Machinas Teaser

Courtesy of my iPhone macro lens, here's some teaser shots of the final vehicle for the Machinas game I'm running on Thursday. I'm heading into darker territory with the musical references on this one.

The Queen's Birthday Sprint

In the Australian wastelands of the post-apocalypse, racers still get together to celebrate a holiday known only as The Queen's Birthday. And they celebrate with a race.

(In reality I wanted to run through a quick game of Machinas to test out a few rules tweaks I'll be using for the game on Thursday. A race seemed the quickest way to do it. And we do get a public holiday for the Queen's Birthday here. I know: why?).

The race consisted of four cars racing for two laps. I took the pink peril, Lola. Other cars included the big-gun toting Fountain of Lamneth, The Anarchist with its flamethrower and the ram-car Dreamline.

The cars hurtle off the starting line. I chose to sit at the back - despite having rear-facing armaments and armour I decided that hanging back and letting everyone else wear each other out was the way to go initially.

And the 'wear each other out' bit started early when The Anarchist torched The Fountain of Lamneth with a single shot, utterly destroying it.

(I have added multiple hits from shooting and damage based on car size rather than speed. The Fountain of Lamneth rolled one success when being shot at, compared to The Anarchist who got an astounding nine. That equates to seven hits on a vehicle which can take four - instant kill)

The Anarchist and Dreamline then jostled for the lead round the first bend and along the back straight. I attempted my move on the second bend, but was immediately blocked by The Anarchist. As we headed into the second and final lap I tried again

I had no success, but The Anarchist took the lead not long after..

I tried again ...

... passing Dreamline and then taking on The Anarchist.

Success!

It didn't last long though. As we headed down the back-straight I decided to use my rear-gun to damage the opposition before it tried to pass me. Unfortunately I failed to line up my shot, which gave The Anarchist a chance at one. It scored no damage, but caused me to drop back into the other car. A series of involved control rolls ensued as both vehicles skidded ...

... and I was out of the race, bouncing over Dreamline as it tried to avoid The Anarchist swerving across the track.

More swerving saw The Anarchist just hold its position.

I ran the rest of the race with the NPC cars, as there were only a couple of track sections to go. The Anarchist was in the lead as they rounded the final bend towards the home straight.

But as Dreamline moved out to pass it, The Anarchist suffered locked brakes ...

... and lost the lead!

The cars raced neck and neck towards the finish line.

Dreamline crossed first!

The complex collision was caused by an oddity in the rules for tail-guns, which I think may need tweaking in order to prevent vehicles swerving back into the vehicle that shot at them. Currently replying to a failed attempt to use a tail-gun is almost as dangerous as being shot at by the gun itself, since the target swerves back into your position far too regularly. I have a possible solution, which I will work through in due course.

Anyway, this was a fun race, if a little short, although it didn't really showcase the shooting damage changes that well, with the only time they were used being a catastrophically skewed result.

Tomorrow I need to write up the game stats for the nine vehicles for Thursday's game.

More Machinas Madness

I'm running a game of Machinas at the club on Thursday, so have been producing vehicles for what I hope will be an interesting Inspired By Mad Max road-chase.

For the baddies I've hacked about a couple of subcompact hot-rods. This one has a rack of missiles on the roof:

And this one is inspired by Fury Road, with a wild warrior wielding explosive-tipped spears. The figure is a Revel Aztec warrior.

There was minimal work on these vehicles. Indeed I left as much of the original paintwork on the first as I could, because I liked the flame design down the side.

This one took a little more work - the obligatory tanker.

This was a cheap ($2) mostly plastic vehicle. I added armour and other bits to hide some of its shortcomings. It's not the articulated rig beloved of the films, but it will do until I find something better.

I haven't given it any guns, but it's fairly well equipped with defences. This should make it a tough 'objective' to crack in the game, especially if it's given a couple of escort vehicles.

The vehicles together.

The game will have more vehicles. I'll add a few from my existing collection of course, but I wanted to use some bikes as well. I have ordered some from Ramshackle early in May, but did so before I read their information on order processing and delivery times which basically suggests that it could still be a month or more before I see them. So I resorted to paper ones downloaded from Junior General.

The gang of baddies will also have another vehicle, for their Boss to ride in, But I'll save that one for another post because it's worth it.

The next stage is to name the vehicles and give them some stats.

Blucher With Figures

Having had 'a bit of a day' I just turned up on Thursday to watch and take pictures before collecting My Son The DJ from the station later on. But the main game was Blucher, using figures from Gary's collection on sabot bases. 

It started with a run through Scharnhorst to generate the battle; Prussians faced the French in North Germany. This is the area they ended up fighting over (marked in red) and with the town as the objective.

The French ended up with two columns on table, bottom right and top right, the latter covering the town. Two other columns were off table to the top right as reinforcements. The Prussians managed to get all of their troops onto the battlefield, so whilst the French held the objective they would have to fight against heavy odds until the rest of their army came up in support.

The game started with cards, as all units are hidden.

A Prussian column is revealed.

Before the town more troops are revealed - the Prussians were advancing cavalry on it, only to discover that the only enemy troops in the area were the French cavalry. Much charging ensued.

With most of the troops revealed the Prussians saw that they were facing two columns of French cavalry. Things didn't look good for the French, although bringing infantry to bear on cavalry in Blucher isn't as easy as it looks - if they are moving then they are vulnerable to the cavalry attacking them, but if they go safe and stationary then they aren't attacking.

More action over on the flank with the town.

One of the off-table French columns, which undoubtedly contained the infantry they needed.

This was a conventional 300pt game, but with two player on each side running the army by committee and a couple of people adjudicating and keeping the game moving. With novice players abounding the game didn't move quickly enough to reach a conclusion. However everyone seemed to enjoy the game and picked up enough of the mechanisms that future games should move a little more quickly. And the next 'future game' will apparently be in two weeks time, for the 200th anniversary of Waterloo.

Elsewhere Peter and Geoff played big-battle DBA with Crusaders of some kind taking on Medieval Germans.

Knights abounded.

It was a close game, with both sides teetering on thh brink at the end, but the Crusaders broke first.

Mad Max: Fury Road - Concept Art

If you thought the film had some eye-catching concepts in it, how about THIS LOT? My favourite is the locomotive with road wheels:

Original image from artbrendan.com