Tips automobiles

For the rules of Automobiles, see GameHelpAutomobiles.

1-Minute Strategy Read

Focus your first several turns on sculpting the content of your bag. This means adding cubes you want, and removing ones you don’t.

Which cubes are most desirable depends on the situation (several situations are discussed below). In general, look for the most desirable cubes among the blue and green cubes.

Buy enough purple cubes to keep wear under control. If you don’t know how many that is, buy 3. (You’ll get a feel for how many your situation calls for with experience.) Remember drafting can help you manage wear.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking a cube that could sometimes be helpful is automatically desirable. Remember each time you draw a mediocre cube, it could be preventing you from drawing a more desirable cube. (For example, yellow cubes often bog down one’s bag more than they help.) Remove undesirable cubes as you can.

Card Set Strategies

How to shape one's bag varies greatly based on the card set, track/racing season, and driver (if used). Your game's card set may not be listed below, but understanding strategies for various card sets will likely help you develop a strategy tailored to your specific card set.

First Game Card Set (Manager, Suspension, Crew Chief, Hybrid Engine, Gearbox)

Hybrid Engine is very powerful, so buy them during your setup turn and on your standard turns. If your opponents are experienced, Hybrid Engines will be bought until they are depleted. If your opponents are not experienced, you may be the only one buying them while others are racing. In this case, keep buying engine cubes either until they are depleted, or until opponents are about 1 lap up on you. White cubes, however, are not useful either for buying cubes, or for moving when compared to Hybrid Engine. So when a yellow cube is not useful for its buying power, use it to remove a white cube. In a base 2-player game, experienced players may spend their first 7 (or so) turns sculpting their bag (mostly buying blue and purple cubes, and removing white cubes) before moving on their 8th turn. (Using a driver from the expansion may shorten this time, as drivers can increase purchasing power.)

What about the other cubes? Gearbox can be powerful, but it can undermine Hybrid Engine. Adding Gearboxes to your bag makes your bag less dense with Hybrid Engines, which will be a problem if you don't draw enough Hybrid Engines to be playable (that is, more than is in any other players' discard pile). The same reasoning goes for Suspension, so be cautious about buying these cubes. However, Crew Chief does not suffer from this downside, because when played, it replaces itself with a cube from the bag. Just be sure to play Hybrid Engines first if Crew Chief might re-bag your discard cubes and make Hybrid Engine unplayable.

Rev’d Up (Car Chief, Aerodynamics, Crew Chief, Hybrid Engine, Boost)

As is typically the case when Hybrid Engine is available, buy as many as you can. You’ll probably want your share of Crew Chiefs. Crew Chief should make Aerodynamics unnecessary.

Consider pursuing one of the following (you probably can’t pursue both):

• buy Boosts to help you add Hybrid Engines to your Active pile. However, be aware that sometimes Boosts can work against you. For example, Boost may cause you to restock your bag, including bagging discarded Hybrid Engines that are needed to make your Active pile Hybrid Engines playable.
• buy so many Crew Chiefs that some opponents can’t get their share to keep wear under control. However, because Crew Chief is so effective, be aware your opponents may only need a few Crew Chiefs.

Rinse & Repeat (Factory Support, Burnout, Pit Mechanic, Internal Combustion, Overdrive)

driverless races, and drivers with neutral or lengthened bag cycles
This card set offers may desirable options. Some experienced players will load up on Burnout; others will load up on Overdrive; many will buy a combination of both. But nearly all experienced players will try to get their share of Internal Combustion. Internal Combustion is powerful because it lets you trade a less powerful cube for 3 more powerful cubes from your discards, which lets the player get even more use out of Burnout and Overdrive.

Note, however, that these highly desirable cubes (Burnout, Internal Combustion, Overdrive) all add wear, and Pit Mechanic is limited in its ability to remove wear. This means you will want to get enough Pit Mechanics to keep wear under control, and it means you'll want to draft in situations where moving further is not worth the additional wear.

drivers with shortened bag cycles
Using a driver which shortens the bag cycle lessens the benefits of Burnout and Internal Combustion. In this situation a player might be justified in not pursuing red and blue cubes.

Cube Analysis

Boost

Typically, Boost gives you 1 cube up on your opponents, not 2 or 3.

Why only 1? Boost needs to draw 1 just to replace itself and pull its own weight. But it also lets opponents draw 1, so it needs to draw another to keep up with opponents. Finally, it needs to draw a 3rd cube just to give any advantage at all.

Still, being up a cube can be very helpful. But you’ll taken on 3 wear to do this. You’re also running through your bag faster, which is undesirable in some situations.

So, how desirable Boost is (or whether it’s even desirable at all) depends on other factors (primarily the other cards, and one’s driver if used).

