Each driver deck is identical except for the color. As such, it is a true card game rather than a collectible card game.

The three track decks represent the three different types of courses: One mile oval, short track and super speedway. (McCartlin is supposed to be working on a road course deck, but I gather they're having problems with getting it to work - we may never see that one.)

The main differences between the track decks is the number of cards you can play per turn, and how far each track card goes. Basically, each hand of the game represents a number of laps represented by the card drawn from the track deck. Each player must first play one or more cards from his hand that total or exceed this hand's lap count. Each card has a maneuver and a lap count, so you have to choose which card(s) to use to make the lap count as those cards cannot be used to race with. Then, after everyone has made their lap counts, the racers can, one at a time, try to pass, block and pull away by using their remaining cards.

The hitch is, that in the superspeedway deck, you can only play 3 cards per turn, and a lot of those track cards are high lap numbers (24 or 30 laps). This means you may have to spend two or three of your cards each hand just making the lap count, so there won't be a lot maneuvering done. In the one mile oval track deck, the track cards have a lot of low lap numbers, and you can play 5 cards per turn. Thus, it will be a lot of maneuvering each hand. The short track deck falls in middle both in lap counts on the cards and allowing you to play 4 Cards per turn.

I hope this helps. As I said earlier, this is a really fun game, I enjoy playing it a lot. I bought all three tracks and six player decks. The game is even better if you get some of the Racing Champions or Matchbox stock cars and use them as counters to represent each driver and car. Have a few extra, as well, to use for blocking traffic.

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