Going the Distance: Boxing in its Golden Age

In Going the Distance, players get to live the drama and excitement of boxing’s golden age. You will wince when your fighter takes a heavy blow, feel exhilaration when your boxer evades a determined flurry, and feel euphoria when your fighter knocks out what seemed to be an indestructible foe. Set in the 1930s and 1940s, players create sporting history with an ensemble cast of unique and larger than life boxers.

There’s boxers like Guido ‘Fats’ Gorgonzola, a big-hearted Italian kid from the Bronx that loves his mama and her cooking, ‘Fair Dinkum’ Frank Kearny, the leather-skinned larrikin from down under who trains with boxing kangaroos, and Everett Hughes, English adventurer, turned Hollywood star, turned elite boxer, to name but a few.

There are 6 boxer classes that have their own style, while every boxer has their own card deck, stats, special rules and strategies that make them unique. Players start the fight with a 40-card Fight deck. When fighters get hit and throw big punches, they take Fatigue Cards which replace cards in their deck. At the same time if the number of times they get hit equals or exceeds their Stamina rating their hand limit drops. Fighters may also either target the head or the body. A head punch is more likely to knockout your opponent while a body punch will cause more fatigue. So, players need to strike a balance between offence and defence while managing their boxer’s energy levels.

A round is made up of 5 sequences in which boxers move in the ring, program three cards and reveal and compare these cards and resolve them. There are ten different card types. The main three are Light, Medium, and Heavy punch cards which defeat each other based on a Scissor Paper Rock mechanic. Other card types are Evade, Block, Combination, Dirty Fighting, Reaction, Counter punch, while some fighters have special cards they can play during a bout.

—description from the designer