2 Fast 2 Furious

I've played through 'Fast & Furious - Highway Heist' a few times now, running a couple of drivers and playing both the basic tank scenario and the intermediate truck heist one. I've had varying levels of success - I've beaten the tank a couple of times, but have yet to successfully rob the truck, even on the easiest mode.

Last night we played it as a proper cooperative game for the first time, with Catherine, Maya and myself running a driver each. We all picked drivers and cars that looked fun, and hoped the combination would be enough to take down the tank.

I ran Letty in the Exotic Supercar
Maya ran Han in the American Muscle car
Catherine ran Tej in the Import Racer

Here we are, ready to go.

The other two picked up the game very quickly, and we were soon setting up moves for each other like pros. Catherine and I zipped ahead and started wrecking enemy SUVs  in front of the tank, whilst Maya used Han's abilities and those of the Muscle Car to drive the SUVs behind the tank in our direction.

Unfortunately Maya got boxed in by the tank and some enemy vehicles, and ended up wrecked. You can see Han's black driver peg on the SUV in the centre of the picture.

We'd done a decent amount of damage to the tank by now, but they sent out someone to repair it, so Letty had to leave her vehicle to deal with him. That's her pink peg on the tank. Meanwhile an enemy goon was on her car.

To the front-left of the tank you can see an SUV with a black marker underneath it. That's Han, who hijacked himself a new vehicle. You can do that.

Tank Repair Man was no match for Letty, so the tank remained thoroughly damaged. More so when Han sacrificed his new car in a stunt that saw it go under the tracks and inflict another hit on the tank.

Our stunt options now included hijacking enemy SUVs and causing them to flip into the tank. Letty did this once, putting the tank on its last hit. As she did so her supercar was wrecked by an enemy driver. Then Catherine sent Tej in to do the same. He can take an extra action in his turn three time during the game, and this was a perfect use of it, as he zipped back behind the tank, leapt onto an enemy vehicle and then flipped it into the tank to give us the win.

We were playing this on the easiest possible setting. You can make scenarios harder by removing cards from the stunt deck which firstly limits some of your options (you have no idea if that killer stunt you relied on in the last game is in this one), but also reduces the number of turns you have available, since the stunt-deck determines the length of the game as well. Next time we'll play the standard difficulty level.

Fast & Furious

Sometimes you come across games completely at random, and this is an example. I stumbled across a positive review of 'Fast & Furious - Highway Heist' on Twitter, and liked what I saw, so I decided to get myself a copy. After all, we're in lockdown, so I needed some retail therapy, and it's a cooperative game so can be played with the family or played solo.

I should say that my knowledge of the film franchise on which this game is based is limited. I've only ever seen the first two, but know that they get more an more ridiculous in terms of stunts as the series progresses. But a game will little plastic cars being driven in an insane manner is already well on its way to being a winner in my book.

I read through the rules at lunchtime and got all the components out and checked. Then last night I set up a game.

The game has three scenarios. The basic one involves destroying a tank. The second involves robbing a moving truck. And the third involves taking on a helicopter and an armoured sports-car whilst keeping a hacker alive. Each is progressively more difficult to play, and you can set a level of difficulty within each scenario by limiting how many stunts your team has available.

The game is designed for 2-4 players, each playing one character. Obviously a solo player can play them all; there's no hidden information. There are six characters in the game, three of which I recognise from the first two films and three I have no idea about. Each has their own set of skills and abilities. In addition there are four cars they can drive, and each car has its own unique abilities too. So you select a character card, select one of the vehicles for them, slot them together and away you go.

For my first game I chose Dom and Brian. Dom was driving the American Muscle car, whilst Brian was behind the wheel of an Import Racer. The former is tough and good at ramming, but lacks control, whilst the other is a nice balance of control and speed, but weak defensively. Obviously I played the basic tank scenario, on the Easy setting. You can see the setup here. My two cars are at the left - the black and blue ones, whilst the big tank is surrounded by the Enemy SUVs, which are controlled by the game system. 

Since you're wondering, these are the other vehicles - the truck, helicopter and sports car for the other scenarios, plus the four player vehicles. The enemy vehicles are rather nice. The player vehicles I feel are a bit indistinct. The holes in them are to allow crew pegs to be inserted for when people end up on top of the vehicles.

And away we go! The tank can't be attacked directly, but each time it hits, or is hit by, a wreck it takes damage. So the aim of this scenario is to lob enemy vehicles at the tank until it's destroyed. Dom started off well, zooming up and wrecking an enemy SUV ...

