Pod Racing Night

This weekend saw MacSver and myself joined by sons (Macspud and Arabiansquire) and friend (Meerkatsoldier) to play a game of Star Wars Pod Racing. It's been quite a while since our last game, but every game had been a hoot and we were looking forward to this one.

The congestion at the gates gave the body repair shop
potentially a busy week ahead.

With so many younger players it was down to the Dads to demonstrate the game rules at the start of the race. I started by disabling my rev limiters to zooming down the opening straight into the lead also my engines cut out. MacSver went one better by surging off whilst playing a card on his son's pod to cut out it's engines on the starting line! But the game is simple so by the end of the first straight everyone has a grasp of how to play.

The pods streak through the forest.

MacSpud and Meerkatsoldier announced that they were playing as an unofficial team. But, as expected of a couple of teen-age boys, their idea of working in a team was more Sebastian Vettel than Tony Lewis as the cards started to flow.

The Leaders pick their route through the giant tree section.

With 5 players, the initial emphasis of speed and shenanigans soon moves to damage repair and numerous bumps and prangs occur on the way round. Things can start to get tense when the "hull points" fall from the initial 20 to 6, as a single bump causes d6 damage.

Meekcatsoldier was the first racer to fall by the wayside, thanks to a fuel leak card played on him. He was dealt a glimmer of hope as he had a card that allowed him to eject and potentially pick up a reserve pod. Unfortunaelty his ejector seat landed in a group of rival fans who beat him up! MacSver was next to go with his battered pod unable to take any more.

MacSver moves in front of my pod, but with only
1 point of damge left and leaving me not room to
maneuver things were looking grim. 

During this time Arabiansquire had managed to stay out of trouble and moved through the traffic to become take up a commanding lead with no damage taken. But his race was ended with only half a lap to go as MacSpud played a fuel leak card on the front runner and a catastrophic dice roll meant that the fuel ignited and the pod blew up.

With Arabiansquire's  wrecked pod in view,
Macspud fires up his engines and heads for his
remaining opponent.

MacSpud then strayed off the race line and with wheat he considered a killer card combo in his hand (you can tell he plays Magic the Gathering) shut down his engines and sat in the final straight for my damaged pod to limp round, like a Wild West gunfighter waiting for the clock to hit High Noon. With my pod in sight he played his engine start card, flicked of the engine limiters and hit the throttle. As he bumped off me he played a "good nudge" card with doubled the potential damage to my pod rolling a double "6" on his dice shattered my pod into small pieces. but in his enthusiasm his pod rebounded off the arena wall, with the extra damage being enough to destroy his pod as well.

So for the first time there were no winners!

But amid the universal guffawing Nobody cared!

Racer Pods Race Again

Our "One Ring" game has unfortunately come to a stuttering end with the GM having to focus on real world issues (work, etc) for a while (given the state on the economy it's more suprising any of us have time). I can easily say that everyone who played this game thouroughly enjoyed every session. The system was very good and encouraged a good party dynamic (not necessarily an efficient one, mind you).
To keep the group going until someone could take up the GM's mantle I thought I'd break out the Star Wars Pod Racers again for an evenings entertainment. Unfortunately a couple of folk couldn't make it (sense a pattern here) but MacSver and his son "Mini-MacSver", as he shalt be known hence forth (probably to his his protests) came down to the hobby shed for a game. The pod racers (and rules) are detailed in an earlier post .

Through the 3rd gate on the first lap
and all still to race for.

The theme for the race quick quickly back a father-son battle (in fact Mini-MacSver pretty much declared it so before we'd even started) and a flurry of nasty cards were flashed whenever possible between the two.

"Oh no, a tree!" - A MacSver induced spinout leaves
me hurtling towards a tree.

Eventually something had to give and during lap 2 MacSver's battered pod mis-fired on an engine restart and he ended up with a scrapped racer and a grin on his son's face. That was until his pod's power coupling failed a couple of turns later and he suffered a similar fate. The cards are very concentrated in a 3 player game (there is alot more damage and manourering with more players) but it's all fun.

