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Sunday, 8 July 2018

Machinas Chase And Race

I'm running Machinas on Thursday, so I thought I'd better brush up on the rules with a couple of quick games.

Firstly I ran a chase. I ran the elegant Back in Black, and set up six possible pursuers. Between one and three of them would start the pursuits, with the others being potential reinforcements.


I ended up being chased by two rams - Red Tide has nothing but a massive ram, whilst the pink Woman King has a ram but also a powerful engine and some cunning customisations, so is less of a one-trick pony.


Red Tide came on strong at the start, but fortunately the road was straight and I could out-pace it. However it was costing me bonus dice.


I used a mixture of AI and common-sense to run the pursuers, making decisions by die roll. One was whether Red Tide would give up the pursuit for a while to let Woman King have a go. Eventually, with the red ram out of bonus dice, the second pursuer moved up for a go.


Fortunately my driver's signature, determined randomly at the start, meant that from time to time I could pick up extra bonus dice thanks to various cunning improvements I'd made to my vehicle. This gave me enough to hold off Woman King for a couple of turns.



Woman King came in for a third try. I held off the pass again, and this time I took a gamble; we were both low on bonus dice, but I reasoned that chucking a pile into a bash would pay off. It meant facing the ram, but it was worth the risk,


The gamble paid off, and Woman King was wrecked.


Red Tide was back in the running though.


However I managed to swerve across the road and prevent Red Tide lining up an attack not once ...


... but twice.


Frustrated the pursuer gave up.

None of the reinforcements appeared.


For my second game I decided to run a three-lap race with four cars. I had the race-track consist of three lanes, with a fourth, outside, shoulder.


From front to back were Stay On These Roads, Woman King, Georgia Lee and Mr Apollo. I ran Georgia Lee, and the AI and common-sense ran the rest.


Both Stay On These Roads and Woman King had decent racing engines, so held the front positions as we went into the first turn.


However Stay On These Roads skidded back taking the turn, and with its engine not counting on a curve, came under pressure from Mr Apollo. Despite being armed with a big gun, Mr Apollo went for a ram ...


... and the little rat-rod was out.


The cars sped into the back-straight. Mr Apollo tried to pass Woman King.


Woman King smashed him off the track.


I swerved to avoid the wreck.


This meant that there were only two of us left by the end of the first lap. I tucked in tight behind Woman King, building up bonus dice. But the end came early in the second lap, when Woman King skidded back into my vehicle, and crashed. This gave me the win, with virtually no effort on my part.

There were a couple of shots fired in the second game, but neither did any damage.

I think I've refreshed my memory now, though. Playing against an AI doesn't give the same feel as live opponents, but it's still instructive.

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