Online 29 Dec

[Mike]

Another gaslands game. This time death arena with no flyers or vehicles over 25 cans.

[Mike]

One of the weirdest starts to a race. Apologies to Simon i cant remember your car names.

Mike - 2 identical up armoured trucks with mini napalm lobbers and extra armour.
Simons - Souped up mad max rammer and sidekick with a 125mm gun.

Round 1
There was a mix up between Simons driver and team manager resulting in an unplanned manouevre.
Mad max went crazy, rammed a gun turret out of existence but managed to lose control a couple of times, ending up pointing in the wrong direction. 125mm tried to stay out the way skirting round the side.

Green Goddess and Penelope ran the gauntlet of several turrets as they turned away from 125mm. Green goddess lost a few hull points, before blowing up 2 of the turrets.

Round 2
Green Goddess and Penelope continued round the edge trying to place as much space between them and 125mm with not much luck.
Mad Max was still not in control. The ram into the turret must have caused some electrical failure to the car.

Round 3
(Gear Phase 2) 125mm went for the kill taking a heavy toll on mikes trucks. Green goddess was on 1 hull point (luckily had taken extra armour on both) and Penelope about 5. 125mm paid the price by being napalmed out of the game. Mad Max was closing in for the kill.
(Gear Phase 4) Mad max had the chance to ram Penelope and Shoot Green Goddess out of the game. Penelope was completely wrecked but Green Goddess survived.

Round 4
Mike had one chance to win. Shoot and Napalm Mad Max to take him out, but with over 50% hull points remaining could he do it.
Rolling 6D6 (2 shots + napalm ) on 4+ with 6=2damage. Mad max was travelling slow so only one save.

Another burning wreck slid across the sand.
Green Goddess won with just 1 hull point remaining. A very close game.

Another lucky choice of factions for the game which made the combo very entertaining.

[DaVinci's Cat]

So close, so close. But on the bright side, plenty more criminals will be happy to jump into my death-traps to attempt to earn their freedom.

My problems during this one started around the deployment phase, or more specifically with allowing Mike a hand in rolling the dice for the number of sentry guns... While I rolled a sensible middle of the road 3, Mike ARBBL'd the total number up to 9! All of a sudden, a reasonable run to the enemy with several options to head him off, now made Luke's trench run on the Death Star look like a Sunday drive to the park.
My only option now was to ram the turrets out of existence before they could fire back - relatively successfully tactic but I did rack up a load of hazards that made me wipe out in two consecutive turns (hence the lack of progress and odd facing in the early photos). I only compounded my issues by picking up an illegal movement template, so Mike kindly made me drive my 125mm cannon armed truck into a billboard as a reward. So much for keeping the cars together to work as a team. Not the most auspicious start to a game I've ever had.

Fortunately it seemed like Mike had taken a leaf from driving Miss Daisy but with a Compton feel, and was steering clear of me and any other hazards and just shooting up the turrets with handguns. This did allow me a little time to regroup and close the gap, finally getting to a position where I could fire the gun and line Mike up for a ram. Clearly this is when all the carnage took place in a relatively short space of time as you would expect from a demolition derby type scenario. In fact, I'm surprised we stretched it out this long.

On reflection, I was slightly underwhelmed with the 125mm Cannon - I expected it to do a bit more damage with 8d6 being rolled but maybe it was my slightly less than average dice rolls. I'd certainly try it again as it has a certain 'don't mess with me' factor and it can reach out and touch someone at distance. A ram with the Battle-hammer perk on the other hand was spectacular. I will certainly be taking that combination again although I must remember not to go for head on collisions and just aim for T-Boning (I was originally toying with taking two identical cars with this loadout but decided against it as I really didn't have any significant ranged threat - maybe next time though). Taking the head-on at the end really scuppered me as Mike was able to remove a significant number of my hull points and help the final kill from his other car. A slight misjudgement in a previous spin coupled with a second target suddenly becoming available put me in a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. That said, another good game, really close and could have gone either way.

[DaVinci's Cat]

Simon, Tom, or whoever else does the ARBBL Facebook thingy, please feel free to use the photos from any of the 'battle reports' to throw up on the page - it's not much but it might be worth posting up to prove we haven't gone into complete hibernation.

[Darkson (Simon)]

Will do when I'm next on the PC, thanks.