Magical Athlete

• Designers: Richard Garfield, Takashi Ishida 
• Publisher: CMYK
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 6+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/47vtTBj 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Magical Athlete is a racing game of pure chaos! Roll a die and move your racer that many spaces — but all the racers have wacky, game-breaking abilities. Race four times, then whoever has the most points wins!

Before the racing begins, players will draft the four racers they will have in the game and choose before each race which to use. Races alternate between the “mild” side of the board and the “wild” side of the board. A race ends once two racers have crossed the finish line — with, generally, only these two players receiving points.

The racetrack is put on the table, starting with the “Mild” side.  Two snake drafts are held so that each player ends up with four racers (thus getting two in each draft).  Each player will use one of their four chosen racers in each of the four rounds of the game.

At the start of each race, players secretly and simultaneously choose which racer they want to use in the current race – taking care to pay attention to which side of the board is in play.  Once they are all selected, they are revealed and the matching figures are placed on the starting line of the racetrack.  This is probably a good time for everyone to read aloud the special ability of their chosen racer…

On a turn, a player rolls their die and then moves that many spaces forward on the track.  Of course, the abilities of each racer might change the outcome or cause other things to happen… If your racer has a power that will affect the action, speak up and make it happen!  Many of the abilities are mandatory, and the ones which MAY be triggered should be worded thusly on the racer card.

Once the move (and any triggered powers) is resolved, the next player goes.  The race continues until two players have finished the race course.  The first place finisher gets a gold (3 point) chip and the second place finisher gets a silver chip (1 point).  Now flip the board over and repeat the process.  The player who finished last in the previous race will start first in the next race.  After four races, the game is over!  The player with the most points wins the game. There is no tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

The original Magical Athlete came out in 2003 (from a small Japanese company, Grimpeur).  I actually came across one of those games, and we did play the heck out of it – though we were never quite sure of some of the translations…  The game got a much wider audience after Z-Man reprinted it in 2010.  Sure, there were still maybe some racer powers that seemed to not be right, but hey, at least they were all in my native language now!

Honestly, though I still have that Z-Man copy in my collection, I hadn’t thought much about the game in the past 10 years or so… Then, this new version came out, and it made me wonder why I had relegated this game to a dusty shelf so many years ago…

Magical Athlete is definitely a racing game, and I think it is one that you should be able to exert some influence over the outcome – but in the end, this is a game that you play for the experience.  Just watching how each race unfolds, often unexpectedly, is a true joy.  Is it random?  Certainly NOT.  You can certainly have the choice of when to play each of your racers, and some may do better on one side of the board versus the other – or may do better depending on who else is in the race with them.  Of course, while you can’t know for sure who the other players are going to choose, you can play the odds to try to get a combination of racers in the game that works for you.

There are 36 different racers in the game, so it is likely that you’ll get a different combination of racers each time you play.  There are sweet figures for each of the racers, so you’ll always have an accurate representation of your characters on the board.  The artwork is a bit comic-y and definitely youthful, and I think it is a good fit for this style of game.

The rules really just give you the framework of how the races will work – any questions that arise will surely come from the interpretation of the racer powers, especially when they interact with each other.  This new version adds in the expertise of Richard Garfield, who you might know from a game called Magic: The Gathering (among a few others)….  The rules have a simple rubric for what to do with questions – 1) just roll with it, and if that doesn’t work, 2) roll off to decide which interpretation is correct.

Yeah, that’ll really grind your gears if you’re a planner – but umm, if you want full control over a game, you shouldn’t be anywhere near this one.  Magical Athlete is a game where you come to the table, make some choices, but after that, you roll the die and frankly you should expect the unexpected!  Sometimes a racer will dominate and fly to the finish.  Other times, an unexpected application of a power will turn a race on its head and a lucky roll will propel someone to victory.  As the rules say, “just roll with it” and you’ll enjoy this magical ride.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Erik Arneson: “A racing game of pure chaos” is the perfect way to describe this sensational, uproarious, flabbergasting gem of a game. Somehow, I never became aware of the previous editions by Grimpeur and Z-Man, so this is my first experience with Magical Athlete. It’s incredible, and it’s exactly as crazy as I hoped it would be. (And I’m a huge fan of the art.) So much fun in a delightfully simple game!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, Erik Arneson
• I like it.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/47vtTBj