Bartosz Trzaskowski
Poland
Warszawa
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Due to some superbusy time at work I had recently a bit less time to play boardgames with my daughters
 . I noticed, however, that they sometimes play games on their own and particularly one game gets played quite often. So today it's time to review this game - the great classic from Rio Grande/Selecta, named Giro Galoppo. It's a horse-racing game for 2 to 5 players with a clever card-driven mechanism that guarantees very tight races and lot of fun.
Components.
The box is OK - quite sturdy with a nicce picture from the game in the front:
while the back shows all the components and a brief description of the game:
Inside you will find rules (my version bought in the US has a 4-page, colourful rules in German in A5 format and a bit smaller, black&white rules in english, french, dutch, italian, spanish, portugal and japanese):
a set of 30 cards - 6 cards numbered 1 through 6 in five different colors (white, green, blue, red, yellow) corresponding to the 5 players:
5 wooden pawns (horsemen on horses), which are one of the best-looking pawns ever and 5 obstacles:
and a very colourful and beautifully drawn, 2-dimensional board depicting a horse track:
The compononents are definitely top-notch and make you (and your kids) wanna play the game.
Gameplay.
Rio Grande could follow the Ravensburger path and prepare standard, boring rules which would have turned the game into luck-driven dicefest with gorgeous components ... but they didn't. The rules, while simple, are interesting and allow for some tactics. The game starts with placing the obstacles on the horse track; these are placed by players in turn making the track different each game. There are also two natural obstacles already on the board, so there is always seven obstacles present.
The goal os obvious - you have to get to the finish line as first players to win it all. You move your pawn by playing a card with number 1-6 and then moving the corresponding number of spaces. What makes it intereseting is that all players play their cards face down simultaneously and then turn them down. The players who has the lowest number moves first, while the player with the highest number moves last. If two (or more) players played the same card the player who is further behind plays first.
Why is it interesting? Well, it's thanks to another rule which states, that only one pawn can occupy each space. If a pawn finishes its move on a space with another pawn, the horse that was already standing on that space gets pushed back to the next, unoccupied space. After the movement the played cards get discarded and another round follows. After six rounds, when all cards were played, they are returned to each player.
These rules allow to plan ahead your movement (even for several turns) and develop some tactics before and during the game. They also require a bit of memorizing, since the knowledge which players played which cards is important for planning ahead your moves. When played by "serious" players, this game can get very tense with some nasty moves forcing other players to fall back. Since all players use the same cards, the races are usually very tight and can get down to the wire.
Gameplay with 4-years olds.
I'm 100% sure that your kids will be delighted with the look of the game, but may not easily catch the flow of the game and the strategies leading to winning. My kids, when started playing the game, just played the highest available card, which in many cases was not the optimal move. They also did not enjoy the very competetive nature of the game and the possibility to move back pawns of other players. I think that only now (when they're almost 5) they start seeing the depth of the game and hopefully enjoy it from a more adult point of view.
We sometimes also play with using dice, not cards. It turns the game into quite a chaotic dicefest, but my kids don't mind it so I'm OK with it. The huge advantage of the game is, however, the possibility of using the gorgeous pawns as toys and this is wha my daughters do a lot, just play with them. So overall, while a bit too complicated for 4-years old kids, I don't regret buying it and will keep it for some time more.
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Andy Andersen
United States
Newark
Delaware
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I'm not sure a 4 year old could have any understanding of this, but.....
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Cheryl (sev) T-Z
Washington
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My four-year-old has largely grown out of Cariboo, so I'm glad to see this -- the mechanics totally sound like something she'll grow into but will still be fun even before she figures it out. Thanks!
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Dan Daly
United States
Perryopolis
Pennsylvania
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This one is definitely on my "thinking about" list. Thanks for the review. Right now, my 4 year old is having a blast with Das MotorsportSpiel.
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Matt G
United States
Connecticut
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My three year old can play along. She started just by picking random cards but is learning to count the spaces to avoid the obstacles. She has fun and adds a wild element to the race.
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