Biathlon Blast (Saturday Review)

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The skiers were lined up at the starting line, rifles strapped across their backs, ski sticks in hand. They proudly represented their nations and each represented a different mix of skills. Some were faster going cross-country, others had better endurance and there were some with precision shooting skills. It would be a tense race. It would be a Biathlon Blast by Lars Max Jensen and Carl Tenland from carlMax with art from Damien Mammoliti and Alex Tantraz.

Racing games are always exciting. Competing with other players to get to the finish line first is exhilarating. It’s one of the most direct and literal head-to-head types of gaming experiences there is. Many games have tried different ways of implementing a realistic racing experience, from the traditional and relatively random roll-to-move, all the way to more, and often overly, complex simulations that take many hours to complete. Biathlon Blast is somewhere at the easier end of the spectrum.

Having a Blast

The game clearly aims for an experience that gives players a glimpse of what it’s like to be a biathlon athlete. While being quick to learn, it still offers plenty of tactical choices. Even though Biathlon Blast can be played in under an hour, you still feel how tough real skiers have to be to simply finish the race.

How it achieves all of this is actually quite simple, but let me start at the beginning.

Every skier comes with a unique deck representing different combinations of skills: some competitors are better at cross-country skiing, others have more endurance and others are better shooters. That creates a nice bit of variability, allowing players to choose a skier that best fits their playing style.

Each skier is then paired up with a unique player board. These are chosen first and define how a skier’s abilities can further be adjusted. Some player boards allow you to adjust your skier’s skiing ability, while another allows you to control your skier’s heart rate, so that they have a steady hand when shooting.

The unique player boards together with the unique skiers create a large number of combinations that allow you to face a different challenge every time you play Biathlon Blast. You could choose a skier whose shooting skills aren’t that great and combine it with a player board that improves their heart rate to help even out the weakness. It also means you could easily create combinations that give more experienced players a slight handicap and thereby level out the playing field.

One more thing that creates even more variety is that the game comes with a double-sided board, with each side offering two different track lengths. So, it’s really up to you how quick or long a game you want to play.

Biathlon Race

How you race is a simple matter of choosing a card from your hand and playing it face down. Once everyone has chosen their card, all cards are revealed and players take turns in initiative order. It sounds a bit like you’re playing a tabletop skirmish game, but it’s an important concept in Biathlon Blast. Who goes first matters, because if you land on a space where there is already another skier, you may have to go back one space, which means your skier has wasted their strength.

So each card has an initiative value printed on it and then different numbers representing the number of steps your skier can move forward on the race course. There are numbers for uphill, level and downhill movement. So depending on the terrain your skier is currently in, you need to find a suitable card. Cards with big movement numbers are great, but they also often show a number that shows how much your skier’s heart rate goes up. If the pulse gets too high, your skier collapses and is out of the game. There are also some really good cards that can only be used once and are then out of the game. All the other cards you play go into your discard pile once you’ve used them.

As you can see, managing the cards in your hand is important. You start with a certain number of cards you drew from your skier’s shuffled deck and only when you run out completely can you draw more. There are ways of redrawing early, but that costs you a bullet token, which are limited and are usually more effective when it comes to target shooting.

Target Practice

Once your skier has gone around the track once, they reach the shooting gallery. There they roll dice to see how many successful hits they’ve got. Your skier’s current heart rate decides what results are a success. A lower heart rate means more chance of hitting the targets. The outcome of your shooting attempt then translates into movement. The more hits, the more steps you are catapulted out of the gallery back onto the track. Doing well with the rifle is very important and can be the difference between falling behind and overtaking the skier in the lead.

The dice used for shooting also play another role. They come in five different colours and some cards have a certain colour dice printed on them, instead of a number. You replace the dice printed on the card with the number of the respective dice. The dice are only rolled when a skier is in the shooting gallery, which can lead to you playing a card that was supposed to give you six movement steps, but because of your low initiative, another player takes their turn with their skier in the shooting gallery and rerolls the dice, potentially leaving you with a one for the colour dice that was previously showing a six.

That shows how important initiative can be and illustrates that while there is some dice luck in Biathlon Blast, it can be mitigated, if you plan well. It’s all about timing and managing your cards. You need to have a really good idea about the cards that are left in your deck so you can make the right decision at the right time.

Biathlon Rouge

While Biathlon Blast will certainly remind you of other racing games, it is also clearly very different. When I first saw the game, I was immediately reminded of Flamme Rouge. They both use a deck of cards to decide how far players move, but the cards in Biathlon Blast require a lot more thought and planning. Hand management is so much more important. The use of dice is also not something you see in the bike-racing sibling.

What Biathlon Blast does so amazingly well is that it creates a really tense gameplay experience, where your skier can easily be eliminated from the race early on, if you’re not careful. It is also very easy to be in the lead throughout the race, only to lose in the last turn or two of the final lap. I have also been in a position where my skier simply didn’t have the cards to reach the finish line at all and was stuck uphill, watching everyone else go past them.

The dice create even more excitement. When skiers are close together, it really comes down to rolling well and controlling the heart rate. Time it right and get your skier to the shooting gallery without being out of breath and you’ll be able to get miles ahead. However, there is still a small chance that you roll badly and all the hard work and perfect timing were in vain. It can be really nail-biting.

Biathlon Blast is a great family racing game that has a fair few rules, but is still quite easy to pick up and certainly pretty quick to play, offering excitement and high-octane tension throughout. So, get your skis on and shuffle your deck. May the better athlete win.

Useful Links

• Biathlon Blast: https://get.biathlonblast.com/
• Rulebook: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/291450/rulebook-english
• Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carlmax/biathlon-blast
• carlMax: https://carlmax.dk/
• BGG listing: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/404422/biathlon-blast
• Flamme Rouge review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2024/07/13/flamme-rouge-saturday-review/

Videos

Transparency Facts

I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way.

• I was sent a free review copy of this game by the publisher.
• At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind.

Audio Version

Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

Sound Effects: bbc.co.uk – © copyright 2025 BBC

“Sleepers” by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/3232-sleepers
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Playlist

These are the songs I listened to while I was writing this review: