 I have played pitch car, I want to say seven or eight times in my life at various points. Some single digit number of times, but for real, various degrees, right? It's like, because sometimes you play a little pitch car and sometimes you play a big pitch car. Yeah. At a gathering, relatively recently, thanks to our good friend Matt, we were able to play what I would call- Matt owns every single pitch car expansion. I'd say we played a fully realized pitch car. Like, yeah. So I don't think it gets bigger or better than that. Your wildest dreams. Yeah. You could buy multiple sets and make it even bigger. But it's like, what's the point then, right? This is the ideal sized pitch car. Yep. So pitch car is one of those previews, like relatively rare games. There's more now, but it kind of comes and goes in the in the tabletop gaming world, uh, dexterity games come and go in terms of popularity. But a very specific subset of dexterity games are the flicking games. I want to make a comment about flicking games in general while we're while we're here because we're not. And, you know, this happened and I didn't, you know, comment on it at the time because who really cares, right? It's not that serious a game. But whenever I play flicking games, even as far back as like middle school times, a lot of people don't flick properly. As far as I'm concerned, I had a note in my notes that I wanted to bring that up and another related topic up before we got in a pitch car as far as I'm concerned, a valid flick means that you use your thumb and you pick one of your other four fingers. It doesn't matter which one. I don't really care, right? Middle fingers, the best one, but yeah, but you pick one of your other fingers and you press the nail of the finger against your thumb as hard as you want, right, but your finger doesn't move actually move forward because your thumb is holding it back. And then you release your thumb and your finger is all that pressure that you were applying to your thumb with your finger is released in one instant and your finger that is released hits the object that you are flicking for a mere instant and then it transfers, you know, power and momentum into it and then that object then moves and that is a flick. I've seen people do shit like put their thumb on top of an object and try to like, you know, release it. That's not a valid flick, right? I've seen people like push it, push it, like tap it with the back of their finger or it's like, no, yeah, none of those are valid flicks. And if I was holding a serious competition, you know, it's no one's playing pitch cards seriously is not we weren't. But if I was having any serious competition at a flicking game, if someone did an invalid flick, as in not what I just described and, you know, they were capable, physically capable, I would try to like ten and get a fault and then a double fault. I'd be like, I would just say like, listen, you know, that was your one warning. If you if you ever do a non valid flick again in the tournament, you're just disqualified from the whole tournament. So you must do a valid true flick. Anything else is not a flick. Get out of here. Hey, so the second point around that that's in my notes, I guess we'll get this out of the way first before we review pitch car as a flicking game, because this also is not about pitch car. This is about all flicking games. I have found in my personal experience across all flicking games that the people who do not flick properly either do not want any instruction or assistance flicking. Like they will actively resist being given advice or help. And to even if given advice and help will never flick properly. Like they just never change what they're doing no matter what. But what this leads to is my sort of final flicking game conundrum and you if you want to play pitch car games like it with your friends, this is a warning. Just like there are games where they can be played fast, but a certain kind of person will bog it down. Pitch car and all flicking games I have found cause a significant percentage of the people who play them to get really, really frustrated, angry, heated, yelling, quitting the game. Even in a non serious who cares game. Yeah. Like even when everyone in the group is supportive and everyone's laughing and having a good time and no one cares who wins, I see people and the same thing happens in mini golf. I see people lose their fucking shit in these games and like have to walk away or start yelling or get actually angry. And I have seen this in every tabletop flicking game I have ever played like without exception. Not all dexterity games have this problem flicking games. If you have a friend who gets a little over frustrated if they're not doing well in a game, I advise you to not play flicking related games with them or sports in general. But I guess flicking games are a place where there's a lot of people who have that problem who might avoid sports, but don't quite internalize that a flicking game is also a sport. And thus they start playing it. They don't do well and rather than just shrugging it off like they might in a regular tabletop game, they get like unreasonably angry. OK, so pitch car is a flicking game where it's really straightforward as you build a racetrack like Hot Wheels, but only wider, right? And you have discs, just wooden discs, basically. And you take turns, you have a disc that's your car. And on your turn, you flick it. And your goal is to get around the racetrack first. It's a race, right? But everyone gets an equal number of flicks because you take turns in rotation. Right. So that's all there is to it, really. If you go off the track, however, which happens often. Yeah, basically what happens is you have to put your disc back where it started and then wait for, you know, your next turn. And you basically just didn't progress that turn, which that's the thing that bogs the game down. However, you could say, well, why don't you just, you know, put the disc where it left the track, but the person then loses their next