Blast Track Review

boardgamequest.com:

Earlier this year, I tasked the BGQ team with posting their Top 5 games of all time. I wanted to give our readers a bit of insight into what kind of games each of our team members loves. For example, if you created a Venn diagram of me and fellow reviewer Dylans’ Top 5, there would not be any overlap unless you count “is played on a tabletop” as a comparison. I bring this up because if you scroll down to my partner in crime Heather’s #1 game, it’s Slide Blast from FoxMind Games. Why does she love Slide Blast so much? Feel free to ask her at a convention sometime.

But this is relevant because this summer, publisher FoxMind Games released an updated version of their 2016 title called Blast Track. Taking the theme from a water park to a roller coaster, and adding in a bit more depth, designers Sam-goo and Evan Song hope to intrigue gamers with this newest offering. Did they succeed? Let’s find out!

I’ll forgive you if you aren’t super familiar with the almost decade-old game Slide Blast. But this new version builds upon a lot of the same mechanics as the original but adds in a few new wrinkles.

On a player’s turn in Blast Track, they first draw a tile from the market (3 face-up choices) and add it to their hand of 1 tile. They then choose one of those two tiles to add to the end of their roller coaster track. They slide their car meeple to the end of the track and adjust their score marker if needed. What score markers you say?

Each player now has a score track with 5 different categories on it: Tunnels, Speed, Loops, Helping, and Connections. Every time a player’s token goes over a Tunnel, Speed track, or Loop, they increase their score on that track by 1. When they move another player’s meeple by playing a tile that also connects to their track, they increase their Helping score by one. Finally, when they place a tile that allows them to roll over at least 2 other previously placed tiles, they increase their Connection score by one.

What’s interesting now is that if