For some reason Formula 1 racing gets all the glory, but MotoGP and Superbikes are much more fun. You get more over taking, riders fall off relatively frequently, and rather than two or three race cars battling it out here and there on the track you get bigger packs of bikes making a challenge for a better position.

MotoGP captures all the excitement of racing without the ponderous changing of gears and checking tire wear or brake wear. It also avoids situations where a player constantly counts out thirteen spaces, checks his final position, takes account of possible lane changes, then counts out thirteen spaces again just to make sure that his movement is optimal through a corner. You can happily get three laps in with 10 bikes during the same time it would take to do two laps with four cars in a Grand Prix style game.

Components wise you get a double sided board with the Jerez track on one side and Qatar track on the other. You also get 18 MotoGP bikes in the official team colours and 18 corresponding cards with the names of the riders to record damage, plus over 90 speed cards. There is an extra cool factor in having bikes in official colours rather than generic red or blue or with white details, it just adds more flavour having real riders on the bikes.

MotoGP is pretty straightforward, you start with ten cards, allocate three cards to each bike and the remainder becomes your hand at the start of the game. The cards are numbered from five to nine and include a few wild cards that can be any number. You determine pole position by the total number of the cards that you allocated to each bike, and draw cards from the deck to break ties.

Generally it is best to put your highest cards down to determine pole position, because it is quite difficult to pull off a strategy of laying low cards and taking a bad starting position so that you can keep the high cards to zoom past the other riders from the back end. Once you are into the race, you activate each bike from the front, with the inside line taking priority. Draw a card and play a card, and move the bike the number of spaces printed on the card.

The track is broken up into single spaces on the straights with room for two bikes. You can move through other bikes on the straight, so the single space track keeps movement fluid and you get plenty of overtaking even through multiple bikes, so long as your move ends in a clear space, and keeps micro-management of movement to a minimum.

The corners are split into two lanes with more spaces on the outside line, you cannot move through another bike on the corners but you can change lanes in the corners, so how you approach the corners is all important. You can move safely through a corner on a 7 card or lower, but if you do so with an 8 or 9 card you roll 2D6. If you get 5 or less your bike/ridertakes damage/fatigue, and as your bikes condition degrades you will have to roll the dice if you play an 8 in any situation, or even a 7 if you push your luck.

The three lap race seems well paced in terms of what risks players take on the corners and whether they finish the race or not, because if the bike takes too much damage you crash. Typically the bikes at the front take risks early to get ahead and then slow down, forcing the lower placed bikes to play high cards in order to catch up, and this situation is then reflected down the pack to the tail ender.

With three laps you have the option of making a rush for the front in the third lap, and with two bikes per player in the standard game you can use high cards on the front bike and low cards on the back bike depending on their position. Scoring has more relevance with two bikes in the race because a win is determined by the total score of the constructorsteam, and bikes fairly low down the podium can still score points, so it is always worth cruising through to the end rather than crashing if you can avoid it.

The limited form of hand management is what makes or breaks your strategy, and it works exactly because you have limited choices. Your opponents’ choice of card and movement can help or hinder you, and your options change from turn to turn. During the course of the game you can harvest high cards while playing low ones where you don’t risk losing a position, and ensuring that you play the right cards coming out of corners so that you can play high cards getting you to the next corner without risking a damage roll.

MotoGP is easy to house rule if for example you want the option of crashing a bike on a roll of 2, and having to play a 9 card to get back on the bike losing race position in the meantime. Its simplicity makes it easy to modify and improve to suit your own taste if you want a more involved game. As it stands though MotoGP is pitched at a good level to make it accessible to a wide range of gamers and still have plenty of tactical and strategic options.

You might have to track down a copy from the Spanish publishers as they seem to have limited distribution at this time. There is a previous edition called Table-MotoGP: The Moto GP Licensed Board Game, which has more tracks and includes score sheets, with different rules. Probably the best element of the new edition is that it plays so quickly and focuses on team scoring,making it ideal to play as a campaign adding another layer of strategy.