Tips heat

Discarding

Discarding cards is about two things. Hand management and deck management.

Hand Management

Try to plan a few turns ahead, and keep cards you will use. Do not hold on to cards you will use 5 turns from now.

If you are in a flexible situation that could be solved in several gears, try and keep as diverse a set of cards in hand as possible. Keeping one of each value and discarding excess of each.

For all of the above the state of your deck impacts the decision too. The odds of getting what you want drastically change based on a number of factors, that are too complicated to summarize without seeing the whole race.

Deck Management

Discarding is probably even more impactful. You can’t discard Heat or Stress cards, but certainly discarding greatly impacts both. Let’s start with two simple examples.

Stress Cards

Firstly if I play all my three stress cards at a time where there are two cards left in my draw deck, I know for a fact that I will shuffle mid turn. My draw deck will effectively be reset, while my stress cards are in the play area. The result is less exposure to stress. A well timed boost can also trigger such a mid turn reshuffle (or mistimed…).

Heat Cards

For heat cards I could have a discard pile with 2-3 of them already in there. When discarding cards that decision could easily impact if I would reshuffle this turn or the next. As there is a big difference between having a draw deck stacked with 5-6 heat cards or half of that, timing when to reshuffle impacts many rounds ahead. Moreover the decisions obviously change based on whether or not you’re heading into a long straight, where 6 heat in draw deck could spell disaster, or four corners where it could be risky but potentially peachy.

Reshuffling

If you are heading out into the long straight on the Italy track your perfect hand of seven cards would be your three 1s for third gear and the corner, and then a full complimentary of your highest cards. However when you reshuffle is just as important. If you reshuffle while going through the corner, sure you will have a fast turn in fourth gear coming up, but all your high cards will go straight into a shallow discard pile. Ideally you want to play them all and then be able to immediately redraw them to play again.

The stress card example from above also works in reverse. Do you really want to play it (or boost) if it freezes your upgrades or high cards out of your deck for a full cycle?

For most of the above deck management examples, you will have to think about the timing a few rounds ahead. While of course trying not to compromise the hand management needs, and adapting the risk/reward decision to the position amongst the other drivers and your current stress or overheat status.

Summarized from https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2998329/strategy-discarding