Heat: Tunnel Vision is an enthusiast’s expansion that you don’t need, but you’ll probably want

As reliable as your favourite mug, Days of Wonder followed on from the successes of Ticket to Ride, Five Tribes, Smallworld and Memoir ‘44 when it released HEAT back in 2023. Designed by Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen and based on the same mechanisms as Flamme Rouge, HEAT is probably the most popular — and possibly the best — racing simulator that you can play today. The second of two expansions released for HEAT so far, HEAT: Tunnel Vision is a connoisseurs expansion that adds relatively little new content, but a lot more of what existing players like.

The first, and perhaps most obvious addition in HEAT: Tunnel Vision is the new board. As always, this is double-sided and includes Espana and the Netherlands. Espana features a number of tunnels that prevent the player from discarding cards no matter what other effects might enable a player to do so. This simulates the intensity of racing through tight tunnels in real life races such as Monaco, but as a gameplay mechanic, it’s a very slight change.

The chicane feature (which appears on both maps) is even more abstract, with blue chevrons noting that two linked corners act as a chicane, and the only change to the base rules for such corners coming into play if you use the weather and road conditions module. If you do, the road condition rules are slightly modified to aid the flow of the game, whereas if you’re not using that module, you can actually just ignore chicanes. For me, this kind of rule is highly indicative of the fact that HEAT: Tunnel Vision is for real fans of the game rather than casual fans, as chicanes will almost never feature in games played by novice HEAT fans.

As with the prior expansion, HEAT: Heavy Rain, there’s a new set of components for an additional player, and if you have both expansions, that means you can now play the game with up to eight racers — whether they be real life or automa based (activated in HEAT through inclusion of the Legends module). On that note, the Legends module has been tweaked to be more aggressive (read that as “harder”) and in this mode, Legends may occasionally cross an additional corner. When I’ve tried this mode, it has made HEAT very hard, so again, this is a module that perhaps suits only the most experienced players.

There are also new Sponsor, Advanced Upgrade and Event cards that simply add to their respective decks, with the Events being focussed on the year 1965 and either allowing the player to either run that season as a campaign, or to mix and match the cards with those they already have to create a custom campaign. It’s worth mentioning here that HEAT and its first expansion are already on BoardGameArena, and personally, I think that’s the best place to play campaign seasons of HEAT. 

And that’s it, to be honest — there’s not much more to say. As an experience, I enjoy the Espana track not only for its tunnels but also for the large number of corners in its coiled-snake design. The Netherlands is much more open track with longer straights and sweeping bends, and whilst that’s fine and adds variety, I feel like we’ve seen similar on other tracks already released. What makes Spain so challenging is the fact you have so many tight corners and that the new tunnels mean you can’t discard cards you don’t want as often — and this leads to some tense, challenging decisions.

For me, HEAT: Tunnel Vision is a solid expansion that adds more of what returning players will like, but adds nothing that new players would recognise as particularly essential. It’s an expansion clearly aimed at experienced players and completionists, and if you want to maximise track variety, make the most of upgrade drafting, play with eight players or experience greater challenge from the Legends, it really will help you with that. If it were a bit cheaper, I’d say the variety alone was enough, but as quite an expensive expansion, I’d suggest you make the most of your base game before deciding whether HEAT: Tunnel Vision is essential for you.

Heat: Tunnel Vision is available now from various outlets, including from Amazon.