A company which had done a great first game in 2006 was HURRICAN GAMES with the mystery game Mr. Jack, and so the HURRICAN booth was another place I needed to visit at the SPIEL 08 convention. The topic of this year's game is much lighter, since Hurry Cup actually takes the players to a race along the curved roads along the Cote d' Azure back in the 1920's.

The game is ideally played on a round or square sized table, with the hexagonal road tiles forming a somewhat round racetrack around the table. The game uses dice to determine the movement allowance of each player, but despite the fact that all dice (which are rolled together in a dicing cup) are of different colours no player actually is assigned a fixed colour. As the name implies, Hurry Cup is a game which needs fast reactions, since large playing figures matching the colours of the dice are placed at the middle of the table, and once the dicing cup has been lifted the players need to look at the dice to decide which dice they want to take. Showing a fast reaction, the players then need to grab for the coloured playing figures, and the player who gets a figure also will be entitled to use the dice of the matching colour.

With each player grabbing a figure and receiving the correspondingly coloured dice, the basic movement allowance of each player's car is found. However, several factors have an influence on the outcome of the race, and most important here are the speed limits which are applied in the bends of the road. Thus, the players may move their cars forwards up to the number of spaces indicated by their coloured dice, but in addition they will roll another dice and add the results of both dice together. Multiplied by 10 this gives the current speed of the player's car, and if he should be going faster than the speed limit of a road tile allows, he will be forced to end his move before the speed limit applies.

Variety is added through the special tokens which the players may use during their turns. At the beginning of the game each player receives one Nitro token, one helmet and one signal-horn, and these tokens may be discarded for different bonus actions. Thus, the Nitro increases a player's movement allowance, the helmet means that the speed limits may be ignored and special fun is created by the signal-horn, since the player who uses it has to shout "honk-honk" and then is allowed to chose a dice from the cup before the results are revealed to the other players.

Some other tokens may be collected by a player who lands with his car on special spaces along the racetrack. These tokens may open up a shortcut, give a slipstreaming bonus to catch up with the next car ahead, force another player to swap his movement dice or give some other kinds of assistance. Overall, these tokens are rather powerful, and depending on the average skill and reactions of the players, the player in lead may receive an additional bonus because he can shorten his movement in order to be the first player to reach a space with such a bonus token. Players who think that this additional bonus for the driver in lead unbalances the game should think about introducing the rule that a car has to go as far as its movement allowance (and the speed limits) will take it. This change of the rules actually may result in a closer race because a player who has fallen behind now gets a chance to catch up by gaining a good token which would otherwise have been taken by an earlier player.

As you might guess, players need good reflexes and an a well-working hand-eye-coordination to have success in Hurry Cup, and even after several playtesting rounds I am still not as quick as the other players in my group. However, this creates an interesting challenge of its own, since reflexes can be trained up to a certain degree. With a group of good friends Hurry Cup is a good beer-and-prezels game, and when played with somewhat older children you will be surprised how often your kids will beat you!!!