I'm sure anyone who's played this game has witnessed a familiar phenomenon -- a player, through absolutely no skill but boundless amounts of luck, manages to flick his or her car in such a way that it bounces off of the track, hits the wall, hops around on the floor, ricochets off the ceiling and somehow manages to land back on the track. In other words, a holy grail shot. Perfectly legal, no problem. However, we've been struggling with how to handle such occurrences when large sections of track have been skipped. On the one hand, we have a rule that skipping sections of the track is entirely in the spirit of the game and can be allowed. On the other hand, sometimes the starting line itself is bypassed and then the question of whether to count the lap gets a little confusing. Our standing house rule is that skipping track sections is okay -- especially since it's rarely possible -- but the puck has to physically pass over the starting line to count as a lap. This rule has led to instances where huge sections of track get skipped -- including the starting line -- and then the player is forced to send the car backward over the start line so that the lap can be registered and then proceed around the track normally. Not a very elegant solution, but it's all we can think of and the instructions don't have any tips for this stuff. An added confusion is the possibility of using the action set to create a crossroads. If the rule is that track sections can be skipped, what's to prevent a player exploiting this rule at the crossroads? Basically, I'm curious how things like this are handled by other groups and whether anyone has a good, solid rule for such things. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 4 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com