... then flipping the wreck into the path of the tank.

The game assumes that everything is moving along the road from left to right, so movement is in addition to that. At the end of each full turn, all of the wrecks are moved to the left, representing the action leaving them behind, but any vehicle in the path of a moving wreck is destroyed (or damaged, if it's the tank).

The tank obligingly moved across into the path of the wreck, which was lucky. The game has a sequence where one player acts, then the enemy gets a turn.

Each player gets two actions. Aside from movement and leaping (see later) these require a skill-roll, so certain character/car combinations are better at certain actions than others. For example, in Dom's first turn he did a move (no skill roll required), then rammed an SUV (skill roll). The Muscle Car has the ability to push a wreck it causes into an adjacent space, so that allowed Dom to drop it in front of the tank.

The enemy turn consist of rolling a special dice which dictates whether they will move their SUVs (to ram the player vehicles), act with any roving crew (to jump on and/or damage player vehicles), draw an event card or move their main vehicle from side to side across the road. In this case the tank shifted sideways and an event card was drawn.

Brian then acted, setting up another SUV to be wrecked in front of the tank. The enemy reaction saw more SUVs placed to the rear of the tank.

And so it continued. Along the bottom of the road you can just see the stunt cards. These are specific to each scenario, and are special actions the players can choose to perform. A new stunt is fed onto the board at the end of each turn, but each only stays in play for three turns, before being moved off the other end. When the stunt deck is used up the game ends.

Anyway, Brian did a great job using a Grappling Hook stunt to pull SUVs into the path of the tank, but fell foul of some attacks and lost his car. A player can't be knocked out of the game, though. When their vehicle is wrecked, they leap out onto the nearest vehicle, friend or enemy. You can see Brain's blue peg on the tank.

And from there? Well, characters can leap from vehicle to vehicle (indeed Brain's special ability is that he can do that for free once each turn), and they also have an action where they can hijack an enemy SUV and take it over. Which is what has happened here - you can see the blue marker under the enemy vehicle showing that it's now being driven by Brian.

And here's more extra-vehicular movement in action; one of the stunts allows a character on an enemy vehicle to flip it into the tank, scoring damage on it. It plays to Brian's strength, so I used it twice; Brian leaped from his captured vehicle (which carries on moving forward without him), flipped an SUV into the tank, and then jumped onto another which he flipped the next turn. He then leaped back to his own vehicle.

This game is insane. But so much fun.

Anyway, Brian was doing a grand job, but the Dom/Muscle Car combo didn't prove as useful as I'd hoped. It's great for ramming enemy vehicles, but not great for getting them into a position where the wrecks will affect the tank.

The final stunt hit the board. In each scenario this is a tricky one, but offers a way to win instantly if it is successfully completed. I managed to fulfil the conditions, but missed the skill roll required by one, and failed to wreck the tank. After that I couldn't get into position to do it again, and the game timed out. I'd lost; I'd inflicted five hits on the tank, needing eight to destroy it.

There's a few basic mechanisms I haven't covered, but I hope that this post gives you the gist of the game. It was a lot of fun to play, and I thought that the components were well-designed to make play as easy as possible too. The rules were clear too; I only encountered one thing where I will need to go back and read them through in detail again. The rules are also pretty simple, so it's a fairly easy game to play, but actually working out the best way to achieve your goal is quite tricky, and will obviously vary depending on what character and car combinations you choose. Anyway, it's daft and it's fun, and I will get that tank!

More Barsoom HOTT

I'm keeping my gaming brain ticking over in lockdown with the odd game of HOTT here and there. This one features John Carter's Helium against the Green Martian horde of Warhoon. 

Helium defended and the Green Martians found themselves advancing through some bad going.

Helium's airboats quickly moved onto the Green Martian flank.

And attacked, before the Green Martians could extend their bunched-up riders into a line.

On the other flank some Heliumitic flyers hindered a flanking moved, whilst other Green Martians moved up with rifles.

John Carter moved up to assist the aerial navy. The Green Martians turned to face the threat.

The Warlord attacked, cutting his way through more Warhoon warriors.

On the other flank Green Martian rifle fire was slowly driving the Heliumitic flyers back.

The Green Martian riders were now broken up and fell back, unable to effectively resist the combined attack of airboats and John Carter.

The army regrouped on their other flank.

Rifle fire brought down the flyers. This now left the way to Helium's stronghold open.

The surviving Green Martians had now turned their line through ninety degrees, and were threatening the Heliumitic left flank. But John Carter and the airboats were still moving up.

