Thursday Night Live

Yesterday we had our first game of Gaslands in a while. There were three of us and we all chose to run one vehicle apiece. We ended up with one of my favourite scenarios (and one of Caesar's least favourite scenarios), Saturday Night Live. This is the ne where you chase around collecting Audience Votes which mostly translate to Victory Points. First to 15 wins.

Caesar went with his Freeway Fighter, this time maquerading as a Miyazaki vehicle
Craig had a rally-car with the handling and robustness of a truck and packed with Scarlett pirates like a clown-car. 
I ran the Yellow Submarine, which is a Mishkin technological terror featuring not only a nuclear engine but also a teleporter. 

Mishkin isn't normally great in this scenario, because their Audience Votes are generally quite low. However I had several unique weapons, and (I hoped) a vehicle capable of competing for the various spot-prizes the scenario offers. 

Freeway Fighter and Yellow Submarine begin the game.

Caesar and Craig met in the centre and a furious exchange of gunfire saw both vehicles damaged. 

To be honest I lost track of a lot of what happened. Craig managed to shoot up Caesar and then ram and destroy him, picking up votes by doing so. Caesar had done a bit of funky Miyazaki movement prior to that and acquired a few votes. And were were all collecting votes for the spot-prizes as they came up.

Yellow Submarine isn't heavily armed, but can put out a bit of firepower. Craig and I exchanged shots.

Craig had sown a couple of minefields, and Caesar's newly regenerated Freeway Fighter contrived to run into one of them. Amazingly it took no damage. 

I got Yellow Submarine into a tight spot and used the teleporter to move back out of danger. I then moved back up and unleashed my Thumper - an awesome sonic device that forces opposing vehicles to make a flip check. Caesar failed and took damage. 

I used teh teleporter to get around the corner safely, leaving Caesar and Craig to fight things out for a bit. Craig and I were both looking strong in terms of victory points, whilst Caesar had barely troubled the scorer. 

A close shave for Craig.

I think this was the point that Caesar got shot up and destroyed again. I think he got a lot of his audience votes from being wrecked. 

I'd brought Yellow Submarine back into the centre, chasing spot-prizes. I was doing quite well, but sadly the next vote I got was when Craig shot me up and wrecked me. 

I think I may have returned the favour somehow. Whatever happened we had a few phases where there were no active vehicles in play. 

And they're back! We all respawned. Craig was out of shot at the top. I chased Freeway Fighter (teleporting to get closer).

At this stage I saw I was only a few victory points away from winning, so I started looking for a quick finish. Using my Eureka! trait to magic up a one-shot tank-gun allowed me to not only destroy Craig's vehicle, but got me a point for using a unique weapon. With only two points away from a win I got to activate. The spot-prize was for declaring a T-bone smash-attach, so I used my teleporter to get into position on Caesar, and lined up a ram. I got the smash, and ended up one point short of the win.  

But the ram caused me to wipe out. And that caused me to flip. And a flip with a nuclear engine means the vehicle simply explodes. And that meant I wrecked and picked up the final audience vote I needed for the win. 

Amazingly I somehow managed to pick up two spot-prizes during the wreck process! So the final scores were:

Me - 17
Craig - 9
Caesar - 6

I got four points just from my Mishkin sponsorship - using unique weapons. I wrecked twice for two more points. The rest were from aggressively pursuing spot prizes. 

It was great fun to get back into the arena after too long a break. 

Rallyman: DIRT

I bought another racing boardgame!

Rallyman: DIRT is the latest version of a series that's been around for a few years. As the name suggests, it's about Rally. Although there are modes in an expansion for head-to-head racing, this game is about hurling your car around a gravel-covered course as fast as you possibly can, with players competing for the fastest time. You string several courses together - the designer reckons you could have four players get through a three-stage rally in around two hours. 

What's nice is that, like Flamme Rouge, the courses are modular. The game comes with 32 double-sided hexagonal tiles allowing you to build a whole range of tracks. Tracks are usually 10-14 hexes long. Obviously you have curves of varying difficulty, as well as shortcuts, bumps (if you want to get into the air) and water. An expansion (which sadly ay be out of print) introduces snow and asphalt surfaces, different tyres and two different types of cars.