turn. And it's like you could do that. But actually that would encourage people to just hit the thing really hard and leave the track somewhere really far away. So that that would actually give them more progress, right? Actually having to progress safely through all the parts of the track is what makes the game meaningful. If you could just otherwise it would just become flick the hardest the game and the track itself would lose all meaning and purpose. That's why you can't have that rule adjustment. Now, the other little bit is that the car, the little cars have a car logo on the top and nothing on the bottom because you also your car needs to land face up. Correct. Now, you could it could flip over as long as it lands face up. You're all good. Now, one thing I did find the digging through some online chatter and the board game being forum is that most people who I feel like there are people who play pitch car once or twice at a convention and people are a pitch car people. And I have found reliably people are into pitch car will do something that it's I think it's a flaw in the game that the game does not have the like extremely precise rules to handle all the potential edge cases of a flicking on a ride. But the way to deal with that, if you play pitch car, this is one of those games where you should, regardless of exactly what the rules say, define upfront out loud with the group you're playing with exactly how the game will proceed in detail and pre make the calls you expect to be able to have to make based on the track and the people, even if those are not in the rules. This is the one case where I say you need to do that up front, not only to avoid the weird frustration problem, but also to avoid the debate mid game of whether or not a flick was OK. Yep. So the components in this game are honestly pretty A plus they you're going to make a pretty good course. And it's pretty obvious what makes a good obstacle or not. Like I'm really impressed with the physicality of this game. It's the kind of game. If I had a house, I would definitely own it because I have a New York apartment. I will definitely never own that the thing is, you know, you have to have to build a good course. You either need to a not have enough pieces that you can make something that won't work in which case anyone can build the course or B if you have lots and lots of pieces for lots and lots of fun, you need adult considered restraint to not make an impossible course. Yep, right. It's like you need to combine the difficult and fun, you know, aspects of the course, like little jumps or ramps or the loop, right, which is a whole expansion in and of itself, right? But like, don't put like the jumps in front of the loop. It's impossible, right? It's like there should just be a straightaway for the loop, right? Because otherwise, you're no one's ever going to be able to do the loop and it'll just be a frustrating, you know, mess and no one will win. You know, it's like you could build the bridge. It's like make the area around the bridge kind of easy because actually getting over the bridge isn't as easy as it looks, you know, but if you show the restraint, any of the obstacles individually, or at least in the correct orientations are conquerable, right? With some amount of flicks, you know, we did a we did what a two lap race and we finished, right? So, you know, and I guess that is where this is a game to where that curation you described is very important designing the track. Not only is it super important and like that's going to determine if the game is fun or not, but designing the track is itself fun. Like I think half the fun of owning pitch car or playing pitch car is you're sometimes the one who sets up the track for everyone to play. Like it would be fun if you own this game to take turns who makes the track. People will have different styles and there's a lot of debate among pitch car people among around what makes a good track, what makes a poor track and how are you going to handle situations with the track like splits or deviates or does something crazy. But I think a real key there is you want to design a track that has relatively easy straightforward areas that are connecting what you would consider to be relatively discreet challenges. Mm hmm. Kind of like how good Mario Kart tracks are or good actual real world race tracks are like a race track has a long straightaway. A long straightaway in and of itself is not hard in a race car. It is somewhat. You mean you stood this the difficulty of you're trying to you know there is some challenge to it. Yeah. If you're you're putting on the maximum speed you're flooring it, but you have to hit the brakes at some point because the straightaway will end. And it's like how long do you floor it? When do you stop? That's the challenge of a straightaway. But that challenge is partly but it's not the same as the straightaway as the challenge of a complicated chicane with three turns that suddenly goes downhill. That's right. And arguably much of the challenge of the straightaway is defined by the chicane that's right after it or the corner that's right after it. Yeah. And this the components of this game do a really good job of giving you the tools you need to make an interesting and compelling course for the flicking. Like it's a fun game to play. I really enjoy it. I would play it again pretty much any time. Mm hmm. My only real complaint other than you know, it takes a long time to set up, a long time to tear down the components are a little fragile and you might not have the space or the people who will not freak out to play it is just that it's the kind of game if you want to enjoy it. I feel like you want to play it regularly in the same way that mini golf is the kind of game that's more fun if you play it regularly as opposed to just once a year. I think it's it's one of those things. I think mini golf can be fun if you play it regularly, but you would need more than one mini golf course, right? If you're playing at the same mini golf, like if