As ever the referees were busy.
Thanks to Victor's kindness and generosity I now have a pack of arena officials, so will be retiring my venerable paper referee once they are painted up.
Critical hits were a common feature of the games we played. One bout saw four consecutive criticals; an attacker broke his sword, but then managed to knock his opponent's weapon away. His opponent then knocked his helmet off, before smacking him over the head with his shield, causing a lethal wound.
The last couple of years have seen us running Charioteer in parallel with the gladiatorial combats. But since neither of us really has a setup designed for the visual appeal of a wargames show Victor suggested that this year I bring along Machinas. I statted up vehicles for a road chase, and ran it a couple of times. In this picture the Red Barchetta finds itself pursued by a range of enemy vehicles, from motorcycles to a big digger.
In this game the player chose the big bus, and was pursued by a ram-car and the digger. He evaded them both for a number of turns. The digger gave up, but the ram-car didn't until an incident with its brakes saw it skid in front of the bus and get chewed up by the big ram on the front.
Back to the gladiators. Victor and I tried out the pons scenario, with a retiarius defending a platform against two secutors. We tried a number of rules tweaks, but I still don't feel we quite got there with the scenario.
Martin, Victor and I finished up the day with a race - three player cars and an NPC car to make up the numbers.
Victor had the metallic Clockwork Angel, Martin took the pink Lola whilst I took the Black Dog (one of the new cars from yesterday, now named). The purple Villain of Science was the NPC. Martin and Victor spent the early part of the race bickering at the back, whilst I tried to stay at the front by virtue of my massive racing engine.
However events saw me slip back, and it took all of my bonus dice efforts to get back into the front before the end of the race. But Victor just pipped me at the post for the win, whilst Martin wrecked Lola on the last turn trying to bash Villain of Science out of the running.
In this race three of the four vehicles had the Saboteur special ability, which allows the driver to force other drivers to make a control roll under certain circumstances. So every car went into the race with cut brake-lines, slow punctures and similar damage, and it was amazing all got as far as they did. The effect of the ability is not so much that it causes cars to crash, but that it forces them to burn bonus dice in order to avoid crashing.
Machinas seemed to pick up a fair bit of interest; people seem to love remodelled Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.
Finally here's Ralph. With a burning tank.
On Monday I will be back again - for HOTT.
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