In summary, Long Shot is a horse racing/betting game with a whole lot of luck and not a whole lot of strategy. Even with this high luck/low control you can get right into the game and be yelling and cheering for your favourite horse.

I picked this up at Origins after a quick demo at the Z-Man booth and ended up getting 3 games in (2, 5, and 6 players). The box says it plays 3-8 but I actually played it successfully with 2. The time on the box is correct, and it will play in about 45-60 minutes (including explanation!).

It’s super easy to play. You have 10 horses, each with different odds and a special power. Two dice, a D6 (0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3), and a D10 that represents each of the horses on it’s sides. On your turn you roll the two dice and move that horse forward the amount rolled. You also check the cards of the horses you own, which have a row of numbers on them. If the number rolled matches a number on the card, your horse also moves forward the number on the die. This only happens when YOU own the horse and YOU roll the die, so owning a horse will make them move a little quicker. There is a ‘No Bets’ area for the last 1/4 of the race where bets can no longer be placed on that horse. This can be frustrating where there is a horse real close you’d like to bet on this turn, and you end up rolling and moving him into the no bets zone  Everyone does have a “reroll” token that they can use to reroll ONE die once per game which could help you in this kind of situation though.

If you roll a 0, you do not move any horses, but instead you get to steal an action card from whoever owns the horse you rolled, if it is unowned, you draw a card from the deck. If you own it, tough luck.

After you’ve moved the horses you get to choose between 4 actions:
1. Play a card
2. Sell 2 cards to the bank for $5
3. Place a $5 bet on a horse
4. Buy an unowned horse

After that, you draw a card and it’s the next players turn.

That’s all there is to the game, once three horses cross the finish line the owners collect money based on their position ($100, $75, $50) and then you calculate the payouts for the bets on the winning horses. Most money wins.
It doesn’t seem like much, but our games ended up being extremely rowdy with a lot of cheering and funny looks from the other gamers in the room.

The cards have some humorous titles like Jockey Itch (send any horse back two spaces) or Grandma’s Dividend Check (collect $10). The cards have many different actions like sending horses forward, backwards, collecting money based on different factors, stealing cards, placing bets, etc. There is a huge stack of cards included and adds a lot of fun to the game.

All in all, this is a very light horse racing game that plays in a short time that is a blast to play. One of my highlights of the convention!