The Adventures of 'Tom Sawyer'

A modern day warrior

Mean, mean stride

Today's Tom Sawyer

Mean, mean pride

We haven't seen the new Mad Max film yet - we're aiming to see it as a family towards the end of the week when our four work, college, university and social lives co-ordinate - but it's inspired me to get Machinas out again. I decided that rather than do a race I'd try a road chase. I'd like to explore these more, as they are a chance to use a mix of vehicles and have a different feel to the races.

In the basic set-up a single vehicle is chased by a random number of pursuers, and must either destroy them all, or survive until they all drop out. At the end of each turn there's a chance each individual pursuer will give up. This increases the longer the chase lasts. There's also a small chance of additional vehicles joining the chase.

Here's 'Tom Sawyer', a hobo vehicle on the grim and dangerous roads of the future. It has a skilled pilot and a big rear-facing machine-gun to discourage pursuers.

But it doesn't discourage these two.

The chase is on. The black car moves up first, with its big flame-thrower.

But fuel is precious - a flamethrower has limited shots - and our hero finds himself being bashed rather than roasted.

He's lucky, and the attacking vehicle falls back. 'Tom Sawyer' is penalised in bashing attempts because of its size, so had to burn a lot of bonus dice to avoid disaster.

The other pursuer races ahead. This is a behaviour that can happen in chases, and is pointless in the rules as written. I have added a modifier that makes it less likely pursuers will break off the more vehicles they have ahead of the chase. So there is an advantage to getting at least one vehicle ahead.

The driver of 'Tom Sawyer' is boxed in now.

The lead car skids, and 'Tom Sawyer' is bashed again, losing more bonus dice.

Meanwhile the black car closes in with the flamethrower this time, but some nifty driving sees the shot miss.

The chase continues. I opt to keep the 'Tom Sawyer' behind the lead car, as it stops it dropping back and deploying its machine-guns, and gives me more bonus dice for drafting. I can keep drafting - time is on my side after all.

A random event places a large boulder on the road. The lead car easily avoids it ...

... but 'Tom Sawyer' scrapes its paintwork.

The grey car suddenly drops back and we collide again.

This time it's terminal. 'Tom Sawyer' flips ...

... rolls ...

... and is wrecked.

Game over.

Exit the warrior

Today's Tom Sawyer

He gets by on you

And the energy you trade

He gets right on to the friction of the day

I never got chance to use the rear-gun. Early on the black car kept trying to pass, and succeeded or failed too narrowly for me to deploy it. And later on I was more concerned with maintaining a good position behind the grey car. 

I like the idea of a bike-gang as the pursuers, and have ordered some resin ones from Ramshackle Games, which I hope will come soon. A mix of bikes and other vehicles would make for an interesting game I reckon.