Track Meet – The best and worst of scoring tracks
by Gil Hova
My newest game The Networks has a scoring track. It’s been a bit of a pain at times, but it’s let me do things I wouldn’t be have been easily able to do otherwise. It’s also made me think a lot about what makes a good and bad scoring track. Let’s check out some theory and practice behind this humble component.
A scoring track, at its simplest, is a track that allows players to keep some value of theirs (usually their score) visible and public to all the other players. Plenty of games use them. Here’s an example of a very good scoring track, Stone Age.
Image credit: BGG user “vekoma”
Here are a few reasons why this is an excellent scoring track:
- It is a circuit. If you need to go from 95 points to 100, you just lap around the 0.
- It goes from 0-99. Players who lap the scoring track simply need to add a 1 to the front of their scores.
- There is an image of a primitive wheel behind every 10-point space. This callout makes adding up large scores easy.
- Players use easily-stacked discs to keep track of their scores.
The only thing this particular game is missing is special markers that indicate which players have exceeded 100 points.
Now let’s look at what makes a not-so-good scoring track: the original track for Alhambra.
Image credit: BGG user “Gelatinous Goo”
What makes this scoring track less than ideal?
- It serpentines. Sometimes it goes left, other times it goes right. Therefore, players often accidentally move scoring tokens the wrong way.
- It loops at 120 instead of 99. It’s very common in this game to exceed 120 points, so players have to decide if looping players move their markers to the 1 spot and add 120 or move to the 21 spot and add 100. The second is easier, but not always intuitive, and it assumes everyone explicitly understands the convention.
Serpentining is not always bad if it’s done judiciously and thoughtfully. Here is the scoring track for In the Year of the Dragon.
Image credit: BGG user “toulouse”
This one is interesting on two levels. First off, the outer scoring track has a couple of small bends at the top to accommodate a discard area. This is close to a serpentine, but it’s small enough that players aren’t thrown off. I’ve found that players can tolerate small bends like that. If you’re having trouble trying to find enough space to fit a 100-point track, consider some small bends like this.
The second interesting part is that there are two tracks. The inner track is meant for turn order. It loops at 60, but players rarely lap, and turn order gets increased by small-enough increments that making the move from under 60 to over isn’t such a big deal.
Okay, so how about another not-so-good scoring track? This one is from Prosperity.
Image credit: BGG user “lacxox”
This one is pretty painful. It serpentines very tightly, and is very unclear to all players exactly which direction the scoring cubes should go at any given point. The serpentining also makes it quite difficult to know at a glance how players are doing positionally versus other players if they’re in the same row. A cube further left in its column than a cube in another column could be ahead or behind, depending on which bend it’s on.
The score numbers are also difficult to make out, and the track only laps at 50 points. I’ve found from experience that players do not like tracks that lap at any value other than 100 if lapping happens a lot. Even 50, which seems like it would be a safe number, isn’t as good as 100.
So why have a scoring track at all? Because having a scoring track opens up positional heuristics. These are strategies and rules of thumb that players will use depending on if they are first or last. A player who knows she is in second place may play conservatively if confronting the player in last place, or aggressively if confronting the leader. A scoring track makes these positions explicit.
Compare this with a game like Puerto Rico, which has no scoring track. Players keep track of points with scoring chips they keep face-down in front of them and with points they gain from constructing buildings. As a result, players don’t know definitively who is winning. They may have an idea who is doing better than whom, but the final results are often surprising.
Scoring tracks can also allow in-game mechanisms based on player position. The auction game The Scepter of Zavandor (based on Outpost) is a good example. Every round, players are handicapped based on their total score. The players in the lead must pay more at auction, while the players in the back pay less.
This sort of mechanism would be very tricky to implement without a scoring track. Making players’ scores explicit allows the game to provide handicaps that would be tricky to do otherwise.
Making the scores explicit also enables positional heuristics. If the leader seems interested in a high-VP item, players may want to bid her up just to make sure she doesn’t get it for a low price. They may be less concerned if it winds up going to the player in the back.
Another game with a nice twist on its scoring track is Primordial Soup.
Image credit: BGG user “dougadamsau”
This scoring track doesn’t lap, but it doesn’t need to; one of the endgame conditions is if a player reaches the darker spaces at the end of the track. It also employs a handicap; players in the lead move last on the board, which is a significant disadvantage.
