Saturday Night Live For Two

Last night was Gaslands week at the Gong Garage Gamers, but with one person crying off sick and others involved testing a game for a forthcoming show we ended up with just two players. 

We rolled a scenario and got Saturday Night Live which, with hindsight, is probably not the best scenario for two people as it involves some quite complex interactions to get the Audience Votes flowing for points. 

Caesar brought two Rutherford performance cars armed with mini-guns. 

I wanted to try out a team for The Order Of The Inferno, to see how it worked. It involves trying to set things on fire, including your own vehicles. I ran:

Jockey Full Of Bourbon - A truck with a flamethrower and napalm dropper
Stay On These Roads - A buggy with a napalm dropper
Picture To Burn - A bike with, you've guessed it, a napalm dropper

They were loaded with perks to repair hits and hazards on each other but to also ignite themselves when it became important to score votes. 

I set up a fairly open arena, and we started on opposite sides of it. 

Here's Jockey Full Of Bourbon (foreground) and Stay On These Roads. The bike had gone off elsewhere. 

One of Caesar's cars came straight at my vehicles, guns blazing but inflicting little damage. However with a spot-prize for initiating a ram, Caesar went for it, turning sharply back  and hitting my buggy. 

It was enough to wipe out his car. My truck shaved very close to it, unleashing flaming death from its side-mounted flamethrower as it did so, and destroying the vehicle. 

Caesar's other car was after my bike but I managed to zip past him before he could shoot at me and dropped some napalm just to be extra mean. Unfortunately Caesar managed to avoid the flames. 

Mind you, in avoiding the flames he nearly came a cropper, narrowly avoiding a collision with a shipping container.

Anyway, after a bit more driving around I got a chance to plonk some more napalm in front of Caesar's surviving vehicle. And I'd set my truck on fire so I could earn Audience Votes once Caesar burst into flames.

He drove through the napalm without taking a hit.

Unfortunately in setting up the napalm my buggy wiped out, crashed into a wall and was destroyed. 

Keen to pick up some sponsor-orientated Audience Votes by setting something on fire I went for another option. I set my bike on fire and then deliberately crashed it into Caesar's car. A collision with something in fire sets you on fire. 

Caesar tried to evade the damage from the bike, so amazingly I survived the crash and actually dealt a decent amount of damage. But I'd misjudged how many hazards Caesar's car had. The crash caused it to wipe out. Wiping out dumps all hazards. And if a vehicle has no hazards any fire it has goes out. 

So once again I'd failed to set something on fire, and now my truck was burning and I had nothing to show for it but damage. Still, the truck soon wiped out and wasn't on fire any more.

The current spot-prize involved ramming an enemy vehicle. Caesar went for it. 

My truck was wrecked. Caesar now had the only vehicle in play until I respawned.

At that point we called the game. We both had 7 or 8 victory points but needed 7 or 8 more to finish the scenario. Neither of us were in much of a position to collect them through sponsor abilities, so it would now be a long slog via spot-prizes. We decided to end the game and call it a draw.

Really we needed at least one more player. But for all that it was a fun game and I found it a useful exercise in trying to understand how best to use a sponsor I'd not tried before.