The mechanism is simple and rather interesting. You have a hand of dice - black gear dice, numbered 1-6, two white or orange dice called coast dice and a red brake dice. On your turn you plot the dice onto the course according to two simple rules. Firstly each dice can only be used once per turn. And, secondly, any dice you place must be the same value, one higher or one lower than the preceding dice. Coast dice count as the same value as the previous dice, whilst a brake dice can accompany another dice and allow you to drop by two speed instead of one. Here's the dice placed for a move. The red car starts at 4, brakes to 2, coasts at 2 to get around a curve then accelerates to 5. This sets me up for the next curve which has a safe speed of 4 or 5. 

But then what? Well, each dice has one or two faces marked with a hazard symbol. After placement you have to roll the dice you placed, and if you get three or more hazards then you crash. You can opt to roll the dice one at a time, in sequence, in which case you can stop rolling at any point and simply end you move wherever you get to. Or you can go all out, and roll the dice together. In this case you are rewarded with time tokens, which can be used to shave time off your final time score, or spent to 'fix' dice when rolling one at a time, allowing you to treat them as an automatic success roll. So rolling one at a time is a safe option, but going all out from time to time allows you more options and rewards.

At the end of your move you take a card based on the gear you ended in. Each card has a time in seconds on it - 50 seconds for Gear 1 down to 10 seconds for Gear 6. Your accumulated cards are your total time (minus your retained time tokens as well). So, as you can see, your aim is to complete the course in the least cards whilst ending each move in the highest speed you can. 

Obviously it plays well solo - you can set up courses then see how fast you can run through them. There are a few rules online for bot/NPC racers too, if you want to 'compete' against someone. 

I have a nice collection of race games now. My favourite is still Flamme Rouge, which has a perfect balance of elegance, simplicity and replayability:

Its child-friendly offspring Flamme Rouge: BMX is fun, but with less replay value due to the limited track configurations. I'm working on that:

A sleeper hit in our house is Snow Tails, which covers sled-dog racing. Again, the modular tracks keep it interesting, and it has a novel and frustrating movement system based around having to run your dogs at different speeds in order to go around corners:

Then there's Heat: Pedal To The Metal. We've played this less than I'd have liked. It shares some DNA with Flamme Rouge, but is a very different game:

Somewhere down in the garage we have Waddington's Formula One, which we haven't played for many, many years, but which actually holds up fairly well with 'modern' games in terms of mechanisms. 

Then, of course, if you want to race on water there's Spinnaker:

And, finally, if absurd roll-and-move games are your thing, there's Magical Athlete. There's an expansion due out for it in the next few months, and I have been lucky enough to have made a small contribution to it. 

Do you have a favourite racing-themed boardgame? 

Battle For Hong Kong

For the third week in a row Daniel and I played Memoir '44 on our Thursday evening club-night.

Last week we did some non-WW2 actions. This week we did two linked WW2 battles, set around the Japanese attack on Hong Kong. They introduced a few new things to Daniel, (and one new thing for me): special national characteristics for the British and the Japanese, bunkers, wire, night-fighting and the beach-landing board. 

The first scenario we played was The Gin-Drinker's line, which sees a Japanese attack on the British defensive positions outside Hong Kong. 

The British position looks strong, with wire and trenches, and even a bunker in the centre, but it's night so weapon ranges are severely limited and the Japanese infantry can move quickly and still attack.

I played the Japanese in the first game. There's some interesting objectives in this one - the bunker and a hill beyond it. They count for whichever side has possession, so the British start with two medals. It does tend to put the onus on the Japanese to focus their assault on them as well. And, fortunately, I was blessed with a hand of cards that enabled me to assault aggressively in the centre, and then keep assaulting. 

Before it got light enough for the British artillery to be really dangerous I'd grabbed both objectives. Then it was just a matter of mopping up a few units to win the battle. 

