Long Shot: The Dice Game Kickstarter Preview

This is your ticket to the track!

In Long Shot: The Dice Game, you and up to eight players will strategize and push your luck as the action unfolds in a tense race of eight horses. During the game you buy horses, place bets, influence race movement, and utilize special abilities. The roll of the dice determines which horses move and the options available each turn, so be ready to adapt your plans. Once three horses cross the finish line, earnings are totaled. While there are many ways to earn money during a horse race, only the player that makes the most money will be declared the winner. Will you play it safe, or risk it big on a long shot?

Review:

<RING>…and they’re off and pacing. No, not the horses at the track, but my entire gaming group pacing in front of their mailboxes awaiting the arrival of Long Shot – The Dice Game. The designer Chris Handy of Perplext matches the olden day feel of a trip with gramps to the track filled with the sent of nicotine and stale beer with my sheer excitement of placing bets with the paperboy money I earned in the early days that would most certainly break some form of child labor laws. It was capitalism, risk, reward, and calling out the pithiest names for your favorite fast four legged friend. I will take Carry on Wayward Sun in the third race and Taken Care of Business in the seventh. Oh, and don’t forget Harry Foot Hobbit for the trifecta!

Long Shot- The Dice Game has all the features you would find at the track. With very colorful horse tokens, cards, and player stat sheets you will only need the program (aka Rulebook) to reference the actions to be taken just a few times and you will be….well….OFF TO THE RACES! The game is based on one race around the track board moving, manipulating, and jockeying for position each of 8 horses on the field.  Utilizing the easy erase marks that come included with the core box, each player will place bets on the horse they think will cross the finish line 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.  

The goal of the game is to be the player with the most money at the conclusion of the race.  Along with gambling element to achieve this, a player will have the opportunity to be an owner of one or more of the horses on the track to reap the purse for finishing atop the leader board. There are added elements like a bingo based concessions area on the player card that give bonuses and benefits for successfully blotting vertical and horizontal rows based on your turns horse movement.  The Cap and Jersey combo not only provides in race value but counts for added dollars at the end for acquiring such a garb. All activity starts by rolling two dice. One that represents the color of the horse and a number die reflecting the amount of spaces that horse moves around the track. Finally, there is that iconic lucky superstition of a horseshoe that can provide the needed strap to the *ss to put the giddy-up into the horse color of your choice to further your chances of seeing the horse you want cross the finish-line before all others.

Ownership of a horse will cost a player some green but provide special abilities or privileges only available to that player if they roll their own color on that eight sided kaleidoscope die on their turn. This money management throughout the race is key in maximizing bets as the horses enter the final turn where unless you adorn that jockey cap of the specific horse after passing a visual line on the board, the betting windows slam shut for those lead racers.

We are now in the home stretch of this review and the game truly gives you that feel of exciting anticipation of who will cross the line and win by a nose. The art design and cheeky illustrations brings an element of Saturday morning cartoons to the table. Its Laugh Olympics but with just one animal type…e-ven! Sorry Grape-Ape.

Luck plays a very significant part of the game but managing your resources and manipulating the movements of your favorable hoofed herbivorous mammal brings enough strategy play into it, making you feel like you could fast track your way to purchasing a stallion and start your own family farm.  Speaking of, I’ll BET – you and the family of all ages will love Long Shot – The Dice Game! Take the odds and lay your money down on this one.

Pick up your copy of Long Shot: The Dice Game which will be live on KICKSTARTER until Sat, April 24 2021 5:00 PM PDT, and has surpassed it’s funding goal of $10,000.