Stars & Lasers!! racing around the asteroids…

I have had some family members staying over the last few days so I have not had a chance to get in any sort of game or hobby stuff at all 😢

But now they have gone back home I have my room back and I have set up my table ready for a game of Stars & Lasers!!, I was just going to have a basic battle, but I received an email containing three scenarios for Stars & Lasers from a good friend… and wow I will be playing a race game using Stars & Lasers!!

This scenario looks like it is going to be very exciting, it is a race around / between some moving asteroids collecting flags, it sounds like fun! 😊

I set up the table for this game using lots of asteroids ( I had to print out some extra asteroids from the free scenarios no.8 as I needed more then I had for this game )

We each had a normal Corvette with the normal weapons loadout, nothing special for the race, so after quickly explaining the rules to the other racers it was time to start… I did mention that we can shoot at each other while racing!

I had the little blue Corvette, my son had the little Yellow Corvette and my nephew had the little Red Corvette…

…That’s it I can’t stop humming that damn tune now!! ☹️

The winner of this race would be the first one to get all four flags and then get off one of the four corners of the table.

We had to get to within 1″ of these and that would be enough to get the “flag”, these are my “mine” tokens but I thought they would work well as the flags for this games.

We rolled to see who started where as there was only three racers, I put the start positions as equidistant as I could from the flags to try and give everyone the same chance.

And we were off…

We all made a mad dash for the nearest flags and desperately dodged the asteroids, we all collected one flag each and then it started to get a little scarier as we started to get closer to each other and those asteroids were moving quickly!!

All was going well then, Crunch!!! My blue Corvette took a small hit as I scraped by a small asteroid, I had misjudged the speed of the thing and my positioning wasn’t accurate enough to get by it, but I was still in the race.

We all managed to get another flag each but then things went very wrong for the red Corvette as it was hit by a large asteroid full in the side, the small ship took a critical hit to its comms which wasn’t great as it was travelling at full speed heading towards another asteroid!!

But the crew managed to get the ship back under control so it was still in the race.

It was a mad race now for the last flag, the yellow Corvette got to the last flag and was heading towards the corner and victory, I had been unlucky with the movement of the asteroid close to my last flag, I didn’t have a lot of room to get by and make my run for the corner…

Just a few inches to get to the corner and victory!

I missed timed the turn again but I didn’t care I took another hit or two from the asteroid but powered off towards the corner with what was left of my small ship.

While this was going on the little red Corvette ( stop it!! stop humming! ) found itself totally out of position going for it’s last flag and was taken out by a collision with a large asteroid.

The yellow Corvette streaked away and made it to the corner and victory, with me just a few seconds behind.

Well that was lots of fun, very quick and very scary with all those asteroids moving across the table, I made a couple of silly mistakes with my positioning, but to be honest the yellow Corvette was quicker to get to the flags and was in a much better position as it went for the corner, well played that man! 👏

The poor red Corvette just had some really bad luck, and was no match for that fast-moving asteroid!!

It was still fairly early so we had time for a second race, we started in the same positions and we all moved as fast as we could to get the first flag, we all then moved on and took our second flags without any problems.

Then the yellow Corvette managed to get in behind the red Corvette and took out its shields with its lasers and then hit it with a missile ( the red Corvettes PDS didn’t stop the missile )

We all got our third flag and as the yellow and the blue Corvettes raced for their last flags the Red Corvette found itself completely out of position and was hit by a large asteroid and again it was out of the race!

The yellow Corvette got its last flag just before I could get mine, so again it had the advantage as it went for the corner of the table.

I pushed my Corvette to the limits as I picked up my last flag, and clipped an asteroid doing enough damage to take me out of the race!!

I was robbed!! 😢 It was so close at the end, but again the yellow Corvette took the flag and the glory…

It was a fun race and we had lots of laughs, hats off to my son and his Yellow Corvette, and commiseration’s to my nephew flying the red Corvette.

And me, well its back to the repair yards with my wrecked blue Corvette, but it will be back, only next time it will be better 😊

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5 Comments

  1. Vic

    Hi Mac,

    I’m very glad you enjoyed it – I had fun playing too. In my original playtest the asteroids were moving diagonally bottom left to top right – it worked but it was also much harder to work out where new asteroids appeared, so I changed it to bottom to top – much easier second time around.

    And in my race Orange won, despite two asteroid collisions & a missile hit that left him with just 1 damage left and critical hit that took out his missile hard point … Red came second, Blue third … Yellow … well, he had a hard race failing to dodge rocks until he blew up

    • Mac

      Hi Vic,

      Yeah I really enjoyed it mate, it was great fun and the games had some real scary moments trying to avoid those asteroids!!

      You had to continually think about where they would end up once they moved and where your ship would be, some very tense moments.

      Mac

      • Vic Dobson

        Hi Mac,

        Yeah – I quickly found that it’s hard to work out where you AND the rocks will end up. I decided not to allow pre-measuring … once a player had placed fingers on their miniature to move it they were committed to moving it – you MUST complete you move with no going back to try again!

        This makes the players think about what they do before they do it … I found guestimating ship & asteroid final positions was hard work … sometimes it worked, other times … 😉 … most of my collisions in my games came about when I failed to estimate final end positions correctly!

        It didn’t help that the ships took to firing at one another – trying to avoid an active enemy AND the asteroids is difficult – and missiles just add to the fun!

        Vic

      • Vic

        And if I was to run it in say a competition type setting, I’d put a timer on players thinking time – 30 seconds to think then get moving! Fail to start your move after 30 seconds you forfeit your go and your ship drifts directly forwards at its current speed …

        • Mac

          Oh that’s harsh!! but could be fun ;O)

          I think it makes for a great party game, I will have to run it at my club one night.

          Mac

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