you owned a mini golf or worked at one and you played that course every day and then you've got really good at it, it's like then it would have no right with pitch car, you can keep remixing the track through right all the time and that's what can keep it fresh as you play it repeatedly and build your skills. You know, but yeah, mini golf, you would need to go traveling around to different mini golfs, right? Even regular golf. You have to go to different golf courses playing the same regular golf course over and over. Some people do that, but it's like, I mean, that that's this. Those are the same people who play Counter Strike dust to only exactly, right? Another thing about pitch car is that, you know, you there are some if you make a long straightaway, you have to consider that if people are flicking properly, right, they're going to try to get as much power as they can. And the disk is wood. It's like you can hurt your fingers playing pitch car just on your own. Yep. Flicking your own disk. And because pitch car is a dexterity game and thus it is a sport just like Jungle Speed, where you can break your finger. Right. It's like you are like if there's a long straightaway or the loop, it's like the way to conquer those is indeed with power, like as much power as you can get is only going to help you get through those. I got to say the finger hurting problem. I think partly a factor there is that we're all around 40 now because when I was in middle school and high school and I played a lot of flicking games like we play a lot of games that involve flicking like just various like I don't want to I don't have names for the games you play at a lunch table. We'd flake each other. We'd play a flaking with a punch for punch. Flicking did not hurt me at any point in my life until I was 40. And now I think it's because I think it's because I was flicking at the lunch table. It was like a cardboard trying. It was a piece of paper folding. Oh, no, we were playing with marbles. We weren't fucking around. I'm just saying, but I got the piece of wood and you're trying to flick it as hard as you can. Right. A marble, you're never trying to flick it as hard as you can. You're trying to flick it straight. Sometimes with it with a break, some power, but not necessarily as hard as, you know, I think it's not supposed to flick with the thumb up in this. There's a different technique, but we're not talking about marbles. We could do a show on marbles. Yeah, I think you'd be bet it would be cool. I think it wouldn't be feasible, but it'd be cool if someone can make a pitch card where the things you flicked right were somehow softer on the finger, but there was less friction. You know, they were a little slidey, like air hockey pucks. I think you could open up pitch car itself to a broader audience, which would help the people we have encountered who get frustrated because they can't flick. If you if the game had devices that basically would hit the cars, kind of like you have your palette of golf clubs when you're playing golf, you have like a little, like a little tiny thing. You hold like hot wheels. Right. Is it put the car on that little gun and you, you know, you want to pull the string and then you push. So what if instead, you know, you have your one way, all your woods and irons and golf, if there were four devices with different powers and configurations and every turn in pitch car, you pick a device and use it instead of flicking. That would be a way to introduce a little bit of an ego shield and reduce the surprising barrier to entry that knowing how to flick seems to be. Yeah, it removes the necessary, you know, necessity of learning a technique, right? You have a device that does the flicking for you. All you have to do is hold the device near the car, aim it, set its power and push a button. Right. But I mean, you could also achieve that by playing pitch car on like TTS or something where it's like basically, you know, you just as a physics engine, you have a disk object in the 3D world and you just apply a force at an angle and push the flick button and it will flick the object and the physics engine will guide it and not the real world physics. So it's not exactly the same, but, you know, it's probably most of the fun, I imagine. Yeah. So pitch car, I would say in terms of any wrapping up the review, if you are the kind of person who hosts gaming events or shows up to gaming events as the one who brought the game and you're like curating pitch car experiences for other people or what there's a lot of people. If it's if it's a, you know, big atmosphere like kids birthday party who likes cars or games. If you got kids, if I had pitch cars, the kid, this would have been one of my favorite toys. Yeah, it's like it's a big event sort of showcase kind of deal, right? A convention is something like that where you can set up the pitch car and organize it, right? It takes effort to make it happen. But it's, you know, it's worth it if you're going to do that. But it's like just having a pitch car on the shelf with all your other board games. It's like maybe if you don't have any expansion is the little one. It's like maybe. But is it really going to get pulled out? It's like, I don't I don't really see it happening, right? Which I would say people waiting for you to set up the track. It's like, you know, yep. Meanwhile, when we were at our thing, our friend Matt, we just like I went off somewhere and I come back and the pool table is covered in like an F1 quality pitch car track. And I'm like, what's going on here? Yeah. And it's like, well, I guess that's going to happen now because someone went through the effort to make it happen. If not for that person, it doesn't, you know, that would have just sat on the shelf there. Right. At no point would someone have said, let's set up the pitch car, right? But someone independently set up the pitch car. There it is. And they said, I have prepared for you the pitch car. It is here now. Let us play at the appointed time, right? And that and so it was.