Racing Legends: Solo Heat and How to Beat the Bots

Legends are the automated cars in the base box. They let you race Heat alone, fill out a two or three player grid, and, once you turn up their speed, give you a practice partner that never gets tired. This lesson covers how they move, how to race them well, and how to use them to train. It follows the Legends module in the Advanced Play and Championship System booklet.

How a Legend moves

All Legends share one deck of 10 Legends cards. Each round, when the first Legend is due to move, flip one card. Every Legend uses that card this round. Each Legend does one of two things, depending on where it is relative to the Legends Line, a line printed on the track before each corner.

Past the Legends Line: the Legend attacks the corner. It moves the corner’s Speed Limit plus the number in the diamond for its color on the card. Sometimes that is not far enough to clear the corner. It never crosses two Corner Lines in one move.

Not yet at the Legends Line: the Legend moves its Top Speed, the number in the helmet for its color, if that does not carry it over the next Corner Line. If it would, the Legend stops on the numbered Space 0 to 3 before the Corner Line shown in its diamond.

Legends never slipstream, use Heat, or cool down. They count when deciding who is last for Adrenaline, but get nothing from it.

Why Legends bunch up before corners

The second rule is the one to learn. A Legend far from a corner either races ahead at Top Speed or parks on one of the few numbered Spaces just before the Corner Line. With several Legends approaching the same corner, they often end up within a few Spaces of each other, right before the line.

For you, that cluster is three things at once:

• Slipstream targets. Land next to or behind a Legend just short of the line, and slipstream across it. Those 2 Spaces never count toward your Speed, so the corner costs less.
• Blocked Spaces. If both Spots on a Space are full, a car that would end there stops behind. A cluster of Legends can push you back.
• A reason to move later. You choose cards before the Legends card is flipped, so you cannot know exactly where they will land. If you sit further back on the track, you move after them and can see where they ended before you React and slipstream.

Adrenaline with Legends

Legends count for Adrenaline. If a Legend is the last car to move, nobody gets the bonus, because Legends get no benefit from it. In a race of 5 or more cars, the last two get it; Legends still take up those places. When you race Legends, do not count on Adrenaline to bail you out the way you might at a full human table.

How tough should they be?

The booklet offers Pro Legends: add 1 or more to every Top Speed on the cards. The designers usually race them at +2.

A simple ladder:

1. Standard Legends while you learn the module.
2. +1 once you beat them most races.
3. +2, the designers’ level. The World Boardgaming Championships Heat event has filled short tables with tougher “pro” Legends, so practice against tough ones.

Solo races as practice

Racing alone against Legends is the fastest way to drill the parts of Heat that do not depend on reading people:

• Corner math. Every corner, say your Speed and the limit out loud before you reveal.
• Heat budgeting. Track how much Heat is left in your Engine at the start of each lap.
• Finishing with an empty Engine. The goal from the endgame lesson: cross the line with nothing left.

Keep a short log after each race: your place, spin outs, and Heat left at the finish. Over ten races, the numbers will show whether you are getting faster. Our list of the best solo board games has more for nights alone.

Legends at a small table

With two or three players, the booklet suggests adding Legends, at least two if you add any. More cars means more slipstream, more blocked Spaces, and a race that feels like the full grid. Two humans plus four Legends is a good way to practice a full six-car grid.

Heat: Legends

Days of Wonder also publishes an expansion called Heat: Legends, listed as adding smarter, tougher automated drivers that slipstream, draft, and clear corners, with new abilities and difficulty settings. It needs the base game.

The base box’s Legends are enough for everything in this lesson.