Arena Of Death

June enjoyed her game of Gaslands last week so much that she asked if I could run another this week. So I did. Then, unfortunately, she called in sick. But we still ended up with four players - Graeme came down again, Caesar came back from a work trip to Brisbane and Declan, who has played once before, decided to have another go.

We rolled Arena of Death, which we haven't done for a while.

Caesar ran a single Idris bus
Graeme ran a single Miyazaki performance car
I ran Thomas, as a Scarlett bus
Declan bucked the trend and ran two Rutherford cars.

There were eight gun turrets in play.

Here's Thomas, ready for the off. He has piles of crew, as well as a front-mounted harpoon and front ram. A classic Scarlett design.

Caesar started things off in style by using nitro to roar across the board, ramming and destroying two gun turrets on the way.

He fell foul of Declan's Fountain of Lamneth, which was armed with rockets and a pile of Do Lots Of Damage perks.

Declan then inexplicably collided with the bus, although both parties evaded, not wanting the pile of hazards a ram gives.

Be that as it may, Caesar's bus wiped out anyway, and sat out the rest of the turn.

A wider view of the action. Declan's second car, The Anarchist, and Graeme's car, were exchanging fire, having both spent the first few moves shooting up gun-turrets. Thomas was plodding safely out of reach of everyone but had taken a series of unlucky hits from gun-turrets and was already showing signs of wear and tear. On the plus side, having a pile of crew meant that each gun-turret I encountered lasted for precisely one shot before it disappeared under a hail of bullets.

Graeme whizzed into the main part of the action, shooting up Caesar's bus and The Fountain of Lamneth with his turreted machine-gun.

The Fountain of Lamneth wrecked. And wrecking is forever in this scenario.

Caesar tried to get the bus back into the running, but found that a long vehicle in a confined space is a tricky thing to run.

Graeme went after Thomas, using his superior maneuverability to stay out of any of my dangerous weapon arcs, whilst slowly chipping away at him with his machine-gun.

The plodding Thomas couldn't get a shot in.

The Anarchist came upon Caesar's bus blundering about in a corner and put it our of its misery with a flamethrower. The bus flipped over the barrier and into the crowd.

Seemingly everywhere at once, Graeme chased after Declan, with the ever-present machine-gun at work.

The Anarchist also wrecked into the crowd, exploding spectacularly.

This left just tow of us with active vehicles. But Graeme's car was easily going to outfight Thomas, so whilst we called it a draw, it was definitely weighted in favour of the Miyazaki car.

Arena of Death is a fun scenario; it's fairly simple to play and delightfully destructive. And sometimes all you need to win is a vehicle that can simply survive, as Graeme showed.