Thunder Hollow

A little while back I had an idea that I could convert my moderns into a sort of post-apocalyptic setting - I've got a slowly growing collection of armed men on motorbikes, beat up trucks and cars, and rugged, mountainous desert terrain.  So I went looking around for a ruleset to use or convert.  I ended up picking up Osprey Games' Gaslands and had a read through, including checking out various YouTube videos on the game.

Well, it's not really what I was looking for, but it is still a fun, easy game.  I then hooked on the idea of recreating the Thunder Hollow scene from Cars 3 (very popular in my house - Erik has had us watch over and over, and he has almost all the 'broken cars' from the demolition derby).

As Erik is out of town, I 'borrowed' his toys and set up a game at the Trumpeter Society's monthly Bonsor meeting.

The track is intended to copy the Crazy 8 format from the movie, and the brown felt circle in the centre is muddy ground (difficult terrain).

I had 10 vehicles ready, but ended up using just 4.  Thanks to Gord for joining me for a run through of the game.  In theory, the race should have gone until only one vehicle was still operational but we agreed that one full lap would be enough.  Actual racers we used were Lightning McQueen (in disguise as 'Chester Whipplefilter'), plus Jimbo the pickup and two normal cars.  Whipplefilter was the only 'performance car', which ended up being a huge advantage for him.  

Straight out of the gate, we had a collision 

Whipplefilter geared up to 4 and pushed through the mud with Pushover (#16) following after.  The white die on the rusty shipping container shows the current gear phase.  Higher gears let you move more often, but maneuvers are more limited and dangerous.  

Whipplefilter clears the mud.

You can see the accumulation of hazard tokens on each vehicle card.  Managing these is a big part of the game.  Unless you drive like a granny (or like me!) you will end up accumulating loads of hazards, and once you have 6 of them you will have a wipeout.

By the by, the rule book recommends little paper triangle hazard symbols, looking a bit like this:  

but I decided to use the coloured blocks seen as I had a bunch of them left over from an earlier project, and thought they'd be easier to manipulate than tiny paper chits.

Pushover nearly catches Whipplefilter, but he uses his special 'slip away' ability to get an extra activation and avoid the crash.

And then Pushover (with too many hazard tokens) wiped out and spun out.

Whipplefilter wasn't in the clear, though - he ended up spinning out on the crater immediately afterward.

Meanwhile Jimbo and Fishtail were stuck in the mud...

After a few turns we had the movement down, and things went pretty quickly.  However, the cars were now spread out enough that they weren't getting in each other's way anymore.

Chester Whipplefilter for the win!