But most interestingly: there are no ties. Players ignore occupied spaces on the track when scoring. This is a wonderful rubberbanding mechanism that allows players in the back to dramatically leapfrog other players. It would be impossible without a scoring track.
What about a game that lets you play directly on the scoring track? In fact, there are many of those out there. Here’s one.
Image credit: BGG user “rsolow”
Formula D is a racing game with no victory points, but since the first player to cross the finish line wins, the scoring track is effectively the game! This is the case with a lot of racing games.
So if you are in the back, it’s very clear that you need to catch up. If you’re in the front, you know you can race more conservatively.
This brings up a weakness I see in a lot of racing games: they generally punish the players who are trying to go too fast. This is in theme, but is also why a lot of players find racing games frustrating. The players trying to go the fastest aren’t the ones in the lead; they’re the ones in the back trying to catch up. So if you’re designing a racing game, your supposed rubberbanding mechanism may actually be a snowball mechanism; you may actually be keeping the last-place players from doing better!
I recently re-acquired the incredible horse racing game TurfMaster. It has an incredible handicapping mechanism that specifically targets the leaders: the player in first may only move 8 spaces at most, the player in second 9 spaces, and the player in third 10 spaces. But players may move as far as 12 spaces if they have the cards or dice that let them, so the players in 4th place and further have a nice advantage.
This may seem artificial at first glance, but turns out to feel much like horse racing. No player can lead the entire race; instead, they must try to stay with the pack and time their charge at the very end. What helps is that each player has “joker” cards that allow them to break the handicap. But they only get a few, so hand management and race planning become crucial.
So if you’re working on a game with a scoring track, or with any sort of explicit positional mechanism, you may want to take advantage of what a scoring track can let you do. They’re more powerful than they first appear.
Formal Ferret Games 
Lords of Waterdeep has a scoring track just like Stone Age, but players get a token when they lap through 100. Considering all those presented here, I’d say that LoW has the best scoring track I’ve seen.
meh, happens in some stefan feld games as well. nothing new/innovative there.
I think it’s worth a mention, especially because I was blanking on games with a 100-point circuit track that had a 100-point token! Terra Mystica is another one.
Very cool article. Now I get to use the buzzword phrase “Positional Heuristics” and most importantly, the speeding penalties in racing games comment is particularly new to me. It makes perfect sense.
But, I will say that for some reason, the Carcassonne score board is used time and time again by game designers. And even though it serpentines, it appears to be one of the best examples of a “stand-alone” scoretrack. Stand-alone scoring tracks always seem to be much harder to design simply because they don’t wrap around the play area.
I’ve noticed that too 🙂 I think the Carcassonne score track is used for designer prototypes simply because it’s smallish, it laps at 50 (an easily-looped number), and it’s standalone as you said, so you don’t have to lug around a whole game board just to use its track.
I know I’ve employed a Carc scoring track for some of my protos!
Thanks TC! The Carcassonne scoreboard is a good serpentine. Its bends are very clear and not too tight; there’s space between the tracks that run parallel in opposite directions, and there aren’t many of them.
I think the thing about a standalone track is that they look weird if they’re just a circuit. What do you put inside? Most graphic designers will want to put something inside that space, and having the scoring track maximizing that space makes sense.
A serpentine will utilize that space, but it’s really easy to get a confusing scoring track out of it. The Carcassonne track is a great example of a functional, good-looking scoring track, even if it laps at 50.
An interesting additional anecdote: Trollhalla has a stone-age-like scoring track around the edge of the board, but the track is only used as an aid for end-game scoring. It’s handy (especially given that Trollhalla is a family-friendly game), but at the same time, most gamers are used to the idea of tracking their score during the game when they see such a scoring track, and thus expect the game to have some of the dynamics you mention in your post. Since Trollhalla defies these heuristics, it adds a little confusion explaining the game to first-timers.
Yes, there are a few games that do this. Concordia and Navegador, for example. They do make the process of final scoring easier.
Technically, you could do the same with Ticket to Ride, but you’d lose the positional heuristics.
Concordia is interesting, because it has optional interim scoring to use with first-time players. This trains the players on the scoring system, so when it comes around at the end of the game, they’re not surprised or blindsided.
Interesting choice for an article. I love the focus in on a rarely-examined yet common board element.
