Keep on Running
There is no denying that our hobby plays strongly on feelings of nostalgia. From remakes of classic games to refresh of IPs, a large proportion of the hobby games market relies on folk like me with rose-tinted glasses and disposable income. Despite being susceptible to it, I find it incredibly distasteful. A cash-in on childhood memories that is often hard to resist.
There is a positive to nostalgia, to feeling that connection to our childhoods, family gatherings, and fond memories of games lost to time but never forgotten. Magical Athlete from publisher CMYK, designers Richard Garfield and Takashi Ishida, and artist Angela Kirkwood evokes those feelings in a riot of colour and hilarity.
I bought Magical Athlete with my own money
Magical Athlete feels like an old design because in some ways, it is. The original game was designed by Takshi Ishida, released in 2003, and it became something of a cult hit. Later an abortive attempt by GMT to revive the title came to nothing and the title languished. Partially forgotten, the publisher CMYK obtained the rights and handed it to Richard Garfield. Garfield is an admirer of the original design and jumped at the chance to bring a new version to tables round the world.
The art of the original game is in a sort of anime cartoon style. The new take by artist Angela Kirkwood is close to Looney Tunes and the Saturday morning cartoons of my youth. The cardboard standees are replaced with chunky wooden pieces, screen printed with an array of characters and the dice treated the same.
All that history aside, Magical Athlete feels older still. A hark back to games with roll & move as the main mechanism that may have charmed us as children, and we dismiss as adults. It feels like a game that had TV adverts from the 70s and 80s with some sort of ill advised theme tune. It drips with the past, but does not wallow there, it swims gracefully through the eddies of the past.
Let us put the poetry aside and get down to the nuts & bolts. Magical Athlete is basically summed up by its title both thematically, and mechanically. You are athletes that have a range of strange powers, and you’ll take part in a series of races to see who is the best.
This begins with picking your team through a draft. Well I say team, but these characters aren’t going to race together. They are more like a country’s team for the Olympics, destined to arrive together but doomed to compete apart. You have an array of miscreants to choose from. Big Baby is so large that no other racer may share a space with them. Scoocher tips along one space every time another athlete’s power activates. The Gunk makes everyone move one less space, while the Hare gets +2 to their move unless they are out in the lead. There are whole host of weird and wonderful characters to choose from, a box of delights.
The racing itself is simple. Pick a side of the board, choose one of the racers you have drafted, line up at the start and go! Roll your dice, move, maybe activate a power along the way. That really is it mechanically. A great example of why describing games via mechanisms only with no emotional context is just bad criticism. As the powers of the different characters interact, the game reveals itself as a rollercoaster of surprise, laughter, defeat, and commiseration.
There are two tracks to race on and the main experience of the game is to flip between them, racing on each one twice. The main track is just that, a series of spaces with no problems to think about, the ‘Mild Mile’. The other side, the ‘Wild Wilds’, is a different story, with trip hazards, boosts to get you ahead, spaces to bring you back, and a couple of opportunities to get an extra point or two along the way.
Points are why we race, with only the first and second places claiming prizes. As the races go on they become more valuable and there are various other ways to potentially score points from racers and the ‘Wild Wilds’ side of the board.
Now of course, some of the racers are better on the straight track and others will be able to pick their way successfully over the hazards of the other board. With the escalating points you would of course keep your best racers for last. Wouldn’t you?
Well maybe. See ‘best’ is a term best understood in context in Magical Athlete. It not only matters which course you are on, but who the other players pick to compete in each race. We have our teams through the draft, but each race we secretly choose which of that team will race. This makes counter-drafting difficult to say the least, but not impossible.
The Magician, who can re-roll their move twice, is good for avoiding the hazards of the “Wild Wilds”. Sisyphus starts the race with 4 points. That sounds like an obvious pick. However he has to go back to the start every time he rolls a 6, and loses one of those points. Sisyphus wants the race to be over quickly, so probably the ‘Mild Mile’ for that one. Of course these individual choices are a starter of strategy against the main course of madness. The ultimate charm of the game comes from the unexpected interaction of these various powers.
I’ve seen combos fire off that created a loop as folks speed towards the finish line. Party Animal, who drags everyone a space towards them gets eaten by The Mouth, who eliminates a racer if they land on them. The Mastermind guesses who will win, then comes second if they get it right. I’ve seen that fire more often than I thought possible. Every race is a charcuterie board of choices, combining new tastes and sensations in a riot of ridiculous races.
There is no denying that Magical Athlete is chaotic, but it is worth taking a short side trip to the two and three player game. In this version you get to take two racers into each race, allowing for a few more deliberately calculated combos. If you are looking for a more tactical game, then this is the mode for you. My only real criticism of the game is that I would have liked more of the pieces to be carved like the shape of the racer as it is for Big Baby, but that is a minor quibble. The cards are coloured and match up with the racer’s wooden piece, so finding them amongst the throng isn’t too much of a trial.
Magical Athlete is that has thoughtful production, strong fundamentals, and a team working to not make the game any more complex than it needs to be. This is a game that conjures nostalgia where none exists. Players pick up the pieces and tap them along the track one space at a time, like kids making sure they got the count correct. Powers combine, astonish, and amuse in shocking ways, making each game unique, and every race a spectacle. You’ll cheer your racers on from the sidelines, admonish the luck of those who get ahead, and celebrate the victories even if they aren’t yours. It’s a winner every time.
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