I managed to get to the club last night for a game of the Last Drifters, I put on a game using one of the scenarios from the rule book, “Gunfight at the OK Settlement” this scenario has four Drifters spending the night in a small settlement in the wasteland, feeling refreshed after a good night’s rest they set off in the early hours only to be ambushed by a local gang as they get back onto the road.
They realise that they don’t have much hope of out running this gang so they decide to hurt this gang then perhaps they can get away without the gang chasing them…
So to win the Drifters have to destroy 50% of the gang and then leave the table along the road and the gang need to destroy all the Drifters to win.
The scenario gives the basic pre-set vehicles for both sides and then the players can add upgrades and weapons etc. up to a set number of points.
The Gang controlled by me had five cars and five bikes all with a good selection of weapons but minimal armour, and the drifters had two cars controlled by each player ( one of these looked very much like a van! ) the Drifters had fairly good armour on their vehicles at least one minigun!!
The Drifters vehicles had been made and painted ready for this game, and they looked really good.
So with the vehicles set up ready and a quick reading of the scenario and it’s victory requirements explained and understood we started.
This scenario is well suited for two, three or even four players, and as this was only the second time playing for my opponents it was a good entry game for a battle using the rules, they had both played a race last time so knew the basic rules, but as they were to find out racing and battles using the Last Drifters called for different styles of play, both use very different tactics and of course very different vehicle load-outs.
My bikes roared across the dusty ground closing the gap between them and the Drifters, firing as they moved, scoring a couple of early points of damage on the small green buggy, the two gang cars moved with them to give them some heavier support.
The Drifters quickly realised that the bikes were going to be easy targets for their guns, and promptly took out two of them by the end of the second turn.
My additional vehicles on the far end of the road started to power towards the Drifters, I was hoping that they could get in the fight before I had taken too much damage on my other group.
The Drifters made the decision to stay and fight the closer group before they worried about my fast-closing vehicles coming towards them along the road, that worried me a little as their shooting was more accurate than mine and my gang was starting to get hurt.
There was a lot of scary moments as the two groups weaved in and out and around each other, luckily my gang was starting to do some real damage on the buggy and the driver looked a little shaken.
At last my second group had got within striking distance, that was when the Drifter vehicle with the minigun fitted decided that he needed to stop the rest of my gang arriving.
He spun his vehicle around on the road and waited until he was really close then he almost ripped the white gang car in half!!! Ouch! That hurt, I knew the minigun would cause me some problems but that was painful.
The Drifter then managed to get the initiative on my badly shaken driver and poured a load more shots from the minigun into what was left of the white car… when the barrels of the minigun stopped spinning my car was dead ☹
The yellow car drove out and around and came at the Drifter from the side to try and get some revenge and managed to get a good few hits into the side of the Drifter vehicle.
Seeing that the Drifter vehicle was in trouble I managed to ram it from behind with my green vehicle taking out the vehicle and that damn minigun!
The Drifter vehicle ( that looked suspiciously like a van 😉 ) rammed another one of my bikes taking that out of the fight.
At this point things were looking really bad for the gang I had lost three bikes and one car, the drifters only needed to destroy one more vehicle and take this victory and I already had a couple of vehicles that had taken a lot of damage.
I saw an opportunity to ram the van from behind with my red car, this was good as a rear ram only did a small amount of damage to each vehicle, that should be enough to take out the van as it was badly damaged and not do enough damage to worry the red car… only in the excitement I had forgotten that the van was reversing! As it was reversing we treated this as a head-on ram and boy that was going to hurt, both vehicles.
The van was destroyed and somehow my red car survived, but only just, it only had three points of damage left.
Talking about reversing, the Drifter buggy was now driving backwards away from my gang car! His reasoning was that he only had one or two points of damage left and only had a gun on the front of the vehicle, so as he reversed he could fire at anything that chased him… I couldn’t argue with that reasoning.
So I drove out and around and rammed him from the side! That was the Buggy out of the battle.
The nice looking ‘Harley Quinn’ looking car chased after my green car as it only had two points of damage left, but only did one point of damage, if he could have destroyed my car he could have then tried to scrape a win from this game, but as my vehicle wasn’t destroyed the driver spun his car right around and fired into the side of the Drifters car, this was too much for the driver and he roared away and was so shaken that she hit the nitrox button and rammed into a pile of tyres and was out of the race!!
The player controlling the Drifter car thought that this would be a very thematic end to the battle, I couldn’t disagree.
So at the end of the game the gang had destroyed all four of the Drifters vehicles and… wait for it… I had actually won!!! Yep I will repeat that just in case you didn’t read it ( or didn’t believe it ) I had won the game…
Well that was such a fun game, my opponents seemed to enjoy it as much as I did even though they lost.
The game could have gone either way, right from the start the Drifters went into an easy lead and saw that the bikes were easy to destroy, but they are very fast and can ( if played right ) get out of trouble as quickly as they get into it, luckily for me I managed to keep them safe and I was still able to hit the Drifters with them when needed.
As normal for this scenario the gang vehicles had almost no armour ( you don’t have enough points to fit armour on all of your vehicles ) this made them easy to damage but with lots of luck and a tiny tiny tiny bit of skill I managed to keep them alive and do enough damage to the Drifters to grab a last minute victory.
The minigun is such a deadly weapon, but the downside was in this game taking that weapon meant the other Drifters only had small weapons fitted, this meant once I had taken out the vehicle with the minigun the Drifters didn’t have much firepower left to really hurt my cars, even with my vehicles low armour.
Using the points from the minigun they could have had a couple of medium or even light machineguns, that may have made a difference to the outcome of the battle.
Any way it doesn’t matter too much what weapons they picked, I still think they had a fun game and enjoyed the evening with all the laughs and banter…
…oh and did I mention I won!!! 😊
Come on over to my Discord server to chat about your races or battles using the Last Drifters rules or just show us pictures of your cars.
You will find the link to my server on the Community tab at the top of the site.
Below are some close-ups of the Drifters vehicles for this game, these are my friends first attempt at putting together vehicles for the Last Drifters, I think they look great.
Zac
Hi Mac
So I you won eh!
We only have your word for that! 😉
No seriously tho well done mate I hope you have a victory celebration.
Some nice vehicles their, I notice they have been based so I guess their not your work; it would be nice to get a closer look at them.
That Manson family buggy is nice.
It seems to me that the bikes should bide their time till the cars engage giving the the drifters larger target’s to worry about while the bikes can pick away at em.
Anyway nice report thanks.
Mac
Hi Zac,
Honest I did win!!! although even I can’t believe it.
I have put some close-ups of my friends vehicles at the end of the post, I think they look really good.
The bikes are very weak but because they are fast they can get out of the way if needed, but I guess the tactic you suggest would probably work well, I will have to see how it works the next time I play.
Mac
Zac
Hi Mac
Thanks for posting the new pic’s.
The Manson family buggy is still my favorite!
The “Harlequin” is also nice, I like the front window!
Constructive critic time!
The front wheel armour looks as if it will interfere with the steering!
I’m not too keen on the armour plates that are at an angle.
However the paint job is nice.
for a first attempt’s I’m giving them a 7 outa 10.
thanks again for the character shots.