2026-02-26T20:38:21Z
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The German title for Magical Athlete is going to be āTurbo Flitzpiepen 2000ā this is enough to make me buy it. Some Germans on BGG think it is dumbā¦ I think it is hilarious.
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Okay, I swear Magical Athlete had a ranking in the mid-6s a few months ago? Maybe a year ago? Itās now at a 7.9!
It canāt actually be that good, can it? And do I really need yet another race game in my collectionā¦?
Canā¦ can I even find itā¦ in Canada? I mean, I donāt need itā¦ and those 6-score reviews are almost always disappointingā¦ soā¦ I wouldnāt buy itā¦ butā¦ if itās availableā¦ it would be neat to knowā¦
(I love the hell outta Hot Streak. I blame all of you for that)
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Predictably, I disagree with their conclusion on which of the two is slightly better 
Iāve played Magical Athlete, and in the 4 rounds we had one where every move set off a chain reaction of other players triggering abilities because of the first dice roll. In another of the 4 rounds nothing impacted anything else and everyone played a near-solo roll and move. Even if it was consistent, Iām just not running back to play it out of more than mild curiosity.
Hot Streak on the other hand I will play repeatedly. Iād play it now. Right now. Having the dealer put a minimum amount of energy into it is really easy to arrange, and it brings joy every time. No contest.
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Yeah, this. I found Magical Athlete to be a fun curiosity thatās worth playing to see if you like it, but I ālove the hell outta Hot Streakā.
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Both are highly variable experiences that I would basically only own to play with people who arenāt that into games or kids. Of the two, I would pick Magical Athlete for those occasions. Itās much more kid-friendly. If I knew or hung out with any game-curious adults who are amenable to gambling, Hot Streak might get a look in.
EDIT: that said, I just learned that the owner somehow made a bunch of rule mistakes, in addition to the unlucky boring initial card deal, so Hot Streak might be better than I gave it credit for, if played correctly.
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Iām now really curious about what the mistakes were.
(Also, it took me several re-readings to realise that the people with whom youād play these games did not consist of āpeople who not only arenāt into games but also arenāt into kidsā.)
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The thing that triggered me to look up the rules was SUSD saying you shuffled the race deck and dealt out cards from it. iirc, we were each dealt 1 new card to add to our āhandā of 2 each race, in order to add one card each to the deck each race, meaning the race deck never varied much and all added cards stayed added. That breaks a core concept.
Then I learned that he missed collisions with downed mascots leading to disqualification, and that mascots can move (safely) into each othersā spaces on the move all cards, which I think might have been played incorrectly, but werenāt game-altering mistakes (albeit disqualification betting featured heavily in our game, and never occurred).
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I havenāt watched this new video, and I donāt have the rules at hand, but (I believe) itās correct that each player keeps their two left-over secret cards from the previous race, and gets dealt one additional card from the re-shuffled deck to bring them back to a total of three (from which they will select one for the next race).
The pool of cards available for a game (3 races) doesnāt change. Itās the same 18 + 2N cards (where N is the number of players), with exactly 18 of those cards being used in any given race. The number of players therefore affects the per-race variability quite a lot.
Iāve also been playing it wrong if this is not correct. (But also, this is why Iāve taken to seeding the deck to make sure that the pool of cards isnāt, by chance, just a big collection of ārun forwardsā.)
Then I learned that he missed collisions with downed mascots leading to disqualification
Ah, yes thatās quite an omission.
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Right, but we were being dealt cards that werenāt from the race deck, they were new cards.
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Oh! I see, yes, thatās definitely incorrect (to my knowledge).
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That is, indeed, incorrect. The total number of cards never changes after the initial setup and deal of cards to the players, and the deck will be the same size each round.
The only thing I am not certain about off the top of my head is if the deck gets laid out again going into the second and third rounds to give players better info to base their bets on. By what was said in the review video, I am guessing no, meaning I played wrong on that element for the one game I have played.
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Yeah, no, that shouldnāt happen, just from a game design perspective (well, that and the rules).
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Hot Streak has not many rules to learn, not many decisions to make, not even many things to do during the game for most playersā¦ yet typically manages to be fun and engaging for everyone at the table. Iām confident that non-gamers can enjoy this.
Magical Athlete meanwhile presents a large cast of characters, each with unique abilities, and players have to draft them. Which means each player will be reading all of the abilities on offer in order to attempt to decide which of them will be better. I just canāt see myself ever trying to get a self-professed non-gamer to agree to a game and then putting this in front of them. Even if you draft randomly (which I get the impression is fine), you then have this mass of new unique rules each race for everyone to navigate?
Maybe my experience of ānon-gamersā is different to SUSDās experience of ānon-gamersā. (My experience is that non-gamers do not want to have to deal with lots of rules.)
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In my experience, young kids will ask what the characters do, but in the end just pick the ones they like the look of, and thatās fine. I imagine adults can do the same. You only need one person at the table who has an overall understanding.
The few decisions in Hot Streak are much more difficult to understand and value. Quite daunting for kids, and it looks like a higher risk of meltdowns to me.
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I think the idea is that the rules for each character are incredibly simple, so even though thereās a bunch of characters, you only need to remember a small subset at a time and the changes to the basic roll and move formula is very minor. Havenāt played it though to know if that is true or not, but that was my impression from the review.
Meanwhile, I calculated out after my one play that Hot Streak needs you to make a total of 16 decisions through the entire game. Many of which happen at the same time as another decision (which bet and then risky or safe). So I would definitely agree that itās a simpler game to play. As they said, only one person needs to know the full rules, everyone else can just be along for the ride.
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I mistakenly did that the first time I played. It was slightly annoying as Iād already shuffled the deck and then realised (wrongly) that I needed to lay it out again per-character. Later I realised that you only do that before the initial race, and for the subsequent races you merely leave the characters on the podium while players are making their bets, and leave it to the players to remember what (they think) the deck consists of.
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It was very surprising to me to hear that some players had found Hot Streak to be stressful (in any negative sense). Excitement and tension? Sure. Stress? Surprising. Yes itās a āraceā which you are ābettingā on the outcome of, but it is such a silly game with such low stakes (to the point that the game doesnāt even officially have a winner or loser), that Iām genuinely startled to learn that it is capable of causing that.
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I donāt know about SUSD, but I was mostly thinking of the stress of making decisions with imperfect information and somewhat complicated value judgements. I had young kids in mind, not adults. Itās a step up from picking characters you like and rolling dice.
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Thats kinda big because a card from the deck gives each player information
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