It’s just a simple roll-and-move game … or is it?
What Is Magical Athlete?
Magical Athlete is a roll-and-move racing game for 2 to 6 players, ages 6 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. It retails for $29.99 and is available for pre-order from CMYK, expected to ship in late November. At its core, it is rolling a die and moving, so that part is easy for young kids to learn; the character powers will require a bit of reading and may benefit from some adult help when weird situations arise.
Magical Athlete was designed by Takashi Ishida (and updated by Richard Garfield) and published by CMYK, with illustrations by Angela Kirkwood. (Magical Athlete was originally published in 2003 from Z-Man Games; this edition has some rules tweaks and all-new art and components.)
Magical Athlete Components
Here’s what comes in the box:
- Double-sided Racetrack board
- 6 Wooden dice
- 4 Gold 1st Place tokens
- 4 Silver 2nd Place tokens
- 9 Bronze 3-point tokens
- 16 Bronze 1-point tokens
- 36 Racer cards
- 36 Racer meeples
CMYK is reducing plastic use in most of their games. This one comes with a paper band around the box exterior, and the meeples and tokens can be stored in the small paper bags provided. (There was a paper band around the cards but I recycled that and just store the cards with the point tokens.)
CMYK’s rulebooks often begin with a high-level overview of the game that takes several pages, with plenty of space for illustrations and not a lot of text. As you can see from the photo above, this section looks almost more like a picture book than a typical rulebook, and it’s an easy way to give everyone a sense of what they’re getting into. The illustrations by Angela Kirkwood are fantastic, with a 1970s vibe that reminds me of my childhood, and the racers are a diverse and fairly ridiculous bunch.
Also included in the rulebook are little bios about each racer, along with some details about their abilities if needed. We did run into some situations where something wasn’t totally spelled out, but the rulebook does provide a general guideline on how to deal with that, too—you just come to a consensus, and if there’s still a disagreement you just roll off to see who’s right.
The racer meeples are chunky and colorful (especially Huge Baby, seen above). It’s kind of an overwhelming number of meeples for a single game, and sometimes it can be hard to find the specific one you’re looking for in the big pile, but fortunately you only need to do that at the start of the game.
Each racer also has a corresponding illustrated card that shows its name, ability, and a little tagline, like “Keep Rollin'” for Sisyphus. Most of the time the background color of the card illustration matches the base color of the meeple, though we found one or two that weren’t the same.
The chunky wooden dice are simple and they go well with the rest of the components: each one is a different color and there are six so each player has their own die.
The wide game board is double-sided, with the “Mild Mile” on one side and the “Wild Wilds” on the other. Both of them are a 30-space track, but the Wild Wilds includes a lot of extra spaces that can move you forward or back, or give you point tokens. At the end of each track is a little podium space for 1st and 2nd place.
How to Play Magical Athlete
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to score the most points over the course of 4 races.
Setup
Set the point tokens near the board, set to the Mild Mile side. Stack the 1st place and 2nd place tokens so that the highest point value (also the largest token) is on the bottom.
Give each player a die. Players roll off to see who will draft racers first—the highest unique number goes first!
Shuffle the racer cards and lay out 2 per player. Do a snake draft—everyone in turn order picks one racer, and then everyone in reverse order picks another one. Then shift starting player to the left, and do it again, so that everyone now has 4 racers. Find the meeples corresponding to your racers, and put the rest back in the box.
The game will consist of 4 races, with each racer participating once. Everyone simultaneously selects one of their racers for the first race, and then places their meeples on the starting space.
Gameplay
On your turn, you do your “main move”: roll your die, and move that many spaces. Some racers have optional abilities that may happen before, after, or even instead of your main move. Your move may also trigger other players’ abilities as well. Once all the abilities have been resolved, it’s the next player’s turn.
If you trip (because of a space on the Wild Wilds or a player ability), you lay your meeple down, and on your next turn you just stand up instead of making a main move. Your ability can still trigger when you’re tripped.
