ONLINE - Tue 19 Jan 21

[DaVinci's Cat]

Gaslands Flag Tag - 50 Cans, no restrictions. And I'm out for revenge... or better hazard management...

[Mike]

OK you run through the gears 1 to 6 each round until someone wins.
Objective hit the other teams flag to get a point. First to three points wins.

What happened lads.

We didnt even get to the end of round one before we declared a draw.
6 vehicles on the table at the start, 2 when we declared.

Simon was left with his Gyrocopter which couldn't hit the flag but could destroy Mikes car easily.
Mike was left with a car that didn't have any weapons that could destroy Simons Gyrocopter.

If the audience likes your team that can reward you with a respawn of a vehicle. But even then we didnt think we could get 3 points let alone 1.

Round 1
GEAR 1
We both moved around our spawn point markers dropping of weapons to deter the enemy.
Then sped towards each other hoping to get the upper hand in the ensuing scrap.

GEAR 2 start
Simons blue gyro was holding back laying out more defensive weapons.
His other vehicles closed the gap and fired off their energy based weapons.
Mikes green car gently swerved its way between the chemical plant to end up at the rear of Simons performance car.
Mikes blue car with some crazy spinning and sliding dropped mines and napalm all over the place.
And Mikes lead driver just rammed the hell out of Simons buggy.

GEAR 2 end
1 vehicle out of the game and a complete free for all in the middle.

GEAR 3 start
What is it with Mikes recruitment team. Another driver (light blue) decides to leave the field as Simon turns it into a burning wreck. Bloody cowards.
Simons performance car gets away from the pack only to be taken out of action a short distance from the prize. ( and a few minefields )
Mikes leisurely green car decides to do some spins into the chemical plant piercing it but taking no damage. A lot of booing from the audience.
GEAR 3 end
Simons Gyro (dark blue) and Mikes lead driver head towards each other. Will a flag actually get tagged.

GEAR 4 start
Simons Gyro gets behind Mikes lead driver and takes him out before he can get anywhere near the prize.
Mikes team manager is pulling his hair out.
'That *&~:~}{)(^**>@:, Sunday leisure driver just wants to get some scars from the chemicals to give him cred. I'll give him some scars'

GEAR 4 end
1 Gyro and 1 car left.
Smoke and wrecks litter the arena.

Green? He is still trying to get his scars. Team manager is loading his shotgun.
Simons gyro knows he will have to commit suicide to give his team any chance of getting a flag.
How much would you give for your team?

The audience change channels in disgust. There was so much carnage at first. It looked like a promising race.
The TV host cut the transmission and all lights went out.

Both teams really need to get the hang of the flag tag race before the next TV show.

[DaVinci's Cat]

Due to a technical hiccup which meant a delay to the evenings racing, we were up against the clock so took the opportunity to deploy fairly close to each other and get straight to it.

Unsurprisingly, we both opted for similar tactics of making it nigh-on impossible to get our flags without forcing forcing our opponent to commit to a kamikaze run. What we also found out was we're surprisingly efficient at eliminating our opponents before they even get a chance to commit to said kamikaze run.

Whilst I got the first closing shot off with my Arc Lightening Projector, my desire to inflict damage left me somewhat open to retaliation and being in a performance car with people dropping napalm and mines on you is certainly not the best place to be. Mike did some pretty nice driving to slide just in-front of me (now pointing towards the board edge!) and drop the aforementioned load off ordinance right where he needed it to go. This left me wiped-out and with only a couple of hull points remaining.

At this point, my buggy forgot about the heavier weight ram laden coffin of death charging towards him and focussed on revenge. A gentle turn put Mike's car in my firing arc so I let loose with the Kinetic Super Booster. This inflicted no damage but moved Mike up to 5th gear. I had a quiet smile as he realised that this left him with very few templates to choose from whilst pointing towards the table edge and those available templates would near enough take him off the table.

It was pretty much the last thing my buggy did as Mike immediately slammed into it for a head-on collision. Realising I would not be able to walk away from this one by evading, I had to try and do as much damage back before becoming a flaming twisted wreck. I got obliterated and failed to explode but did at least put a fair chuck of damage on Mike's car.

Over the next couple of gear phases, I managed to get my performance car moving and turned back toward Mike's Flag whilst plinking away at his ram car. Unfortunately my much reduced hull finally caught up with me as Mike pistolled me to death. I skidded forward and then fortunately exploded causing Mike's Blue Car to take it's 2 remaining damage and fail it's wipe out test, which effectively catapulted his flaming wreck of a car off of the table.

All that was left for me to do was drop a bunch of mines right in front of his crippled ram car to remove that from play before we took stock of the carnage. The more I reflect on this one the more I think it might be easier if there were more than 2 teams chasing and protecting flags.

On a positive note though, we'll be ideally suited for next week's race which is Capture the Flag - i.e. smash your opponent to pieces, nick their flag whilst keeping hold of yours!