ARBBL

Another Gaslands race on the cards. 50 cans 2 vehicles max.

Theme for the race. Smokey and the Bandit.

Gates - Start,1 ,2 and Finish. Scenario - Death Race.

Mikes 2 identical upskilled 'Highway Patrol' cars with mine layers.
vs
Simons 'Miyazaki' extremely upskilled performance car and armed buggy.

Round 1
Patrol car alpha moved slowly ahead of the performance car who just wanted to speed ahead.
A couple of tailgating collisions caused some bodywork damage to car alpha.
Both cars raced through gate 1. Weapons are no active. Mike grins.

Patrol car beta chased the buggy straight from the start and rammed it taking out of the game.
Lost some control and nearly collided into gate 2.
(photo round 2 gear 1)

Round 2
Both alpha and performance lost control as they sped through gate 1. Slowing down to take the sharp left around gate 1 and onwards to gate 2.
Beta shifted through the gears catching up to the others.

Weapons active alpha started dropping mines around performance and letting loose with its sidearms.
The performance car was taking some serious amount of damage.
As beta drove through gate 1, arming its weapons, the performance had taken all it could handle from alpha and crashed out of the game.
(photo round 2 gear 5)

Smokey and the Zombie Bandit
Round 3
Using audience votes Simon resurrected his Performance car and realised he hadn't been using all of his skills in the first 2 rounds. (Much swearing and slapping of head. It was even written into his teams game plan before the race)

Zombie performance now proceeded to tear up the field, sliding and spinning its way around obstacles, patrol cars and through the gates.

Alpha tried to follow but could not keep the pursuit up. Beta took a while to notice the change in Zombie P and missed the first mine drop off point. Placing mines the second time spot on target.
( photo Round 3 gear 6 )

Round 4
Beta tried to get back to the 1st drop point but lost the plot and spun around achieving zero. Alpha gunned the engine towards Zombie P, using pursuit and highway patrol skills to shorten the gap. If alpha could cause enough trouble Zombie P could lose control just before reaching the finish gate. Nope, all Alpha did was wipe-out and shunt performance over the line.
( photo Round 4 gear 4 )

A win declared for Simon. Wait a yellow flag has been thrown in, by Simon.
The race judges should have declared a win for Mike when Simons vehicles were both wrecked. But the audience allowed the resurrection and continuation of the race.

The judges have come to a compromise and a draw has been declared. A win for both.

A very good game. Both agreed a very good match of sponsors. If I had picked any other sponsor Simon would have won very easily.

Miyazaki is regarded as the most OP sponsor for the game.
That's if you remember its sponsor perks and accompanying skills list.

Simon ‘Gaming enhancements’ do Litko shooting template set for £15.50 with £3.70 delivery.

Another really good game. Very definitely and quite literally a game of two halves. I was really kicking myself after realising what a complete and total tool I'd been with my driving and not utilising my most expensive perk.

As Mike mentioned at the end of the game, this felt very much more like a race rather than the previous destruction derby's. I think that that is down to the teams/sponsors taken and the way they interact. My set up was clearly designed to get away from everybody else and get to the line first. And when played by a semi-competent individual, a perked up Miyazaki Performance Car is indecently fast. It should be through gate 1 and well on it's way to gate 2 before others are halfway to gate 1. Whilst this probably seems OP, it's worth remembering that in this loadout, all of the eggs are definitely in one (quite fragile) basket:- the car only has 8 Hull and only needs to be rammed by another car to really do some major damage - witness my buggy! Clearly this loadout, wouldn't work for any of the other scenarios so if we were playing a season, you wouldn't be seeing this level of performance at the outset.

One thing that stood out for me was the importance of the volume of dice. Now that should be nothing new to any of us, but my rolling was thoroughly average this week, both for damage and handling. I was only rolling 1 die for damage (handgun) and consequently did very little of it, in comparison to 5 dice (and a free reroll) for handling, my car control was awesome - well when I remembered what I could do. It's worth considering when building the cars, trying to get that good balance so when you get into a good firing position, you're not totally shafted by the dice-gods.

I think that both Mike and I have fallen into the trap of racing with both/all cars we've taken, when really you should perhaps race with one and ram/trash with the others. Worth considering when building the cars as you need to get through gate 1 to activate any shooting and dropped weapons, rams however are active from the very start!

Definitely going to have to try the Highway Patrol - so many good things to manipulate the other team with and if Mike had maybe replaced the PIT perk with some HMGs or a minigun, I think I would have been shredded. Double move and then shoot!

Looking forward to trying out the Arena of Death scenario and probably another different sponsor...

Mike wrote:Simon ‘Gaming enhancements’ do Litko shooting template set for £15.50 with £3.70 delivery.

Bizarrely, it's still cheaper to get the single (not sure why you'd need the other range rulers) 'double' ruler from the States! £2.70 & £10.60 delivery. He does template sets in a variety of colours as well: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/thomaswynnstudio