Wacky Raceland

Having now got four vehicles inspired by a certain Hanna-Barbera cartoon I decided to have a go at a wacky race using Gaslands this evening. Each vehicle was a 'team' in its own right, and I assigned each one to a sponsor, allowing me to try out perks.

From left to right:

The Anthill Mob (Slime) - Car, Forward HMG, Double-Barrelled, Road Warrior, Pinball

Dick Dastardly (The Warden) - Car, Terrifying Lunatic, Madman

Peter Perfect (Idris) - Performance Car, Nitro, Overload, Idris Nitro Perks

Penelope Pitstop (Miyazaki) - Car, Front Ram, Virtuoso, Evade, Powerslide

And here they are on the starting line. The Anthill Mob took pole position.

The end of the first turn. Despite a good start, the Anthill Mob were quickly outpaced by the other racers.

It was Dick Dastardly who broke away from the first gate, putting a few bullet-holes in Penelope Pitstop's car as he did so. To add insult to injury, the Anthill Mob rear-ended her as well, leaving them both wiped out. Peter Perfect was next to pass the first gate.

As Dick Dastardly passed the second gate, Penelope Pitstop and Peter Perfect were on his tail.

Unfortunately Peter Perfect pushed his pursuit too far and flipped over the stream, ending up facing the wrong way.

Penelope Pitstop used a series of spins and powerslides to pass the second gate. Meanwhile the Anthill Mob were having a terrible time of it. They passed the first gate, they almost immediately spun out again. By the time they recovered they were well out of it, but they did spin up to the second gate and lay down a hail of fire into Penelope Pitstop, leaving her vehicle on its last hit.

Elsewhere Dick Dastardly was heading for the finish. There was only one thing could stop him ...

Peter Perfect fired up his nitro-booster, and smashed into the side of Dick Dastardly's car. He was seriously damaged, but it wasn't enough to slow him down. Peter Perfect flipped and wiped out. Again.

Dick Dastardly crossed the line for an easy win.

I played out the race to the finish. Penelope Pitstop passed through the third gate and finished off Peter Perfect with handguns in passing to take second place. And the Anthill Mob? They ran into a rock outcrop. I ended the game at that point.

I got to use all of the perks, and they do add a certain something to the game. Dick Dastardly's combo was especially effective early on, allowing him to put hazards on his opponents in the early stages and give him an edge in the race for the first gate. Penelope Pitstop's Miyazaki perks were particularly useful as well; rerolling the skid dice for free allowed her to pick up slides and spins when she needed them, and the powerslide ability was excellent for covering ground quickly on bends. With hindsight the best strategy for the Anthill Mob was to turn around and try to intercept Dick Dastardly, rather than doggedly run the course, but I didn't think of that until afterwards.

Still, all in all it was a fun game, although I did nearly lose track of who had activated at a couple of points.

More From The Garage

Apologies for all of the car-related posts recently, but I am rather enjoying converting vehicles and then playing with them at the moment. Anyway, here's two more I put together over the weekend. Once again their inspiration should be fairly obvious.

The driver in the second and gunner in the first are from the weapons and crew pack produced by Ramshackle Games.

Sunday Drivers

Catherine and I gave Gaslands a go this morning, partially so she could learn the game, partially so I could try out one of my new vehicles and partially to see if the game will fit on our dining table.

The answer to the final question is, yes. Just.

We played with about 50 cans (points) each, with a ute and a car apiece. The cars were identical - armour and an HMG. Catherine had Mr Apollo, whilst I had Georgia Lee. Catherine's ute, Bulls On Parade had a ram on all facings (the excavator strapped to the back) whilst mine The Marvellous Engine Of Resistance had a front-ram, armour and a rear-facing HMG.

The track was a simple oval.

We scattered from the start-line in order to avoid collisions at too early a stage, but I couldn't resist piling on the speed when Bulls On Parade presented its side to me. The collision thoroughly smashed Catherine's vehicle, but left us both running, as neither of us had amassed much in the way of hazard tokens at this stage.

The cars accelerated and headed towards the first gate together. Meanwhile Bulls On Parade tried to make a run for it, but I spun The Marvellous Engine Of Resistance around and rammed it again, reducing it to its last damage point.

As Georgia Lee passed the first gate its guns activated, and a short burst wrecked Bulls On Parade.

Catherine boldly rammed The Marvellous Engine Of Resistance with Mr Apollo, accelerating to full speed to do it. She made the first of a series of blinding damage rolls and reduced my ute to its last hit, whilst taking surprisingly little damage back. Both vehicles wiped out, leaving them well behind in the race.

Georgia Lee looked to have an easy ride, and I easily took her through the second gate. But approaching the third saw me go out of control crossing the ditch, and the resulting flip piled me headlong into a rock outcrop. This stopped me cold, and reduced me to a couple of points of damage. By the time I got moving again, Catherine had brought up Mr Apollo, and she used a well-timed spin to bring her gun to bear and roll another ridiculous load of damage, destroying Georgia Lee.

I was working The Marvellous Engine Of Resistance through the gates, and slowly catching up by some reckless driving. But Catherine pushed Mr Apollo to its limits in her race for the finish line. This was the beginning of her spectacular finish; a straight run followed by a spin at the end ...

... followed by accelerating to top speed. You can see The Marvellous Engine Of Resistance coming in from the right, as I tried to cut the corner and beat Catherine to the line.

