I cracked out my desert scenery for a 3' by 3' Factious Waste test game on Tuesday night. You may remember these cliffs from Deathrace 40,000 at BOYL 2015, or you may even remember when they were first built for my egyptain high elves six years ago! For this game we gave the two starter gangs carte blanche to drive any vehicle on the table.
A promising first turn saw my Trash Runner leader bag himself a tasty convertible whilst my NeoPrimitive and Luddite went after some scrap and my GenCorps officers activated their suit shields and went after the other gang. Spotting 3 of the enemies bunched together the Luddite prepared to drop a pipe bomb on them... only to fumble and drop the explosive right at his feet. Fortunately it was a dud and did minor damage but it was enough to drop him prone right out in the open. The Trash Runner seemed to be having difficulty getting the hang of his car's handling. After misjudging a corner he had to brake hard to avoid crashing into a pillar and spent a couple of activations pulling a 3-point turn to get back in the game.
Meanwhile the enemy Doughnutter had appropriated a nimble buggy and already stuffing some scrap into the back. The GenCorps descended on him with charged crossbow bolts but covering fire from ReFrat agents kept the officers at bay whilst reinforcements moved up to help out. The GenCorps diverted their suit's systems to deliver a crippling electric shock to the first agent, laying him out, but were forced down to the ground by a hail of machine gun fire.
Over the other side of the table the stricken Luddite was being hammered by gunfire. Kept prone by the relentless hail of bullets he was quite unable to get away from the buggy bearing down upon him and bit the dust... quite literally. His executioner slowed to allow another agent to jump aboard with a haul of scrap. Across the board there came a roaring of engines as the Trash Runner finally extracted his vehicle from the pillars and came cannoning forward in a cloud of dust, straight into the side of the buggy. The rammed vehicle skewed sideways and the distracted driver stood hard on his accelerator.
Smash! The buggy cannoned forwards into a rock pile, flipping and throwing its occupants clear of the vehicle. The Trash Runner leapt out to finish the job, but he was on the receiving end of retribution from another ReFrat agent. Fortunately a slick of oil spreading from the convertible caused the agent to loose his footing and his shots went wide, his magazine emptying into the sky. As the GenCorps officers were overwhelmed my gang fled the field, leaving the enemy victorious. Fortunately long-term injuries were minor (well, mostly) and the gang will be back for vengeance.
The game lasted 8 turns and took just under an hour. Really happy with how the vehicle interactions were working, keeping the action model-focused and slotting alongside the core SystemMech rules neatly. It was also our first real use of plot tokens as a narrative driver and again I was really pleased with the extra depth and flexibility they added. We each got through 2 tokens in the course of the game (to modify environmental features and our opponent's actions) so my estimated allocation of 5 tokens to a starting posse seems reasonable. I want to have another look at how further tokens are gained though as I'm torn between not wanting them to be too easily restored and not wanting to add complexity to the between-game stages by adding in a separate system. As always, thoughts welcome!
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