Pirates Ahoy!

Our scheduled game this week was Gaslands, and it looked like we'd get so many players that we'd have to run two games. However with one thing and another we ended up with four people, enough for a comfortable single game.

The Zombie Bash game the other week was so good that we added the scenario to the table for arena battles in the rules, dropping the extra Death Race (and thus reducing the odds of that scenario coming up). As it was we got an old favourite - The Arena Of Death.

The four teams were:

Declan, running an Idris team of two cars - Black Dog and Back In Black
Caesar, running a single Mishkin monster-truck, It's A Long Way To The Top
Craig, running a single Scarlett van, All You Need Is Love
I ran a Maxxine team, consisting of two cars, Woman King and Terrible Canyons of Static.

Declan has played a couple of times, whilst Craig was a complete novice.

Here's an action shot of Caesar rolling the first skid dice of the game.

His monster-truck zoomed forward and unleashed fire from a mini-gun at Declan's Back In Black. With Headshot, Dead-Eye and a second shot from Rapid-Fire he shredded the car before it even moved. When Declan did move one of the gun-turrets fired and wrecked him.

I got off to a nice start, with my vehicles dancing gracefully and earing some Audience Votes.

We encountered some opposition from Black Dog, and Terrible Canyons Of Static took more damage than I would have liked at this stage.

I fluffed some moves and ended up in a near-miss collision with Black Dog. This left my synchronised driving a bit out of sorts. At that point Craig came his Scarlett VW camper-van, loaded with jolly maniacs armed with guns. He managed to get the scatter-guns lined up on both of my vehicles and unloaded a ton of fire on them. Woman King was damaged, whilst Terrible Canyons Of Static was destroyed.

Caesar's monster-truck was finishing off gun-turrets.

Woman King zipped out of the way of Craig's deadly pirates; I hoped that Caesar's truck would finish him off. Meanwhile Craig gleefully rammed Black Dog, destroying it.

So Declan was out of the running, with both vehicles destroyed. Craig was now gunning for Caesar's monster-truck. You can just see Woman King hiding behind a container in the background.

The two vehicles turn towards each other ...

... then run straight at each other,

Crash! The monster-truck had a ram, but Craig had the battle-hammer trait which means that his hazards add to a collision. A head on collision meant that both vehicles were rolling lots of dice for damage.

They both survived, but Craig used a Scarlett ability that allowed him to sacrifice crew to cause hits on the opposing vehicle, boarding the monster-truck and wrecking it. He then press-ganged one of its crew onto his team!

So it was now just me and Craig. I managed to slide my vehicle into a wall in the excitement of the thing.

Timing would be everything. I had to stay out of range of the camper-van's firepower, then zip in on my turn to ram it at high speed and hopefully destroy it.

I didn't manage it, and got shot up. A lucky evasion roll saw me survive with one hit left.

I tried to turn in on Craig, and did get in a shot, but on his move he was able to stay in range and handguns were enough to finish off Woman King.

So as the sole survivor Craig won! And in his first game as well.

The Scarlett bus is a beast:

All You Need Is Love - Truck - 50 Cans - Scarlett

3 x Extra Crew, 4 x Blunderbuss, Caltrops (Rear), Mines (Side), Armour Plating
Battlehammer, Boarding Party, Terrifying Lunatic, Fenderkiss, Double-Barrelled.