Heat: Tunnel Vision Board Game Review

Heat is one of the more popular racing games currently available at retail and for good reason – the game is great fun and really simple to play. There is some strategy in how your deck gets built out and when you risk those stress cards, but overall the game is pretty accessible to a wide variety of ages and folks with varying degrees of board game knowledge. We missed out on the Heat: Heavy Rain expansion which added a ton of cool new features, but Asmodee Canada has sent over a copy of Tunnel Vision, so let’s take a look!

Like with Heavy Rain, Tunnel Vision provides players with a brand new, two-sided track board that features some of the new concepts introduced in this expansion (tunnels, for one). There are also player pieces and cards added so you can play Heat with an additional player. If you just have the base game, this will expand your options to 7-players; if you have Heavy Rain, this will bring your car count to 8. A few additional heat and stress cards are also added to be put into the main decks, and a few other cards that are utilized with the expansion (primarily).

These new cards bolster your championship deck, event deck, etc. and just makes the game have more stuff. None of these new cards were mind blowing in my opinion, but in this game more is better, I guess. Let’s put it this way, I’d rather them throw in more cards for these decks than just opt to not do it…right? What am I saying…it’s all good here, I love more cards!

The new front wing garage cards, however, are a fantastic edition! These cards add in the concept of drafting, which provides some free movement. The number of draft symbols are added together, and as long as there are no cars blocking your movement, players can move additional spaces on top of their speed, so long as they end their movement with at least one car in the spaces ahead of them. These have proven to be very powerful cards, and thankfully you get a lot of them. It’s also a great catch-up mechanic in my opinion, as players at the front cannot use them since there are no cars for them to end up behind.

Heat’s new board is chalked full of new ideas and concepts as well. Tunnel spaces stop players from discarding cards from their hands, even if card effects tell them to do so. This didn’t have as big of an impact on the game as I thought it might, but it is yet another wrinkle that players need to think about as they head into a tunnel section. The simplicity of just making players rethink their strategy is enough to make this a great addition in my opinion.

The other major board feature is Chicanes. These are subsequent quick turns with the same speed value. Blue curbs are placed on each side of the track denoting a Chicanes so they are easy to spot! These unique locations on the map are impacted by Weather and Road Condition modules, so they only are impacted if those modules are being used. When drawing the tiles for these corners during setup, new rules apply that makes these corners a bit more difficult than others.

What I love, and others might hate, is that Heat: Tunnel Vision is not some massive expansion to really elevate your copy of Heat. It’s a bunch of smaller modules that can be mixed into your experience to change your experience just a little bit. I’ve always been a fan of modules over expansions, so to see this being used here is a huge bonus in my books. Whether you want some really meaty, or are OK with just a few new additional things, I think Tunnel Vision is a great addition to your Heat collection.