The Last Drifters City race, once more around the block…

Well it’s club night and it’s the Last Drifters race night, this time I thought that I would get the city mat out and test my club mates driving skills on a street circuit.

Oh wow it was great stuff, there was excitement right form the starter flag!!!

But first we had to set up and pick our cars, earlier I had pointed up nine cars which we picked from at random, all the cars were pointed up at around the 725 points mark, some were a little less and some were a little more.

725 seems to be a good level for a race game if you want the cars to be similar enough to make the race fun, if you give too many points for the vehicles then they just have all the best weapons and upgrades, restricting the points makes it a lot harder to set up your racing vehicles.

Too much armour and you will soon be left as the lighter vehicles leave you behind, put on too many of the bigger weapons and the vehicle will be under-armoured so will not last long, I have found that getting the balance between weapons and upgrades is not as easy as it may seem.

You need to have a fast vehicle but you also need to be able to take some punishment, but don’t forget you still need to shoot at those other drivers that are racing against you, yep it is not easy to get it right.

Five players were taking part in the race, two of whom had never played before so after four or five minutes of me taking them through the basics of the rules we were ready to start.

We all rolled to see what position we would start in on the track, I started off as I meant to carry on and was now in last position before the race had even started, I had rolled the lowest.

I played with the normal “no shooting until you are past the first bend” rule as I find this is a good way of sorting out the vehicles, once past the first corner though it normally falls apart very quickly, and this race was no different.

This also gives any new players a couple of turns to get to understand the rules.

There was a lot of bunching up and weaving in and out until the cars started to sort themselves out with a couple of drivers at the back having to just sit there as they had no way through the mess in front of them.

Then for the next couple of quick turns the drivers raced down the straight towards the first bend using their Nitrox boosters to try and gain enough of a lead to get around the first bend safely ….and that’s when all the craziness started!!

Bullets were flying everywhere as they rounded the first tight bend, one driver got in a couple of good hits and started a fire on board the red car, things were already starting to look bad for that car.

Then another driver came screeching around the bend and put a few more holes into the red car!

Cars were dropping spikes and oil on the road making it really hard for those cars following, at the back of this pack was the yellow car and the green car ( that was me in the green car ) just slowing down giving those in front time to sort themselves out and move off of the first bend.

Dozer was going so fast into the bend that he found that he had no way around the two cars in front of him so he gripped the steering wheel and put his foot down hard on the accelerator and aimed at the rear of the red car, thinking if he was going to go out of this race he would take another car with him…

Well that was the red car out of this race!! And to be fair there wasn’t much left of Dozers vehicle either.

The driver of the blue car, seeing how things had gone, got into position to put a few more holes in Dozers car.

The yellow car and my green car slowed down a little more as we moved into the first bend.

Dozer and the blue car traded a few more shots before Dozers car coughed and spluttered to a stop further around the bend… crazy!! Two cars out of the race on the first couple of bends.

The driver of the blue car hits his accelerator hard and powered away from the wreckage trying to get as much distance between him and the remaining two cars.

Seeing the blue car disappear around the corner the driver of the yellow car woke his engine up and roared off after it…  I on the other hand slowed down!!! There was so much wreckage and oil on the road I had to really take it easy getting past it all.

The driver of the blue car pushed his vehicle hard towards the bend before the long straight thinking that if he could get around that quick enough he could use some more Nitorox to open up his lead a little bit more.

The yellow car was having none of that, he used some Nitrox and pushed past and into the lead.

I had finally made it past that first bend and started to try and catch the two vehicles in front of me, I managed to burn some Nitrox and closed the gap a little, but I was a long way behind, had I left it too late?

The yellow car screeched around the far bend and headed off down the long straight, with the blue car falling behind a little.

Then came that dreaded first bend on the second lap and the yellow car slipped through nicely followed by the blue car… and just for fun the blue cars driver decided he would drop some more spikes in the only gap on that bend as he knew I still had to get through… that wasn’t very nice!

I used another boost of Nitrox and closed the gap a little more on the two lead cars, and had to just drive through the mess on the bend, I took a little damage as I went through but not enough to really worry me.

The blue and the yellow car continued to shoot at each other as they roared down the far side of the track, the yellow car at this point was in real trouble warning lights were flashing on the dash panel and the driver thought he could smell burning coming from somewhere in the car!

But he ignored all that and moved towards the final bend of the race when the blue car moved into range and took what would possibly be the last chance he would have of stopping the yellow car…

…and that was that he punched a few heavy shells through the rear of the yellow car and it coughed and spluttered to the side of the road and out of the race.

I had been driving at break neck speed with my foot hammered down on the accelerator and could see what had just happened in front of me, my main gun was jammed so I gritted my teeth and aimed for the rear of the blue car hoping to take it out… crash!!! No, I didn’t do enough damage to take him out of this race.

The blue car ignored me and accelerated away and tried to get around the final bend, but I managed to keep with him and fired off my small autoguns hitting the rear of his vehicle doing some more damage but was disappointed to see the blue car slide easily around the final bend and burned the last of his Nitrox to cross the finish line and win the race.

Oh that was so close, deserved congratulation’s go to the driver of the blue car, that was his first time playing these rules and he showed us how it should be done.

We lost a couple of drivers early in the race at that crazy first bend, which is a shame.

Now I have to go away and think about my tactics, did I wait too long before making my move on the lead cars? Did I go too slow in the first lap? ( everyone thought that I was going too slow ) would I have done anything different?

No, I don’t think I would have done anything different, I went slow early on in the race just to keep safe, which worked.

I timed my attack on the lead car perfectly, but my ram just didn’t do enough damage as I needed to destroy the blue car, three more points of damage was all I needed!!!!

And not unjamming my heavy machinegun didn’t help, my autoguns struggled to punch through the blue cars rear armour.

I was robbed!!!

Seriously thought that was a really great race, we had lots of exciting moments and we saw some great driving, I can’t wait for my next game…

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4 Comments

    • Mac

      Hi Zac,
      Thanks it was a really fun game, lots of excitement and some really fun crazy moments.

      The city mat is a work in progress, I need to print out a couple more buildings and I am also 3D printing some more scatter terrain / barriers etc. to fill the board out more.

      It does make a nice change from the desert / wasteland mat.

      Mac

  1. Vic

    Hi Mac,

    What your ‘chariot’racd needs is some hostile crowds … with MG’s! Or that old revolutionary’s favourite, the RPG …
    A bit like Tusken raiders taking pot shots during the pod race …

    Use the Farce, Ook …

    • Mac

      Hi Vic,

      You may laugh, but I did actually think about adding a scenario where a couple of “Deliverance” types, while not playing banjo’s, take pot shots at the cars on the track, only fancied it in a scenario not as a rule to add in the main game.

      Gaslands has some odd stuff including Sentry Guns and Gun Turrets, hey even Formula D has people shooting at the cars in the city races!!

      So you never know I might add them at some point…

      Mac

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