Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Each round you grip a hand of 7 speed cards and choose a gear (1-4); the gear is the number of cards you must commit face-down behind your screen. Everyone reveals simultaneously, sums their speed values, and moves their car that many spaces. Optional spice: spend Heat to boost (flip the top of your deck for bonus speed) or to shift gears more than one step.

Phase 1: choose a gear, paying 1 Heat per extra step beyond a single shift. Phase 2: select N cards equal to gear and play face-down. Phase 3: simultaneous reveal, sum speeds, optionally boost. Phase 4: move; for each corner crossed, pay Heat equal to speed-limit overage or spin out. Phase 5: cooldown — gears 1-2 flush Heat from hand back to engine reserve. Phase 6: discard, redraw to 7. Game ends when first car crosses the finish line at the end of the final lap.

Each turn you balance gear-against-hand (which gear can my current cards actually fill), corner-against-tempo (downshift early to handle the apex versus push and pay overage Heat), and engine-against-deck-pollution (every boost or overage seeds a Heat card into your discard, where it will choke a future hand). The choice space at any single decision is moderate — typically 3-7 reasonable gear+hand combinations — but planning depth runs 2-3 turns ahead because gears are sticky (one step free, two steps costs Heat) and corners must be set up in advance. The famous strategic lattice lives in this constraint: you cannot dump from 4th to 1st to dodge a chicane, so cornering becomes a rhythmic deceleration puzzle.

The dominant skill is tempo planning — knowing when to sandbag in 1st gear to flush Heat back to your engine and reset your hand for the next big push. A close second is corner-positioning forecast: judging whether a high-card hand will arrive in time for the next chicane, and whether to pre-emptively burn Heat now to avoid a disastrous overage later. Opponent reading (slipstream timing, gauging when a leader is bleeding Heat) is real but secondary; memory load is near zero and the math is simple addition. The game rewards drivers who think two corners ahead and punishes turn-by-turn play.

You are a 1960s F1 driver. Late-brake into the chicane, scream past the leader, feel like a stunt driver — without simulating tire physics.

Vincent Dutrait period-romance illustration: warm sepia-and-cream palette, hand-painted cars and circuits, deliberate echoes of 1960s sports magazine spreads. Distinctive enough that the game is recognizable on a shelf at 10 feet.