But she was too quick for me; a car can travel one speed higher than a ute, and she used that extra phase to cross the line before I could catch her.

Catherine really enjoyed the game, quickly picking up how to manage the templates and the handling dice, and using skids and slides to her advantage. The fact that she rolled well above the average whenever she inflicted damage helped as well. My ute is primarily equipped for ramming, but by the end of the game I was so low on hits I couldn't risk doing it even if I had the chance.

I think we'll be playing this again, maybe with some more exotic weaponry and a few perks.

More Cars

A couple more vehicles for Machinas or Gaslands.

This one has a demonic theme.

Someone in the Gaslands Facebook group suggested I should continue the pentagram theme to the wheels. So I did.

The ute is a little more rough and ready.

The small AT gun is scratchbuilt.

The words on the bonnet are 'RESISTANCE IS DUTY'.

Maurice Campaign - Round 3

We played Round 3 of our ongoing Maurice campaign last night. Round 2 saw the end of the first war, so we started this one with all of our conscripts upgraded to trained troops, and a new set of alliances. The new was saw Austria (Peter), Sweden (Me) and France (Caesar) up against the Ottomans (Gary), Russia (Colin) and Prussia (Ralph), and in that order.

I defended against a mighty wave of Russian infantry. Seeing it ready to advance on my position, I quickly switched my cavalry from my left flank to my right, with the vague idea of trying to either fall on the flank of the Russians as they advanced, or slip into their rear.

I opted for the latter plan, and then completely screwed it up, getting tangled up in the forests and village covered by the Russian's small force of irregular cavalry.

Meanwhile Colin ignored my cavalry and advanced his wall of men towards my somewhat exposed position.

I attacked his cavalry, hoping it might distract him. It didn't.

As Colin's troops arrived on my left flank I brought my commander back on the hope I could salvage the situation.

But, as ever, I'd left it too late, and I lost  the two units holding my flank before I'd organised any reserves to reinforce them. With no obvious way to prevent myself being overwhelmed, I sought terms in order to prevent any further casualties on either side (and to preserve our hard-won trained troops). Colin accepted.

Gary and Peter ended up in a similar situation. Gary's Ottomans advanced against Peters infantry, and inflicted a series of such rapid and heavy losses on them that Peter felt further conflict was unneccessary. he too sought, and received, terms.

As ever Gary's cavalry looked gorgeous.

It was left to Caesar to try and salvage some dignity for our alliance, and he did so in a very close game against Ralph. Both armies ended up with much of their infantry wiped out, and the battle pretty much went to the last morale point, but Caesar just clinched the victory. However both Prussia and France will be fielding a lot of conscripts in the next battle, as the was hasn't ended.

John's Irish sat this round out, as we now have an odd number of players. I have a feeling that my performance leaves me sat firmly at the bottom of the rankings. Weighting an army towards cavalry doesn't really seem to be the way to go in Maurice. Ironically I might have done better in my battle had I opted for more terrain, which would have broken up Colin's attack and negated his superior numbers of infantry somewhat. I could have used my cavalry as a massive reserve. Maybe next time, eh?

Chase Me

I played a couple of quick Machinas chases with Mrs Kobold last night. Life has been a bit traumatic for us recently with one thing and another and we needed a bit of a distraction.

Obviously it was also an opportunity for me to tweak a few mechanisms I want to change, mostly to do with how time and endurance work. As ever when you try to test some changes, the games didn't pan out in a way that made it worthwhile. So I'll have to play some more.

Anyway, in the first game Catherine chose the ram-car Red Tide and the gun-armed rat-rod Rhapsody In Blue, and they were chasing the flamethrower-armed ute Jockey Full Of Bourbon. 

She led with Red Tide, pushing it into aggressive passes in an attempt to bash me off the road. I held her off and gave her a dose of the flamethrower, badly damaging her vehicle.

Unfortunately Rhapsody In Blue had a terrible time with random events, skidding all over the place and, in one case, almost colliding with Red Tide. This left her having to continue to use Red Tide as her main attack still. She tried a pass but I almost forced the damaged car off the road.

Rhapsody in Blue put a seal on Catherine's run of bad luck by pulling out of the chase at pretty much the first opportunity. This now left Red Tide to make all of the running. Catherine tried another pass, I got a shot lined up with Jockey Full of Bourbon and flamed her off the road.

We set up another game. This time I ran Big Yellow Taxi, which was being pursued by Rock Lobster and Here Comes The Sun. This time she had the flamethrower, although Big Yellow Taxi is well-armed, with guns to the front and rockets to the rear.

Rock Lobster led the attack, but its spikes did little more than scratch the taxi's paintwork.

Rock Lobster fell back and Here Comes The Sun moved into the attack. Big Yellow Taxi swerved to avoid the worst of the flames, but unfortunately this left me with no bonus dice. With the taxi on fire I had to make a control roll, failed it and flipped.

Both games only lasted two or three turns, so I didn't really get to test the chase endurance mechanisms the way I wanted to. At the moment I'm veering towards all vehicle - pursuers and pursued - testing to see if they stay in the running at the end of each turn, but with the lead vehicle not accumulating time towards this test. So as long as the target stays in front it will never drop out, and generally it will always be testing with better odds that its pursuers. In the case of a team, if one member is the lead vehicle then they can opt to accumulate time instead of another vehicle in the team. I'll see how it all works out with some longer chases.