Saturday Night Live!

I've been on a short holiday, so I'm a little behind on my blog posts. Last Thursday was Gaslands night at the Wollongong Wargamers. As ever we were well-subscribed, and ended up playing two three-player games. We brought pre-designed teams, then randomly decided the division of players and what scenario would be played on each table.

Our table got my favourite scenario: Saturday Night Live. In this one you zoom around trying to earn Audience Votes. Obviously you'll mostly do this by whatever means your team sponsor has for picking them up, but you also get them for losing vehicles (risky strategy) and picking up randomly determined spot prizes. There's one of these active at all times, and it goes to the first active player to achieve whatever the goal is. Once one is achieved a new one is generated. They may require vehicles to be damaged near you, or for you to do a risky manuever or even simply be close to the centre of the arena. But if you do one you get a vote and a victory point.

Our teams were:

June, running a Maxxine team consisting of a car, and buggy and a bike.
Stuart, running a Rutherford team consisting of Mr Apollo (minigun) and Ali Baba's Camel (turret-mounted mortar)
Me, running a single Miyazaki vehicle, Fantastic Cat. It's a hover-car and can do lots of cool stunts.

Here's the setup with Rutherford to the left, Fantastic cat top right and June's team bottom-right.

One rule is that although you always get any Audience Votes to which you're entitled, they only count as victory points if you are reasonably close to an opposing vehicle. So you can't hide in the corners in this scenario; you have to get up-close and personal.

I'm not going to lie; having played this five days ago and having been on holiday during that time some of the events of the game are hazy. Take notes you say? Well, I don't. I rely on my memory and what I see in the photos I take. Plus this scenario tends to generate a lot of incidents as players race around trying to hit the ever-changing spot-prizes.

This is June harpooning Ali Baba's Camel, and dragging into a ram.. The brown marker just above the vehicles is the designated centre of the arena. I should make a nice obstacle for that.

Stuart drove Ali Baba's Camel into the thick of June's team looking to score some shooting-based Audience Votes. Meanwhile my hover-car was coming into play at the top of the picture.

A head-on collision! It was obvious the bike was goin g to be a wreck. Less so was teh sheer number of 6s June rolled, which caused Stuart's car to disintegrate as well. So that was two vehicles down (but ab Audience Vote each)

June's Maxxine team did some audience-pleasing ballet, whilst my car did some drifting and driving too, keeping the crowd very happy. Everyone was steadily picking up points at this stage.

June tried some more harpooning, this time on Stuart's Mr Apollo.

I did some serious Miyazaki shit and took a shot at June's car.

Wrecked it!

Stuart took Mr Apollo into a turn ...

... that saw a not depicted head-on collision with June's buggy, destroying them both. This left Fantastic Cat as the only active vehicle. Normally this would be good, but in this scenario it means that Audience Votes don't count as victory points. So I cruised around for a bit until someone respawned.

Mr Apollo back in the running, and now we could score victory points again. A couple of us picked up a nice score through a spot prize that kept coming up for clearing all of your hazards without wiping out. Once we were all up to a good speed it was a great way to spend spare shift results on the dice.

Anyway, Mr Apollo shot at me. I took minimal damage because I was stupendously evasive, but as Rutherford Stuart only had to inflict potential hits, not actual damage, and he got Audience Votes.

I squirted a bit of oil around just to be annoying. My car ignores it. Everyone else's couldn't.

Stuart came in for another shot. And did enough damage to pick up his 15th scoring Audience Vote, which gave him the win!.

The final score were close - Stuart won with 15 points, whilst June and I both finished on 12. So it could have been anyone's game. 

This is a very tactical scenario, since you are constantly looking at how to pick up points and sometimes wrecking opposing vehicles is a secondary consideration. You also get to pick up lots of Audience Votes, which means there's fun things you can spend them on to make your life easier (or other people's more difficult). This was one of the first scenarios where I've seen people spend them to change who has initiative, for example, as having the active car is important for so many of the spot-prizes.

Anyway. it was a great game. Thanks for June and Stuart for an entertaining evening.