level one tech that matches the color of the cube. The level two sales rep allows you to take two cubes from the board in the same manner or you can steal cubes from another player. The player must have an HQ in the same region as you. And the customer you steal must match the technology that you have at least a level one in. And it must be from their bench because when you get a customer either way it goes into your bench. The bench can hold up to four customers. Customers on the bench do not generate revenue and can be stolen by other players. But if you have enough engineering, you can place customers directly into your revenue

4:53 zone bypassing the bench. A level one engineer allows you to keep two customers in your revenue zone, and a level two engineer allows you to keep up to five customers in your revenue zone. If the number of customers in your revenue zone exceeds the capacity from your engineers, they must be removed to the bench, and if that's full, they go back to the supply. When placing customers into your revenue zone, place them in the column that matches the tech marker or to the left of it. You cannot have customers to the right of any other matching tech markers. If your tech marker increases during the round, you can move the matching customers with that tech marker. And there is a limit to the number of customers in each level you can have. When you're using your engineers, you also collect coins for each customer in your revenue zone depending on what column they are in. One, two, or three coins. The engineers also have a different level two engineer, which is the research scientist. Each one allows you to collect resources and develop new technologies. You can take two resource tokens from the board. You can also pay three coins to flush the board and draw five new tokens. You can also trade or buy resource tokens from other players during the game. When you activate the research scientist to collect your research tokens, you can also develop one new tech. Each tech will show you which resource tokens you need to upgrade it to the next level. Discard those and move your tech marker. At the end of the action phase, you must do your payroll. Each employee token costs the number in the top right. If you cannot afford them, they must be fired and you lose five victory points. Once all players have taken their actions and standing around three, there's going to be a lobbying phase. Three policy cards are turned over and each player takes their matching policy numbers, 1, two, or three, and places one of them face down in front of them. And you hide a number of coins in your hand. Once

6:25 that's done, simultaneously reveal and the policy with the most coins passes. If tied, the policy with the single largest bid, and if it's still tied, player order breaks it. Whether your policy wins or loses, you pay the coins to the supply. Now, you are allowed to bid nothing. And if all players bid nothing, no policy is enacted. The game ends when a player reaches 100 points or it's the end of the ninth round. Players would have gotten points from their levels that they've reached in their tech level. Each office building is worth points and any awards you claimed during the game. At the end of the game, you score one point for each customer cube in your revenue zone. For every five coins you have left over is a point and any end of game policies are scored. And the player with the most points is the winner. Let's get back to see what I thought about Tech Race. On to them and components. The theme in this one very much tries to mirror real life and it makes sense for the actions you're doing. you know, hiring and firing employees to expand your company. So, although not a novel or exciting theme, it's actually well done in this one. For the components, they're decent. I do wish these company boards were a little more, you know, differentiated just even if it was just a theme or player color, but right now, they're all the same. The rest of the components are fine. You won't be wowed by them, but you also won't be mad at the components. The rule book does a decent job of explaining the rules, but does have some things that aren't clearly defined and the iconography is clear on the company boards as well. I mean, you can easily see what each of the employees does, which is always helpful and kind of speeds the game along. And overall, I kind of like the look of the game. For the game play, I kind of enjoyed the

7:56 basic gameplay idea. At the beginning, you'll be wanting more employees. So, HR managers are good at the start, but almost all employees have a shelf life. And at some point during the game, you're going to be firing employees because you don't want to pay for them. And making sure you have the right employees, and that's kind of important, but I didn't find it overly engaging. What you're doing in the first round is identical to what you're doing in the last round. And honestly, what you did in the last time you played this one. I'm also not sure about the balance of the CEO. Some of them seem to be more useful than others. Being able to ignore one of the requirements for an upgrade, and I'll get into that in a second, seems to be a lot more useful than getting extra employees for the first year rounds. But I can kind of see the usefulness of the others, but there are definitely ones I prefer more than other CEOs. But as I just mentioned, this leads me to one of my biggest issues with the game. During the game, it's important to get the most money as possible to kind of support your employees and the uh policy cards. And to do this, you need to get your research up to make those products that you have more valuable.

8:55 But that market is so annoying. There are five displayed out of 54. And when a player spends them, they're discarded and not used until that draw pile is empty. And some of those tokens, there's only four or five of them. So if you need that one token, you can waste turn after turn waiting for it. And if you get it early, you're just better off in that game. Not because of strategy, just because of luck. I've had games where I've had multiple research scientists and still played three coins multiple times on a turn just to refresh that market to try and get that one token I needed. And often players are taking the rare ones just so no one else can get them. Not to trade later on, which you can do, but why would you? I can see your points. Nothing is hidden. So, I'm just going to stop you from being able to upgrade and get those points and getting more money. And upgrading leads to having more money. So, why is having more money important? Well, that comes to my second biggest issue with the game, and that's these policy cards. I really, really dislike them, especially the level two ones. Whomever has a better money engine going decides who gets punished. You know, here's an example. Each player who has developed any biotech must pay two coins for each of their biotech customers or lose half of their biotech customers. Or each employee with an office in Technopolia must remove it, lose one office manager, lose 10 points, and no players may enter that region during the next round. And these are introduced in the last three rounds of the game. I really dislike them and they seem out of place. They don't add fun to the game. They don't

10:26 add a little wrinkle for you to work around. They're just like a lastminute punch. Now, some of them are beneficial, but again, if I have my money engine going, I get to decide which one passes. So, would I recommend this game? No, I would not. I just didn't enjoy my repeated plays this. I like the look of the game and thought the theme was well done. The teach is pretty quick and that's helped by the theme integration and the game itself is pretty quick. The staffing phase is done simultaneously and the players turn are pretty straightforward as well because there's not a lot of variety that you're going to be doing. So those are quick. For the negatives, I was just not engaged with the gameplay. On subsequent plays, I was just thinking, I've done this before. I'm approaching the game in exactly the same way as I did last time I played, and I don't see an alternative.

11:16 I dislike the randomness of those research token and the impact they have on the game. If you don't get them, you will not win. And I also really dislike those level two policy cards. Level ones were okay, but having such a such a potential hit at the end of the game just felt like kingmaking or ultimately just punching people down. And the award tile seemed to be geared to whoseever kind of gets out ahead first. And then they just kind of get more points because they're already leading. So overall, I'm giving this one a five out of 10. I do think there is a core idea of a good game in here. And I'm not saying I hated the game, but each time I played, I just didn't want to come back to play this again and again. But that's it for the moment. Until next time, thanks for watching.

12:01 Hey everybody, thanks for watching another video from the Dice Tower. Hey, you want to learn more about us, communicate with us? We have a Facebook group, we have a Discord channel, lots of different ways to get involved with the Dice Tower. You can find that in our link tree link below. So, just click that. It will take you and you can communicate with us on Facebook. Join our Facebook groups. There's lots of cool things that you can find and become part of the Dice Tower. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Tom Bassel.