Heat Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Object of the Game
• Setting up the game
• Playing a round
  • 1. Shift Gears
  • 2. Play Cards
  • 3. Reveal & Move
    • Stress Cards
  • 4. Adrenaline
  • 5. React
    • Cooldown
    • Boost
  • 6. Slipstream
  • 7. Check Corner
    • Spin out
  • 8. Discard
  • 9. Replenish Hand
    • Running out of cards
    • TODO + Symbol
• HEAT Cards
  • Paying Heat
  • Shifting up/down 2 positions
  • Cluttered Hand
• Starting Upgrade Cards
• How to Win

Components

Here are the components you will need to play your first few games. You can leave the rest in the box for now. They will be described in the other booklet.

• Rules booklet
• 2 double-sided game boards with 4 different race tracks (USA, France, Great Britain and Italy)
• 6 player mats in player colors
• 6 Gear pawns in player colors
• 6 race cars in player colors
• 72 Basic cards (12 per player) They are identified by the TODO symbol
• 18 Starting Upgrade cards (3 per player)
• 37 Stress cards
• 48 Heat cards

Object of the Game

In “Heat: Pedal to the Metal™” everyone races a car around the track for a given number of laps to determine the best driver. At the start of each round you can shift gears, which dictates how many cards you play that round. You control your car’s speed by adding the value of these cards to move that many spaces on the race track, jockeying for position.

If you’re playing this racing game, you love speed so you’ll be playing your high-value cards early and often. However, racing requires skill as you maneuver around the track, so be careful not to exceed the suggested speed of each corner or your car will start to overheat; push too hard and you risk spinning out. Manage your speed and take care of your engine if you want a shot at the podium!

Setting up the game

• Place the game board in the middle of the table (for your first game use the USA track, and consider only racing 1 lap as a learning experience instead of the regular 2 laps as printed on the board).
• Each player chooses a color and takes the car, player mat, Gear pawn and 12 Basic cards in their color. Each player also takes the 3 Starting Upgrade cards in their color.
• Check the game board to discover how many Heat and Stress cards each player must add to their car (typically it will be 6 Heat and 3 Stress cards so that example is used below).
• Place your player mat in front of you . Shuffle your 12 Basic cards, 3 Starting Upgrade cards and 3 Stress cards together and place this draw deck facedown on your player mat’s left spot . Place the 6 Heat cards faceup on the Engine spot in the middle of the player mat and your Gear pawn in first gear.
• Place the remaining Stress cards faceup close to the board as a reserve .
• Randomly place all participating race cars on the starting grid to determine player order for the first round. Place them one at a time, filling the spots in ascending order.
• Draw 7 cards from your draw deck into your hand. These are the cards available to you in the first round of the game. You are ready to begin!

If you are an experienced driver and playing with rookies, consider removing 1 or 2 Heat from your own car to level the playing field.

Playing a round

“Heat: Pedal to the Metal™” is played over several rounds. Each round all players ALWAYS complete 4 steps:

1. adjust their gear,
2. play cards,
3. move their car,
4. draw back up to seven cards.

These mandatory steps are highlighted thanks to the following icon TODO. The remaining steps (4-8) are all situational and only sometimes apply to your turn.

All players complete steps 1 and 2 at the same time (do them in order, but without waiting for each other). Then, starting with the frontmost car, closest to the Race Line, complete steps 3 through 9. Once a car has completed step 9 and ended their turn, proceed back through the positions completing one car’s turn at a time. Repeat this sequence until all cars have finished the race (check the number of laps on the board for the track you are using).

1. Shift Gears

First, check which gear your car is in, and decide if you want to leave it there or shift it one gear up or down from that position.

Note: You can choose to shift your gear up/down two positions, but doing so will require that you pay one Heat, which you can read more about on p. 7: Heat Cards.