Naturally we swapped sides. Daniel's attack wasn't as all-out as mine and the bunker in the centre changed hands a couple of times. Daniel managed a bold attack on my left that broke through the lines and reached the outskirts of Kowloon, but it wasn't enough. I held both objectives and, with the casualties inflicted on the attackers mounting I picked up a win for the British. 

The key bunker, still in British hands at the end (but not the original defenders). 

We then set up the second game, which covers the Japanese landings in Hong Kong itself, and the subsequent fighting. The Japanese have numbers on their side, but the British can whittle them down as they come ashore. I took the Japanese in the first game and started with a strong attack on my left that, sadly, quickly petered out and was broken up. 

There's armour in this scenario - the British have one unit and the Japanese three. So we had a 'tank' battle in the centre. By this stage I was ashore in the centre and had defeated the British defences there. After some hard-fighting teh Japanese won 6-4.

Time to swap sides. Daniel ponders how to get everything ashore whilst I planned my defence. 

This was an epic game. Daniel got units ashore across the board. I spent a couple of turns hitting each infantry unit just to remove one figure and stop them getting their horrible close-combat bonus for being a full-strength unit. The British armour attacked right down onto the 'beach', the Japanese air-force put in an early appearance, the 'stiff-upper lip' rule claimed a few Japanese figures, and we even had another tank battle. 

Both sides were on five medals, and the next casualty would decide the battle. I found a quick easy kill on my turn, got it and scraped a narrow win for the British. But it was a great fight. 

Thanks to Daniel for four great games. And we played them through in just over two hours. 

Dawn Patrol

In my previous game of Spandau & Lewis I tried out the Taubes for the first time. In my next game I wanted to use the Bleriot XIs. They didn't seem to hang around on the Western Front for as long as the Taube did (at least not in any numbers) so it was harder to put together a scenario that allowed a mix of machine-guns and rifles. So I didn't. I just went for an all-rifle scenario.

It's early in the war and both sides need to check out what's happening around a village on the front-line.

The Germans send a couple of Taubes, escorted by an Albatros B-type. Escorting with aircraft just equipped with a rifle-armed observer does seem to be a thing. They seem to have just acted as a deterrent. 

The French send a couple of Bleriot XIs. They are escorted by a Morane L. The latter plane is a two-seater and the rear observer is equipped with a rifle. 

I varied the firing arcs for the planes. My rules pretty much give rifles free firing except to the front (on tractor planes) and rear (pushers) but really they were just as restricted as machine-guns, so I'm less generous these days.

Taube (Front-seat observer) - 2*,4,8,10*
Albatros B (Front-seat observer) - 2*,4*,8*,10*. All arcs are restricted because of all of the stuff in the way.

Bleriot XI (Rear seat observer) - 2*,4,6*8,10*
Morane L (Rear seat observer) - 4,6*8
I reasoned that the parasol wing on the Morane would restrict firing to the front.

I didn't take detailed notes, but here's everyone closing in on the two objectives. The Bleriots failed to notice any enemy aircraft for ages, and were pretty much scouting the targets before they saw planes with black crosses on the wings. Both sides kept their scouting planes on mission (of course) and sent the cover off to harass the enemy.

The Albatros and teh Morane exchanged a shot as they passed each other in the centre, mor for form's sake than anything else. 

One of the Bleriots finally spotted the Albatros, just as it passed alongside. A single shot rang out from the German plane and the French observer slumped in his seat, mortally wounded.

For practical purposes this now left the French down one plane and, to make matters worse, they now had an unarmed aircraft that had nothing better to do but go home, but had to avoid enemy planes whilst doing so. 

Both of the Taubes spotted a target, and one closed in on the second target. The other Taube swung wide (right of the picture). The operational Bleriot spotted both targets with ease and looked at heading home. A few shots were exchanged, to no effect. 

As the operational Bleriot turned for home its observer got of a couple of shots at he Albatros. One went home, doing some minor structural damage, but nothing more. 

Both Bleriots were heading for home unmolested, as did one of the Taubes. The Morane went after the last Taube, but couldn't line up a shot. 