One track of note for me is the Doge Track in Rialto… it’s not technically a score track, but the mechanism could be used for one (and probably has been elsewhere.) The way IT works is that when a player marker (stackable disc) moves into a space already occupied by another marker, the newer marker is placed on top of the older. Markers on top are considered to be “ahead” of those further down in the same space. This rewards the player who most-recently got to the space, rather than the one who got there first.
Someone was complaining about the Railto scoring track! I haven’t gotten to try it yet, but I can’t judge.
Trajan has a similar mechanism, where the marker on top is ahead. It’s a nice subtle rubberbanding mechanism. Similar to Primordial Soup, but not as extreme.
Prosperity has the worst score track I’ve seen by far. Let’s not forget the fact that the cubes are also larger than the scoring spaces!
I created my own custom score track that’s a little more intuitive, follows the aesthetic of the game, and includes icon spaces so you know what phases have been drawn in that particular decade. (It’s available in hi-res on BGG in the files section.)
I forgot that detail, Erik! Yes, it’s pretty difficult to work with.
I’ll add the FFG version of Ingenious alongside Prosperity as among the worst.
How is it different than the original? What don’t you like about it? I remember the original wasn’t so bad.
Rialto: Just played this last night! The SCORE trsck is awful – the spaces are separated by streetlights… many have complained. Josh was talking about the DOGE track, which works like the Person track in In the Year of the Dragon, or the Wall track in Macao (Feld seems to like that mechanism). It’s also in other games such as Ground Floor. It’s just a turn order track, and as Josh mentioned, the last person to reach a spaxe goes before the first person to reach that space. So we all start in a stack on the first space of the doge track, and if we each move 1 space, then we completely reverse turn order.
Positional Heuristics: I actually DISLIKE this very much, and I’ll tell you why. Many games with score tracks have significant end-game hidden scoring (Rialto has area majority scoring that’s not reckoned until the end. Ticket to Ride has tickets you count at the end, In the Year of the Dragon has endgame scoring based on people and leftover stuff, etc). So any “positional heuristics” (or as I often see it, any “he’s the leader, he’s your competition… attack him!”) based on the current score which does not include a players position or potential endgame scoring is… we’ll say disingenuous.
In games WITHOUT such hidden endgame scoring, that’s fine – base whatever you want on the position of the score markers. But in a game like Power Grid, where your position on the score track gives you significantly better in-game benefits, there’d better not be any endgame bonus scoring or you’re just rewarding players to value that endgame scoring over the in-game scoring.
To put that another way, it would be ridiculous to have any mechanism in Stone Age which relies on the relative position of score markers, because one could easily score the majority of their 200+ points in a game entirely of of endgame card scoring (and indeed, many players do score the majority of their points this way).
So in conclusion, I’ll just warn that positional heuristics can be dangerous because they do not take into account potential future score based on board position, which is absolutely relevant when considering who is “in the lead.”
Thanks for the Rialto clarification, Seth!
Regarding the positional heuristics, I can see what you mean. For a game with enormous endgame scoring like Stone Age, I can see what you mean. Fortunately for Stone Age, there’s little direct conflict, and I think that’s why the game gets away with it. If it were more of an attacking game, then either the score track or the big endgame scoring would have to go.
Francis Drake uses it in a great way. It plays in three rounds, and each round’s turn order is based on points, with the player having the fewest points going first. But you can collect gems that only score at the end of the game, so they’re points without the turn order handicap.
In Francis Drake, like Stone Age, there aren’t many ways to target another player, so positional heuristics don’t interfere with the big endgame scoring.
Another game worth looking at might be Lewis & Clark, which involves racing down the scoring track the same way Formula D does. Endgame is simply first person to reach the end of the track and set up camp (a la Primordial Soup), and it’s got a similar tiebreaking system to PS as well in that players can never end on the same space. Very good scoring track.
Prosperity has an awful track, and serpentine tracks with small size are pretty awful across the board… I think the worst scoring track I’ve seen is either Seasons (uneven numbers, tiny values, hard to parse) or 51st State (monotone, hard to read, and involves flipping over the game box to use it!).
Mykerinos has the worst scoring track of all time, for a reason you didn’t address here: The spaces are smaller than the score tokens, making it incredibly easy to be wrong about what space you’re on.