2. Play Cards

Your current gear determines exactly how many cards you play from your hand. 1st gear means you must play 1 card, 2nd gear is 2 cards, and so on. In this step you can play all types of cards except for Heat cards. Keep the 1-4 played cards facedown in your own Play Area.

3. Reveal & Move

Reveal the cards in your Play Area, then add all values together to determine your Speed. Values from Upgrade and Stress cards (see below) contribute to that total Speed. Move your car forward by exactly that many Spaces on the track. Always put your car on the Spot closest to the Race Line if available.

• Cars never prevent you from passing through them, even when it looks like the race track is blocked. However, if you would end your move in a Space where there are cars on all Spots, then you are blocked and must put your car in the first Space with a free Spot behind the cars that blocked you (as close to the Race Line as possible).
• If there are 2 cars next to each other, the car closest to the Race Line is considered ahead for all purposes.

Stress Cards

All players start with three Stress cards shuffled into their draw deck, and you will eventually draw these into your hand. Stress cards represent lapses of concentration as you race around the track.

You will have to play Stress cards to get them out of your hand. Doing so introduces randomness to your Speed (see TODO symbol on the right).

4. Adrenaline

Only applies if you are the last car to move this round (or two last cars in a race with 5 cars or more).

Adrenaline helps the last player each round. It is not really a step of its own, but gives that player extra symbols they may use in the next step (React). They may move 1 extra Space while adding 1 to their Speed value and/or gain 1 extra Cooldown.

Note: Adrenaline cannot be saved for future rounds.

5. React

In this step you get to activate symbols you have access to in ANY order you want. In the core game you have access to symbols from your current gear (Boost and/or Cooldown) and Adrenaline if last. Each symbol is activated and completed individually.

Cooldown

Cooldown is an important aspect of the game because it allows you to take a Heat card from your hand and put it back in your Engine (so you can use the Heat card again). The number in the Cooldown symbol indicates how many Heat you can move in this way. You gain access to Cooldown in a few ways but the most common is from driving in 1st gear (Cooldown 3) and 2nd gear (Cooldown 1).

Boost

Regardless of which gear you are in you may pay 1 Heat (see p. 7) to boost once per turn. Boosting gives you a TODO symbol (see p. 5) as reminded on the player mats. Move your car accordingly, you may still be blocked.

Note: TODO symbols always increase your Speed value for the purpose of the Check Corner step.

6. Slipstream

Only applies if you are next to or behind another car at this point.

Slipstreaming is optional if you land next to another car, or in a Space behind a car or cars. If you choose to Slipstream, you move 2 Spaces forward. You can only Slipstream once per turn and if all the Spots in the final Space are occupied, place your car in the first Space with a free Spot behind the blocking cars.

Note: Slipstreaming does NOT increase your Speed value for the purpose of the Check Corner step.

7. Check Corner

Only applies if you crossed a Corner Line this round.

If at any point this turn you crossed a Corner Line, you must now check if your total Speed for the round exceeds the Speed Limit of that corner (Speed = Sum of the values of all the cards in your Play Area, +1 if you used the Adrenaline Bonus).

• If your total Speed for the round is equal to or lower than the Speed Limit, nothing happens.
• Otherwise, you pay Heat equal to the difference between your total Speed and the Speed Limit (p. 7: Heat Cards).

Note: If you drive through several corners on the same turn, you must pay for each of them separately, starting with the first Corner Line you crossed.

Spin out

If you do not have enough Heat to pay for your excess Speed, you pay all the Heat you have and immediately spin out:

• Move the car back to the first available Space before the Corner Line that caused the spin out.
• Take 1 extra Stress card into your hand if you are in 1st/2nd gear, or 2 extra Stress cards if you are in 3rd/4th gear.
• Move your Gear pawn to 1st gear.

8. Discard

You may discard cards from your hand if you do not want to save them for future rounds. Do so by placing them face up into your discard pile. However, nobody can browse through the discard piles (including their own); only the top card is public knowledge.