The action ended with the Albatros and the Morane meeting briefly in the middle again. They both shot at each other to no effect, then went home. 

This was another German win, with a French observer killed and three observations brought back to their lines compared to the French who only got two. Still, they could have lost their Albatros to that shot from the Bleriot. 

This was a very sedate game, and made a change from the usual frantic dog-fighting you get with WW1 games. 

The Gunbus Scourge?

Having made some new planes it was time to christen them in a game. The problem with the Bleriot XI and the Etrich Taube is that it's hard to find a point where you can get some gameable aircraft combinations on the table, since by the time anything with useful weapons appeared they'd pretty much been withdrawn from front-line service.

Still, in early 1915 the combinations for this game would have been viable. 

On a quiet sector a couple of Taubes are on a reconnaissance mission. Two Taubes, two targets. Each in unarmed, but their observer carries a rifle. They are escorted by a new Aviatik C-type, whose observer has a machine-gun. It would be better if he wasn't also in the front seat, surrounded by the wings, but you can't have everything. 

But today's patrol is about to be rudely interrupted, for the British are unleashing a new technological terror - the Vickers FB5 'Gunbus'. Here's one of them. There's another on the other side of the board. 

Also new are the acrylic markers I ordered when I got my latest batch of plane bases. They're 1cm circles, 3mm deep and I got them in ten different colours. In this game blue markers show planes that are oblivious to enemy aircraft, whilst the dark grey markers show those that have  lost speed through a manoeuvre. I've made a small tweak to those rules, by the way, which I'll add below. 

Anyway, a Gunbus stalks a Taube. The Aviatik has spotted it and is rushing to it assistance. It needn't have worried. The first burst from the Gunbus, on an unwary target, at short range, from the rear, didn't inflict a single hit. 

Lots of manoeuvre sees three aircraft slowed down. The Aviatik closed in on the attacking Gunbus, whilst the Gunbus fired another burst at the Taube. 

This burst was more effective. However despite a 50% chance it failed to inflict a critical hit. The Taube was badly damaged, though. However it managed to get a good look at one of the targets. 

The second Gunbus had joined the fight now, dropping into the rear of the other Taube.  

The first Gunbus and the Aviatik zoomed past each other at close range. The Gunbus tried a shot but with that defection it didn't stand much chance of hitting, and didn't. 

The Aviatik pulled off a tight turn and the observer got the Gunbus in his sights. A short burst saw a catastrophic structural failure on the British plane, and down it went!

The surviving Gunbus kept up the attack on the Taubes. The white Taube broke off from its reconnaissance run to try and shake off the British plane. The other Taube looked at observing the second target but instead turned for home, albeit whilst making a pass across the front of the Gunbus allowing a rifle shot that hit but did no damage. 

On the left one Taube is now safely heading home. In the centre the Aviatik had taken a shot at the surviving Gunbus with no effect. The Gunbus was trying to stay in the rear of the second Taube, and had taken a couple of shots as well, inflicting some damage. 

But in turning tightly the Gunbus lost speed, and the Taube decided to avoid further damage by heading home. In theory the Gunbus could have caught up with it, but the sensible move was really to break off at this stage. 

So a win for the Germans, with one observation returned home and one enemy plane shot down. Both Taubes were heavily damaged, but that was all the British could claim. That one lucky shot by the Aviatik crew turned the game, as the Taubes were unlikely to have done very well against both FB5s. 

And the manoeuvre change? In Spandau & Lewis you roll a D6 to see how well you can turn or sideslip. If  get a turn over 45 degrees (or a sideslip greater than 1") you have to make a power check to see if you lose speed. This is adjusted negatively for more extreme turns. The change that I added was that if your final manoeuvre  roll is 1-2 then even a 45 degree turn/1" sideslip forces a check, although it made at a +1. So there's an incentive to try and keep your manoeuvre modifiers as high as possible and a chance that even planes that can't turn more than 45 degrees (like the Taube) will suffer a loss of speed.  

For the next game I need to come up with something with which to christen the Bleriots.