After seeing
Shaun's 6mm Pods we were all queuing up to have a race. So he put on a game at the club using the
rules from The Armchair General
The course was a figure-of-8 clockwise around rock A and then anti-clockwise round rock B. As none of us had ever played before we decided to have a practice lap followed by a 3 lap race. Seven of us played with a Monaco-style start line.
Each player gets dealt a playing card - the 2-9 cards are used to either add an extra 2 inches of move per card or repair 1 point of damage. The 10 card repairs 2 points of damage and the picture cards are events that you either play on yourself or on your opponent. Events for yourself include avoiding spin-offs, avoiding collisions and bribes. Events for your opponent include being shot at by the locals, fuel leaks or have your pods decouple
There are two basic speeds - standard which is 1d6 +1 inches or overdrive which is 2D6+1 inches and may cause engine shutdown. If you move over 18 inches then there is a chance of a spin-off as well. you must move the full amount
A pod can turn upto 90 degrees with a 1 inch drift. If you do 3 or more turns in one move then there is a chance to spin off
Pods can drive over anything except really big rocks and buildings so if someone breaks down on a bridge then it's not too much of a problem.
Each pod has 20 points of damage. Damage is caused by driving over plants,1 point, collisions, 1D6 each, driving into canyon walls, 1D6, and event cards.
Shaun may be a star at making the pods but he is pants at driving. His pod is the one with the yellow dice indicating he has spun off. The black pod is the leader so Shaun is half a lap behind him. For those readers with a taste for Schadenfreude then Shaun's spin-off roll sent him straight into the rockface by the pond.
Pods can glide across water. I am tempted to try this the next time I drive on the M4 to Wales rather than pay £6.40 at the toll bridge
After ruining his paintwork, in two more spin-offs I should add, Shaun finally managed to get onto the bridge
Each turn a player gets an extra card and can hold a maximum of 5 at the end of his go. One of the picture cards is Bribe. This allows you to take one card from each of the other players. I got this card 3 times allowing me to disable the two front-runners with fuel leaks and pod-decoupling, increase my speed with the 2-9 cards and avoid spin-off cards from other players.
Therefore it is not surprising that I won the race convincingly.
I'm great!
And that was the practice lap which, with the usual messing around, checking the rules, fag breaks, getting a round in and dealing with unwanted phone calls, took us a couple of hours We didn't get in the 3 lap race.
An excellent way to spend an evening - well done Shaun for coming up with a cracking game. There is a very good chance that we will put this on at
Blast-tastic