Race End
The race ends as soon as two racers have crossed the finish line, and they are awarded the 1st and 2nd place tokens. Then clear the race board, flip it over to the opposite side, and everyone chooses racers for the next race.
The game ends after 4 races—the player with the most point tokens wins! (Ties are shared.)
Game Variants
If playing with 2 or 3 players, you can also use variant rules that give each player 8 racers, fielding two per race. You move both of your racers on your turn, in the order of your choosing.
Magical Athlete is GeekDad Approved!
Why You Should Play Magical Athlete
Okay, so if you’ve read the How to Play section, you may be thinking to yourself: “Wait, that’s it? This is just a roll-and-move game—how is that interesting, and makes that GeekDad Approved?”
Well, I’m glad (I pretended) you asked! Yes, Magical Athlete is a roll-and-move game, but it’s the racer abilities and the chaotic interactions between them that really makes this game shine. Each of the characters has a game-breaking ability. Legs can just choose to move 5 spaces instead of rolling. Banana trips everyone who passes it. Lovable Loser gets a point every time it starts a turn in dead last. There are racers that can move other racers around or slow them down, racers that give themselves a boost when specific conditions are met, racers that benefit when other racers are doing well. And everyone loves Huge Baby, who takes up an entire space so nobody can share it—the extra chunky meeple is such an over-the-top component.
There are limited choices to be made during the race itself—some characters have optional abilities (like rerolling dice) but for the most part once the racers have been placed on the board, it’s mostly a matter of watching things play out. In that sense, it is a lot like Hot Streak, another wacky racing game from CMYK: most of the strategic decisions take place before the race starts.
Here, the two decisions are drafting your team of racers, and choosing which racer you use for each race. The rulebook advises you to save your best racer for last, since the last race is worth the most points. But the “best” racer in each game really depends on context. A lot of abilities depend on what other racers are doing! Unlike most team-building strategy, you’re not actually looking for 4 racers who work well together, because your own racers won’t ever be on the board at the same time. Instead, you’re looking for racers who will synergize with other players’ racers … and then, ideally, figuring out when those racers will be on the track. As you play Magical Athlete, you’ll get to know the racers better and how their powers trigger, but with 35 total, there are so many combinations that it’s likely you’ll see a different mix each time you play.
Of course, with the 2- and 3-player variant rules, everyone controls a pair of racers for each race. That gives you a little more opportunity to pair up racers, and makes it a little more strategic. It extends the game a little, but it still plays pretty quickly.
What I love about this is that you can take this approach, trying to outguess the other players, but you can also just choose racers based on vibes, and then sit back and watch how the races unfold. Younger kids can get in on the fun really easily, rolling dice and moving and watching for opportunities to use their abilities. It’s the sort of game that young kids can play with grandparents and everyone in between.
Since both Hot Streak and Magical Athlete are from CMYK, I’ve had friends ask me which of the two is better, and it’s been hard for me to decide. What makes both of the games fun is watching a chaotic race and cheering for your chosen racer while absurd things happen on the racetrack. Hot Streak is a bit more strategic because the racers’ movements aren’t totally random: you have some information about what cards are in the deck, and you also get the opportunity to put in a card to exert just a tiny bit of influence on it. Magical Athlete is easier to get up and running without having to explain much. While it may not be as deep, I think Magical Athlete is one that I’ll probably be introducing to a lot more people because it works with a broader range of players.
I did play the original 2003 version of Magical Athlete once, back in 2013. A friend of mine had a copy and wanted to show us this game that made roll-and-move worth playing again. The original version was a bit more complex: instead of just drafting racers, you started with a number of points and had to pay points for the racers. That added another layer of strategy to the game—how many points is this racer’s ability worth?—but I really like the simplification of the new version, which gets the race started more quickly.
If you like racing games and revel in a bit of chaos, check out Magical Athlete!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
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