How to Play Whirly Derby, the swirly whirly marble racing game.
Watch the Video
Read the Rules
The aim of the game
To win, own marbles that place in the top 3 in each race, to collect point scoring trophies.
To set up
- Place the speedway in the centre of the table.
- Each player chooses a colour and takes the corresponding paddock, marbles and reload token - place this with the number 2 side face up.
- Shuffle the trophy cards, place the deck face down on the table and flip 3 face up to form the prize pool.
- Layout the 8 basic race tokens with the red traffic light side face up and flip one over to the green flag side to begin!
To play the game
Now, each player secretly chooses a number of their marbles to race. You must always enter at least 1 marble if you can.
Once everyone's chosen, reveal your marbles together and place them all in the launcher. It’s time to race!
Pour the marbles into the outer edge of the speedway and cheer on your team.
The top 3 finishers get to pick a trophy card, starting with first place. A trophy’s points are marked in the top left corner.
The player who came dead last gets to return that marble to their paddock. All others that raced are put back in the box…for now.
Twice per game, you may use your reload token to buy back all the marbles you’ve raced. The first time flip it to the 1 side and the second time discard it.
After the first race, reveal 3 new prize cards, flip over the next race token and go again. If ever you run out both marbles and reloads, you’ll have to sit it out.
Game end & advanced rules
After 8 races are complete, the player with the most points wins! In the case of a tie, have a 1 marble race off!
There’s also advanced rules for pro racers, for this you’ll need the thunderball!
On set up, place 2 standard race tokens down first and hide 2 thunderball tokens at random among the next 6.
When a thunderball token is flipped the player with the least points takes the thunderball. If that’s tied, it’s whoever has the least marbles.
The thunderballs owner can enter it into any race just once before returning it to the paddock. If another thunderball token is flipped before they do, too bad, whoever has the least points takes it off them.
When you use the thunderball you must also enter at least 1 normal marble into the race too.
The thunderball blocks the speedway and the more marbles it stops, the more cards its owner takes from the top of the trophy deck.
If any marbles make it to the end, the top 3 get to take a trophy as normal. There’s no last place bonus.
You’ll also notice that trophies have icons on the bottom that will increase your score.
Whoever has the most cacti gets 15 points. The lava lamp scores extra the more you have and collecting a donut, cheese and jelly gives you 30 points.
That’s Whirly Derby, simple, swirly-whirly fun!
Enjoy