Well the last night at the club this year for me was a great one, I put on a game of the Last Drifters and a few friends turned up to play.
Five plus my son were going to race some cars around a city track using some of the new upgrades from the new supplement “Race Nights”
I pointed up nine cars of varying upgrades and weapons all in at just under nine-hundred points ( slightly more than the normal eight hundred and fifty points used in the new supplement ) as this was a party game and the first time the players had used the new upgrades I thought I would just add a few more upgrades just to see what they thought.
These new upgrades allow you to build very fast vehicles which as this was going to be a race was perfect and knowing the people playing, I knew it was going to be a lot of fun.
But one down side to adding lots of upgrades to make the vehicles faster means two things… very light armour or none at all!! this leads nicely into the next bit…
Spending lots of points on these upgrades meant that there would not be many big heavy guns in the game, but just to give a little variety on the vehicles I did go a bit lighter on the upgrades for a couple of the cars and added a couple of the bigger weapons to give the players a little bit of a challenge ( it actually caused a lot of fear!! )
One of bigger weapons was the new heavy flamethrower, although this weapon has only two shots, I knew this would freak the players out a little once they realized how nasty it was, and it did 😊
The track was set up as a nice city track with a nice long straight and some tight bends, also two cross overs!! they could be fun.
The players had picked their vehicles and so we were ready to start.
I did a very quick update for the players about some of the new stuff in the supplement ( they had all played before so I didn’t need to go through the basic rules with them ) I explained how some of the new stuff worked like the new “Speed Test” this is a simple test combined with the standard “Brake Test” because of the much faster speeds the vehicles can travel, they picked this up very quickly… once they hit the first corner!!
They all raced off from the start weaving in and out of each other’s vehicles, and somehow managing not to crash!! It was a little tense a few times, but once they got moving and heading down the long straight they settled in nicely.
Then the first bend came at them real fast and that’s when they realized its fun going flat out at speeds around twenty-four inches plus each turn, but then you have to be able to control the fast-moving vehicle as it goes around the tight bend, lots of panic breaking and laughing about bad dice rolls and bad driving but they soon all got past the first bend and surprisingly all in one piece.
At the first bend they could also start using their vehicles weapons! Lots of machine gun fire was heard as the cars battled it out as they continued to race around the track.
The shooting I know would be a problem for these cars as most didn’t have any armour or very light armour, but luckily most people couldn’t shoot straight or couldn’t penetrate the paper-thin armour!!
Which was really funny to watch… I didn’t laugh honest 🤣
Although one car did suffer more than the rest as for some reason it seemed to have a target painted on its rear!! 😮
I think during the first lap almost every car fired their guns at the thing and did loads of damage, soon the driver was badly shaken and was in real trouble.
The car with the flamethrower on was having fun, it kept trying to get past everyone so that it could fire back towards the other cars but the driver was struggling to get in front of any cars… the flamethrower was mounted on the roof facing backwards, every other vehicle only had weapons facing forward, this made for some interesting manoeuver’s!
It only has two shots but they can do a lot of damage if you get some good dice rolls, they also hit any vehicles within the fire arc this means it can hit multiple targets when fired… yep they were scared of this vehicle 😉
The next problem was going around the bend in the middle of the tack, they had real trouble getting through this chock point, there was lots of fancy driving going through here.
The rusty yellow car which had been in the lead from the first corner was still managing to hold its position, the car got around the last corner before the start and the long straight easily and roared off down the track.
This corner saw an end to the red cars suffering, it took its last point of damage and ended its race on the bend.
The driver of the lead car had to leave early so I took over his vehicle with just about a lap to go, all I had to do was keep the lead and I would actually win a race… No pressure then!!!
The pack was close behind fighting to get into second place to try and get closer to my car.
After the other cars fought their way past the burning wreck on the corner they started to chase me along the final straight.
My car was doing twenty seven inches per move now and I somehow managed to do some good dice rolling on the bends and kept the car on the track.
At this point I am heading across the long straight and making my way towards the top bend, the closest car was one bend behind me.
I managed to keep the lead I had and went across the line in first, with the second-place car one bend behind.
This is the moment that the horrible yellow car was destroyed ( yellow cars always seem to win for some unknown reason!! ) this happened as I crossed the line at the other end of the track, the car behind doing the shooting was the car with the now empty flamethrower, the driver used the cars front autogun to finish the yellow car.
As I drove by these two cars the car with the empty flamethrower rammed into my vehicle trying to at least get a little satisfaction by trying to wreck my car… he failed I did spin out and come to a stop but I had already won so I didn’t care!! 😉
Well I will claim a partial victory as I didn’t race for the first lap I only took over after the original driver had to leave, but I will take that.
There was some really fun moments in the race, apart from the speed that the cars were travelling around the track!!
My favourite moment was when the car with the heavy flamer got in front of two cars and hit them with some burning liquid!! That was fun to watch, it didn’t destroy them but damn it did toast them a little!
The other funny thing that I got from this race using the new upgrades is that as the guys had played before they knew all about ramming and wanted to ram in this race as well, it took a little bit of persuasion from me to keep them from ramming at every opportunity.
The builds for these race cars wasn’t done for ramming is was done solely for speed and handling, of course extra armour and dozer blades or even rams could have been added but that would have meant less of the new upgrades and that would have meant much slower cars.
There is of course nothing to stop people using more points for their vehicles allowing them to add more of the heavier weapons and armour etc. but every player would have to agree to do this.
Any way I think they all had fun and I look forward to getting them all together for another race maybe in the new year.