Note: You can never choose to discard Stress or Heat cards (even the Upgrade ones).

9. Replenish Hand

Take all cards from your Play Area and put them onto your discard pile.

Draw back up to 7 cards, then the next player can proceed with steps 3-9.

Running out of cards

At any point, if you must draw, flip, or discard cards and there are no cards left in your draw deck, immediately shuffle your discard pile and place it face down as your new draw deck. Then draw, flip, or discard the cards you were missing.

If this happens during your turn (before this final redrawing step), do not shuffle the cards in your Play Area back in the deck, as they have not been discarded yet.

TODO + Symbol

For each symbol played you will add an unknown value between 1 and 4 to your Speed. This is done by flipping the top card of your draw deck:

• If it is a Basic card (TODO), add it to your Play Area.
• Otherwise, immediately put it in the discard pile and keep flipping until you find a Basic card (TODO).

For each played Stress card, cards are flipped from the top of the active player’s deck and discarded until a Basic card (TODO) shows up. This card is then put in the Play Area, on top of the Stress card it replaces.

In this example, the active player discards 2 Heat cards, a Stress card and a Starting Upgrade card and ends up with a Speed of 8. They immediately move their car forward that many spaces.

HEAT Cards

As you race around the track you should use Heat to drive faster on straights and in corners. As a consequence, Heat cards will move from your Engine to your discard pile. Later on they will be shuffled into your draw deck and reach your hand. The only way to get Heat cards out of your hand and back into the Engine is to cool down, typically by shifting to lower gears. This cycle means the same Heat card could be used several times during a race, depending on how fast you use it, draw it and cool it down again.

Heat cards can never be discarded or played from your hand. They effectively reduce your hand size by filling it up with useless cards.

Paying Heat

Every time you are asked to pay 1 Heat, you must take 1 Heat card from your Engine and move it to your discard pile. If you do not have a Heat card available, you cannot choose to Boost. If you went through a corner exceeding the Speed Limit and do not have enough Heat to pay, you spin out (see p. 6).

Shifting up/down 2 positions

If you want to move your Gear pawn an extra step up or down (e.g. between gears 1&3 or 2&4) during step 1: Shift Gears, you have to pay 1 Heat immediately. As everyone shifts gears at the same time, just announce you are doing it, pay the Heat and move your Gear pawn accordingly.

Cluttered Hand

In rare circumstances you can get stuck with so many Heat cards in your hand that you don’t have enough playable cards for the gear you’re in. If this happens, use as many playable cards as possible and cover the difference with Heat cards.

In this case, your car does not move this turn. Instead, when you reveal your played cards, immediately move your Gear pawn to 1st gear, place the cards that are in your Play Area in your Discard pile, and skip straight to step 9 (Replenish Hand).

Starting Upgrade Cards

In your first few games, all the players will have the same 3 Upgrade cards (identified by the chevron pattern) in their decks. You will remove these cards from the decks when you use the Garage mode described in the Advanced Rules Booklet.

Two of those cards (0 and 5) have the same look and feel as Basic cards. They are used mostly in the same way. The only difference is that they are discarded when flipped for resolving the effect of a TODO symbol.

The 3rd one is simply an extra Heat Card and works in the exact same way as the 6 regular ones except that it starts the game shuffled into the deck instead of in the Engine.

How to Win

You win the race (and the game) by being the first player to cross the finish line after the number of laps indicated on the board. If two or more cars finish in the same round, the winner is the player whose car is furthest ahead (the spot closest to the Race Line is the tiebreaker if two cars end up side by side).

• Slipstreaming can never be used to cross the finish line nor after having crossed the finish line.
• Disregard any Speed Limits in corners after the finish line, simply move as far as you can.

At the end of the round, remove all the cars that crossed the finish line from the track and place them in order on the Hall of Fame Space on the board. Continue playing until all cars make it to the finish (give Adrenaline to the last car or last two cars based on the number of cars that started the race, not the remaining cars in play).