Second attempt at getting this on the boards – first version disappeared when I hit preview last night.
Not amused.
So, not too many surprises when the teams were initially revealed. Mike decided to go with his much favoured sponsor of Verney and I plumped for Miyazaki looking for a strong start and finish to the campaign whilst being agile enough to survive the middle 3 rounds! That said, starting with only 30 Cans apiece meant that teams had a very different look about themselves than we’d previously been used to. Very few weapons and even fewer perks. This first round was going to be about getting to the end without sustaining too much damage.
Mike brought a ram-toting car with the crusher perk and supported this with a motorbike with gyroscope and a glue dropper. Fortunately I wouldn’t be suffering those double dropped weapons templates of mines and napalm this round although the ram & car combo was starting to give me the jitters.
I had gone with a performance car, with the intention of speeding off into the distance, armed with RC Car Bombs, supported by 2 motorbikes with only the crew’s pistols. My team had clearly spent too much time watching Quentin Tarantino films, and were very badly modelling themselves on the Crazy 88 from Kill Bill.
Traditionally we’d run a death race in a figure of eight pattern but at short notice a request was made to randomise the gates which meant we actually ended up racing around the edge of the board. So in the pictures above we started at the top left, heading to the top right, then down to the bottom right before aiming at the finish line centre left. As soon as the pole position roll was made, I knew I was in trouble.
Mike won and placed his bike down first, clearly indicating that whatever I put down next was going to get run over by the car with its rather nasty ram. My dilemma was ‘Do I sacrifice a motorbike and accept we’ll both now have the same number of vehicles/activations or do I risk my performance car loaded with bombs?’ I decided to go with the latter, reasoning that the speed differential shouldn’t be too great and therefore should be able to survive the onslaught. The remaining vehicles were placed as expected with Mike’s car lining up directly behind mine. No surprises for the first turn, Mike drove his car into the back of mine, then over the top of it before activating Tombstone. With a speed differential of 2 gears and the additional ram bonus meant he was rolling 4D6 and with 8 hull points, I wasn’t too concerned. Until of course he rolled 3 6s and one 3. 6 damage in total. And blocking my path which would then potentially cause me another 2 damage. Things had gone south at an alarming rate and the prospects of even getting my car to the first gate was now looking pretty remote. At this point, bikes started heading off in all sorts of directions, trying to find the quickest way to gate 1. My car took the only real option available and reversed away from the start line to put a little more space between it and the crusher car.
In all of this mayhem, 2 of the bikes had a coming together, with me sliding into the side of Mike’s bike for an effective T-Bone. Reminding myself that there was a long game to be played in terms of the campaign, I had to decide whether discretion was the better part of valour or not, and would Mike opt to evade if I did or would he Smash me back (as the active vehicle, I had to decide first). Clearly I went for the Smash attack which ended with Mike been reduced to 1 hull and me to 2. Round 1, Gear phase 1 complete!
Gear phases 2 & 3 continued in the same vein. Clearly incensed by my attack on his bike, Mike moved it bike away towards the gate and proceeded to drive his car into my biker, rolling 7D6 with bonuses all told. Somehow he only managed to inflict one hit but subsequently lost control and spun out, leaving him stranded pointing towards the centre of the board. This left the bikes free to race towards the gate 1 and my car to charge up through the gears following the bikes. As soon as Mike got through the first gate, he activated his glue dropper, making 75% of the gate pretty treacherous for any one following. The turn ended with one of my bikes next to his, but missing with its pistol shot and my car having to take evasive action due to being stuck in 6th gear and a less than stellar shift dice roll. I had to do anything to avoid a flip at this point because that would have caused 2 more hull damage and the wrecking of my car.
Turn 2 started with the Verney bike sliding and putting a bit of space between it and my biker, again missing with the pistol shot. My biker turned the corner, looked over their shoulder and fired one more time. This time they, hit and Mike failed to avoid, even the tumbling wreckage didn’t do any further damage other than to cause a bit of a road block in an already tight space. This put Mike in a bit of a tight corner. His car was already heading across the board, presumably to eliminate any of my bikes out front but now he needed to start going through the gates to win the race. By the end of the turn, Mike’s car had driven towards gate 2 ready to intercept my leading biker (who was just about to pass the gate on their final run to the finish) but had wiped out and spun to a stop and my car had driven in circles but managed to avoid hitting anything whilst getting its hazard tokens and gears down to something manageable before pointing in the right direction through gate 1.
Turn 3 was all about my biker getting to the finish line avoiding being hit by Mike’s Car whilst he had the one goal of ploughing into my biker before moving on to the next one, which at this point was still stuck by the burning wreck of Mike’s bike. By gear phase 3, my bike had shot past Mike’s car with just enough room to spare and feeling pretty confident that he wouldn’t have the reach to ram me. Mike gunned his throttle, headed off in my direction and proceeded to attempt a dastardly move of sending an out of control car, flipping through the air to land on my bike with the very inevitable consequences. In a sequence ‘worthy’ of inclusion in any Fast & Furious film and due to some misreading of templates involved, Mike managed to get his car to fail its flip check and sail majestically through the air,
over my bike and land on the other side of it. (Medium straight for a flip, short for wrecking!) Having wiped out with this manoeuvre, it left me with the unopposed task of avoiding aircraft wreckage to get through the final gate for the victory.
After everything was totted up, Miyazaki leads Verney 14-6. Mike had to roll for damage due to his bike being wrecked and ended up losing his glue dropper (although this can be repurchased for the next round) and taking +1 dent on the bike.
With 10 cans to spend before the next round, I anticipate quite an few more RC Car Bombs and Napalm templates making an appearance along with a perk or two and maybe even another motorbike? And a significant amount of carnage.
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:12 pm