2014 · Portland Game Collective
My Favorite Carrera RS is a "must not follow" trick-taking card game for 3-5 players based on the Japanese manga 彼女のカレラ, a.k.a. My Favorite Carrera. The game has six suits of cards ranked 1-5, with two differently suited versions of the 4-ranked card. Each rank is its own suit, e.g., all 1s are yellow, all 2s are blue, etc.
At the beginning of a game, each player has six cards and five fuel chips. The lead player of a trick plays a card from their hand, then in turn order, the following players each play a card of their choice to the trick with the caveat that no two cards can be of the same suit. The rank on a played card represents the speed of the player's race car. When playing a card, the player can place any number of fuel chips from their reserve on the card to increase its rank by 1 per chip. The player whose card rank is the highest wins the trick and receives a momentum token, then leads the next trick. Momentum tokens can be thought of as permanent fuel chips; when a player plays a card to a trick after having won any momentum token(s), their card rank will automatically be +1 per momentum token they have in their possession.
When a player cannot play a card of a unique suit to a trick, they play a card of choice face down. Note that a player can also choose to play a card face down even if they could play a unique suit. This card's rank is 0, and momentum tokens and fuel chips have no effect. After determining the trick winner, all players who have played face down refill their fuel chips, splitting all of the fuel chips played on previous tricks as evenly as possible. If a player now has more than five fuel chips, they discard the excess from the game. (Any chips that could not be divided evenly are also discarded from the game.)
The final trick of a round is the most important trick as that round's winner receives a trophy token, then a new round begins, with all players discarding their momentum tokens and keeping their fuel tokens; all fuel chips in the market remain there. Whoever won the final trick of the previous round is the first lead player. The game continues until one player earns a second trophy token and wins.
Twists: Small card powers.
-Cards ranked 1 will turn rank 4 or 5 cards to 0 when assessing the trick. However, any momentum tokens and fuel chips on the affected cards still increase their rank by the normal +1 per.