Crew Chief

Crew Chief is the most forgiving cube in terms of removing wear. Even so, experienced players can still let wear get out of control even when they have access to Crew Chief. So be careful to buy enough before they are bought out. In fact, consider buying so many that your opponents can’t buy enough for themselves. Because Crew Chief replaces itself with a non-wear, it will not dilute your Active pile as a non-productive cube (discounting edge cases, such as situations where you don’t want to trigger a restocking of your bag).

Crew Chief limitations:

• if the cubes remaining in your bag are all wear, or if your bag is empty, Crew Chief will be incapable of removing any wear.
• Crew Chief can’t remove anything other than wear.

Diesel Engine

Diesel engine requires dark gray cubes to be powerful. So when pursuing a diesel engine strategy, keep an eye on the number of available dark gray cubes so that you get enough before they run out.

Players pursuing a diesel engine strategy will often end their turns in 5th gear spaces. So if you're not the only player pursing a diesel engine strategy, you'll want to increase your mix of light gray cubes in order to pass (and depending on the track, perhaps a few black cubes as well).

Hybrid Engine

This is a powerful cube. It does carry a risk that it will be unplayable when an opponent has more in their discard than you have on your board. But if you avoid that risk by not buying it, an opponent who took that risk will likely dominate you. Therefore, buy it, and buy as many as you can to minimize the risk that it will be unplayable.

Also resist adding much in the way of other cubes to your bag. If you water down your bag too much with other cubes, you’ll draw fewer blues on average, and increase the chance that they won’t be playable. Even if they are playable, you’d rather have more blues to play than fewer.

Considerations

big bag vs small bag

Some situations lend themselves to big bags; that is, ones with sufficient cubes for 4 or more turns before a refill. Card sets with cubes that rely on discarded cubes for their power tend to fall in this category. Other situations call for a small bag; that is, one that refills in no more than 2 turns. A small bag has less variability for each draw than a large bag. In the extreme case, a tiny bag that draws the entire bag contents each turn has no variability at all. In this last case, a well thought-out bag can be reliably powerful, but requires care to never gather wear.

cube exhaustion

Since cubes are limited, be sure to buy needed cubes before they are exhausted. Alternatively, you can attempt to exhaust a supply before opponents get the cubes they need. Purple cubes tend to be particularly susceptible to exhaustion.

Driver Analysis

All driver abilities can be helpful, and all are optional.

Note some cubes rely on the discard pile, and the discard pile is typically empty after a bag refill. At such times, those cubes are useless for that turn. This leads to the following concepts:

• bag cycle: some abilities can lengthen or shorten the number of turns between bag refills. For cubes that rely on the discard pile, a longer bag cycle is better.
• empty refill: some abilities allow you to plan for your bag to be empty when it gets refilled. This is helpful because the more cubes that are in your bag when it is refilled, the more likely you'll lose the chance to use cubes that depend on the discard pile.

Driver 01

bag cycle: neutral
empty refill influence: none

Driver 02

bag cycle: neutral
empty refill influence: none

Driver 03

bag cycle: lengthens
empty refill influence: yes

This is the only driver capable of lengthening the bag cycle.

Driver 04

bag cycle: shortens
empty refill influence: yes

Driver 04 has the most buying power of any driver, which makes it desirable when multiple players are competing to buy the most cubes of a particular kind. Driver 04's buying power comes not only from adding cubes during the Buy phase, but also from removing cubes with weak purchasing power.

Driver 04 can be used to avoid refilling the bag with wear that is gained on turns which trigger a bag refill, as follows: plan ahead so that the turn which triggers a refill has no more than 2 cubes left in the bag. Then use the driver ability to draw enough cubes to trigger a refill. As this happens during the Buy phase, any wear earned during the current turn has not yet been discarded, so they are not used as part of the refill.

As of April 2023, more BGA games are won with driver 04 than any other driver. However, that doesn't mean that driver 04 is best for your situation. Some card sets may favor other drivers.

Driver 05

bag cycle: neutral
empty refill influence: none

As of April 2023, fewer BGA games are won with driver 05 than any other driver. However, that doesn't mean that driver 05 is not the best driver for your situation.

Driver 06

bag cycle: neutral
empty refill influence: none

Driver 07

bag cycle: shortens
empty refill influence: yes

Driver 08

bag cycle: neutral
empty refill influence: none

Driver 09

bag cycle: shortens
empty refill influence: yes

Driver 09 can be a strong choice for a small bag strategy, and especially for tiny bag strategies.

Driver 10

bag cycle: shortens (but without the usual downside; see below)
empty refill influence: yes

Driver 10's ability is unique in that although it shortens the bag cycle, it can always keep some cubes in discard, which mitigates the downside of bag refills.