The Warhoon attacked the Red Martian foot, whilst John Carter went onto the attack again.

And the Green Martians were now marching on Helium's stronghold.

Furious fighting in the centre could have gone either way, but with a possible victory within their grasp the Green Martians prevailed, cutting through more Red Martian warriors. Could they capture Helium's stronghold before their casualties became too high to endure?

Two attacks on the stronghold were repulsed.

John Carter attacked with redoubled fury - Helium only needed to destroy one more element for victory, but that last kill was proving elusive.

The Green Martian thoat-riders in the centre still couldn't break through to the stronghold, as rifle-armed foot failed to take it again.

But it was too late. John Carter carved his way through more Warhoon thoat-riders to give Helium the victory.

The Green Martians were outfought from the start, but got a lucky breakthrough on the flank to allow a possible stronghold capture. At one point a tie looked possible; Helium could have lost their stronghold on the same bound that the Green Martians lost 12AP, causing both armies to lose at the end of the same bound. It's the only possible tie condition in the game, and I don't recall it ever actually happening. 

Paper Guns

I had planned to play some more HOTT today, but I ended up reading sets of rules and then making some heavy artillery for my ECW paper armies. Since I was printing off sheets of figures I also added some more pike and shot (in the background) and some horse (which I haven't based yet).

This new foot and ordnance should hopefully see action in the next week as part of a little project I'm pottering around with, inspired by stuff on another blog.

Tour De Covid - Part Four

Over the past couple of days Catherine and I finished off our twelve-stage Flamme Rouge Tour.

Stages 9, 10 and 11 all feature fewer (or no) ascents/descents and a lot of cobblestone sections. These are narrower (which causes blocking) and prevent slipstreaming (which can cause exhaustion). So a new challenge for our riders.

Stage Nine has two long sections of cobblestones, but no slopes. Seeing it as a straight flat race, both Catherine and I hung back, hoping to slipstream in the early stages and then cruise through the pack to victory.

OK. I did. Catherine pushed to the front.

I realised the error of my plan on the first cobblestone section, as the pack bunched up and we started to get blocked.

Basically I was playing decent cards trying to break through the pack, but not getting their full benefit, nor changing position much.

As we approached the second stretch, I was at the back and Catherine wasn't doing much better.

There was a final flat run to the finish, but we were both badly positioned to make use of it.

The 'bot teams got the top spots.

Catherine and I finished in the bottom half. 

Stage Ten had a couple of ascents and a single long stretch of cobblestones. We hoped this would be easier.

It wasn't. We got stymied by the hill ...

... which meant we were badly placed for the cobblestone section, and got blocked and slowed again.

Once again we found ourselves at the back of the pack on the run to the finish.

A small ascent before the finish line caused the pack to bunch up again.

Catherine and I finished a little better this time, but my lead was eroding and Catherine was now in fourth place.

Stage Eleven was now not one we were looking forward to, with three sections of  cobblestones and virtually no boost squares at all. 

Early breakaways. But this time we were closer to the front of the main pack going through the first cobblestone section.

It didn't help. We still got blocked going into the second section, and lost ground.

The riders broke up some more. Catherine managed to have one of hers in the front group.

And she exploited her advantage, forging ahead for ...

... a narrow win!

I finished mid-table.

This put Catherine into third place going into the final stage. My lead had eroded, but so long as I didn't do really badly I would still win.

Stage Twelve had one long ascent followed by a long flat to the finish. It looked pretty easy.

Some bunching at the foot of the ascent cost both of us some energy.

The short descent saw Catherine pushing a rider ahead.

The flat section saw lots of riding, but few slipstreaming opportunities, which meant that all of the riders were burning through their decks.

Approaching the final section.

Catherine broke away again, whilst I somehow ended up stuck in the main pack.

A second consecutive win for Catherine! But I picked up a third place which was enough to maintain my overall lead.

The final team scores:

Red (Me) - 170 points

Black - 166 points
Blue (Catherine) - 156 points
Green - 153 points
White - 151 points
Pink - 146 points

So it was actually fairly close.

Individual rider scores:

Red Rouleur - 108 points
White Rouleur - 105 points

Pink Rouleur - 102 points

Green Rouleur - 101 points

Blue Rouleur - 93 points
Black 1 - 92 points
Black 2 - 74 points
Red Sprinteur - 64 points

Blue Sprinteur - 63 points

Green Sprinteur - 52 points

White Sprinteur - 46 points

Pink Sprinteur - 44 points

This was a lot of fun to play, even if the 'bot teams are somewhat random. Maybe we need a third player for that extra challenge.