"What if," I thought, "I combined Gaslands and gladiators?"
I know the Arena of Death scenario is kind of a straight combat scenario for Gaslands, but what I had in mind was single-combat, but in cars. A simple arena, two basic vehicles and a last man standing victory condition.
I tried it out yesterday, using some of the 20 Can designs I prepared for Thursday's club-game.
The arena was small, and had a few basic terrain pieces. Vehicles started in opposite corners at Gear 1.
The first bout was between Stationary Traveller (top left) a car with armour and a ram, and Tom Joad (bottom right) which had an HMG and the Terrifying Lunatic perk.
Early moves brought saw Tom Joad skirt the sand patch and bring its gun to bear.
Surviving the attack with no damage, Staionary Traveller zoomed forward ...
... and rammed Tom Joad. Unfortunately, despite the ram, Tom Joad got off lightly whilst Stationary Traveller didn't.
Stationary Traveller floundered around for a while on the edge of the arena.
Tom Joad got in another shot before accumulated hazards saw the vehicle wipe out.
This gave the ram-car an opportunity, but it couldn't turn in on the immobile Tom Joad fast enough. Tom Joad did a hard turn in reverse ...
... fired ...
... and wrecked its opponent.
Winner stays on!
This time Tom Joad faced Back In Black, which had a front-mounted mini-gun and improved handling.
The two cars exchanged fire.
Tom Joad skillfully spun after the pass to get in a sneaky shot on the rear quarter of Back in Black.
The driver of Back In Black put his foot down in order to bring his car round for another attack, misjudged his next turn and crashed into the arena wall, wrecking his vehicle.
The final bout saw Tom Joad facing Mr Apollo, which has a bazooka (with limited ammo) and the deadly Headshot perk.
The two cars spun around the containers in the center, but Mr Apollo did manage a shot which put a few hits on Tom Joad. It then accelerated ...
... and used a slide to line up a second shot which ...
... against the odds, completely missed, wasting one-third of Mr Apollo's ammunition.
Mr Apollo took hits from Tom Joad's HMG, as they closed again.
A misjudged turn saw an unavoidable T-bone collision. Mr Apollo accelerated ...
... and Tom Joad was wrecked. Mr Apollo spun out and flipped, but survived. Just.
The three games took 15-20 minutes each to play.
This style of combat is fast, very random, and deadly, but was fun. A lot of it will be down to the designs, but the 20 Can limit should prevent too many obvious combat-monsters. We may look at running a small tournament as a club-game at some stage, with several bouts during the evening.
The two areas I need to consider is how pole-position works and whether there's a way of the vehicle picking up audience votes to help manage hazards, gear or replenish ammo.
For pole-position I switched it back and forth each gear phase, but that essentially gave each vehicle a double move, so I'm not sure that's what I want. My current thought is that the vehicle closest to the centre of the arena at the start of the gear phase goes first. That allows it to switch back and forth, whilst allowing for some minor tactical play to influence the move sequence. I don't have an idea for audience votes yet.
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