Last Race of the Season

Saturday was the last meeting of the Livingston Battleground gaming club until after the Summer holidays (which scarily start in 2 weeks in Scotland) so I took along the Pod Racing Kit to hopefully try out on some new and younger racers.

A mass spinout card causes ArabianSquire (in orange) to
miss the first gate, whilst MacSver (back left) finds himself
facing the wrong way down the track.

We managed a race with 5 players, Myself, ArabianSquire, MacSver, his son MiniMacSver and for want of a more mysterious name, Callum. Only MacSver and myself had played before, so it was an interesting test if I ever considered taking the game to a convention.

It didn't take long at all for the new racers to get the hang of speed and laying down the cards. With two fathers & sons playing there was a lot of gleeful inter-family backstabbing, as you'd expect.

MiniMacSver plays the price for over boosting his engines
as the rest of the field zoom past his stalled racer.

We ended up only running 2 laps, which took around 2 hours to play. This didn't include any downtime or players taking a long time to decide moves. The main "delay" (if you could all it that) is with the playing on cards on each other - by the end of the first lap we'd gone through an entire pack of cards!

In the end, after the lead changing several times, ArabianSquire won on the last bend - speeding past the burning wreckage of his fathers pod which he'd blown up with a saboteurs bomb the previous turn! Only one other pod (MacSver's) remained on the track to take the Checkered Flag - a similar non-finisher ratio to previous games we'd played.

More Pod Racing

MacSver and Azhdeen popped round again last night for a return Pod Race rematch. Rules details are in the last Pod Racing post

A new race - a new course

I'd managed to get my race gates finished after last race night so they were on table. They were constructed from the bases of the micromachine pods that had been removed (with a piece of bamboo skewer). I'd also learned a couple of things about course layout, so I positioned some low "rough terrain" on the inside of the first corner to give the racers a tougher decision of taking damage to cut the corner fine. I also used the gates with terrain to force pods into closer manouvering decisions, which also worked nicely.

The new race gates forced some tight manouvering

The race went along smoothly and was great fun, with damage rolls taking effect, drivers risking engine shutdown with over boosting their engines, and playing spin out cards to throw each other in random directions. MacSver had been working under pressure for the last 16 days non-stop in the real world, so was releasing a bit of steam with highly aggressive driving on myself up front and laying down cards on Azhdeen who'd been brining up the rear all race. This ended in tears as a final bump over the Arabian Pod caused my rig to Kaboom, taking MacSver with it, leaving a gleeful Azhdeen alone to coast to victory, laughing all the way to the checkered flag.

MacSver's aggressive tactics blow up in his face (and mine)

Star Wars Pod Racing

"Drivers, start your engines"

With the RPGing in temporary hiatus at the moment, it was time to break out some sort of light pickup game - a perfect excuse to test out my pod racers that have been waiting to go since the winter . The rules used were still the free Spin Out set, the guniea-pigs for the game were MacSver and Azhdeen.

The course is set out

The game uses an ordinary pack of cards to bring in an element of strategy. Face cards have special effects such as negating spinouts, avoiding damage or being nasty to your opponents with fuel leaks, bombs, etc. Movement in the game is easy. On their turn the player specifies if their pod is moving between 1 - 12 inches. This movement can be added to using number cards from the card pack, or by temporarily bypassing the engine rev limiters (which risks of engine shutdown). Two turning manouvers can be done each player activation before the risk of spinning out comes into play. The pods also have a limited damage counter to keep track of scratches, bumps, explosions, etc. The game is easy to learn (with the odd reference lookup for special card effects) and we rattled through a couple of games on less than two hours. 

The pods blast down the opening straight.

These games were meant to be 3 lap races, but in each case two pods exploded due to accumulated damage or burst fuel lines. With only three pods racing this time there was quite a bit of room for maneuver, but I imagine that with 5 or 6 racers that trying to maneuver round or through the pack will have a greater bearing on the race, rather than just relying on the cards. Great fun all round, and one that will be repeated.



Worried glances are exchanged as Azhdeen
tactically takes a wide corner



MacSver's pod runs over some terrain after a Spinout.