Games from the Crypt #9 - De Day

If there’s one thing my games gang loves on the tabletop, it’s racing. Doesn’t matter what we’re racing – F-1, rally, horses, chariots, karts, camels, spaceships, hamsters, anything. Race games tend to offer a lot of drama, risk-taking, push-your-luck decisions, and direct competition. The trash talk around our table or screens is vicious after the green light flashes or the starter pistol sounds. And lately I’ve had the great pleasure to introduce my group to a Games From the Crypt-qualified racer that I’ve been playing for over 30 years- Eric Randall and Laurent Lavaur’s classic Formula De.

Record scratch. Formula De? You heard me right, the game that is on Board Game Arena and available in game shops is now, for some reason, just Formula D. I guess it’s like the whole Die Siedler von Catan versus just Catan thing. But at any rate, this masterpiece dates all the way back to 1991, before Catan really broke Eurogames in the United States and it was a weird, imported game that only this one guy at a convention had but everyone wanted to play because it wasn’t really quite like any other racing game to that point.

Formula De’s most apparent ancestor is the classic 3M game Speed Circuit that was published 20 years prior (establishing its vintage as another Game from the Crypt I also absolutely love), but the designers of this French classic came up with a pretty brilliant idea to capture the breakneck speed and daring thrills of F-1 racing. They mapped each of the cars’ gears to a different polyhedral die. So a d4 is rolled when a car is in 1^st gear, a D6 in 2^nd gear, and on up to a d30 for 6^th gear. And these custom dice also had specific ranges to account for the fact that you aren’t going to move one or two spaces when you are barreling down a straight at Monaco in top gear. The funny thing is that this is fundamentally a roll-and-move design, which even as far back as 1991 was kind of grimaced at by “serious” gamers.

The design also featured a few clever ways to express the sheer danger of piloting a 250mph death machine essentially made of tinfoil and rubber. One is how corners are handled- you have to stop a certain number of times to avoid damaging your car, which is expressed in a few “hitpoint”-like metrics such as tires, brakes, and body. Overshoot, and you might burn your tires or brakes out. This introduces a risk-taking element, especially in a packed field where other racers are struggling to get ahead of the pack. Do you go up a gear and risk blowing through a turn if you roll too high? Or do you play it safe and stay in gear, hoping for a high enough roll to land in the turn and then slingshot out at a higher top speed?

Add in rules for pit stops, drafting, collisions, weather, and in the newer editions more details and options like street racing and you have a fairly comprehensive and really quite simple F-1 event. It’s all quite a bit more detailed than venerable old Speed Circuit was, but it’s still pitched at a family game difficulty level. For a while, there was actually an even simpler, shorter, and more family-friendly version called appropriately Formula De Mini. I do think some recent racing games, like Jeff Horger’s excellent Thunder Alley or the card-driven Heat: Pedal to the Metal offer some more strategic complexity but Formula De’s directness and simplicity give it and edge. Compared to simpler racing games like the long forgotten classic Ave Caesar or Kramer’s masterpiece of the genre Downforce (which is really half betting game), the detail gives it a little more punch and possibilities for deeper, more heads-down play.

And that is where Formula D winds up struggling, at least on a real tabletop. The game supports a whopping ten players and speaking as someone who used to play in Formula De tournaments back in the ‘90s – you want there to be ten players. A full grid is all but essential to get the most out of the game. But back to that heads-down play problem, when you have ten people playing a very competitive game like this and it involves counting spaces and planning moves around nine other players, the result can be a very, very slow affair. The listed playing time is 60+ minutes, and by 60+ minutes they really mean an hour to four or five hours. Indeed, IRL games can drag interminably as analysis paralysis sets in and players essentially have to start from square one to plot their move every turn as the track situation changes. That said, winning a game- or even crossing the finish line a smoldering, exploding wreck- is extremely rewarding and actually kind of worth it.

Oh, and lest I be negligent to inform you – it is an elimination game. So if you are in one of these ten car contests, be sure you have a backup plan for your afternoon or evening. Crashes are inevitable!

If all that didn’t scare you off, you can go buy Formula D right now at a game shop, Asmodee has a great 3^rd edition of the game out with its own battery of expansion tracks. There used to be a But if you want to get in on this great game, as far as I’m concerned, the only way to play it here in 2026 is on Board Game Arena. The implementation there is terrific – it eliminates counting out spaces, shows you outcomes in terms of damage or wear before you make a move, and handles all of the logistical things that make the IRL game take so damn long. Granted, it isn’t quite the same as standing around a cardboard representation of Monaco or Road Atlanta and pushing around a little plastic F-1 car, cheering and jeering your opponents, but a game can reasonably finish in that mythical hour time frame. And it is, with the digital assist, actually a better game now than it was back in the day.

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Tags: board games | tabletop | games from the crypt