Maximilian 1934 Playtest

 Last night at the Trumpeter's monthly meeting at Bonsor Community Centre, Corey led us through a first go at Maximilian 1934 (aka Mad Max 1934), a game which is basically Car Wars using 1920s-era racing cars.  

Our motive for trying these rules came from our WWI games, and the question of |"What else can we do with our WWI armoured cars?"  So right from the start our approach stretches the concept of the game, as we brought heavily armoured, big and clunky vehicles compared to the sleeker racing cars that the game designers built the game around.

The basic idea we had was that we would only use vehicles we already had in our collections.  This was supposed to be limited to WWI-era armoured cars, but I stretched that a bit by bringing my Afghans on motorbikes.  

In game terms, we rated the  Pierce-Arrow Armoured Lorry and the two Armoured Autocars as 'Junkers' - the largest class of vehicle in the game.  The Ford Model T Armoured Car was rated as a 'Jalopy', which is the base car style in the original ruleset.  The bikes were, naturally, rated as 'Bikes', although I did rate the RPG as a 'rocket', and we allowed it to fire at the same time that the bike was moving at full speed :)  We didn't count any points, just assigned values to the cars based on what it looked like they were carrying.

For the scenario, we did a slight variation on Scenario 2, the Death Race.  In our game, the racers started between the pair of palm trees at the top of the photo, and they were instructed to drive past the near palm tree and return to the top to complete the lap.  No weapons were allowed until cars had passed the first quarter of the lap.

To start the race, the smallest vehicles went first, starting with the two bikes, followed by the Ford.  The Ford driver (Corey) tried to 'fang it' and immediately accelerate to speed 2.  Unfortunately he failed his test and burnt out his motor.  This allowed the Arthur's Autocar (who successfully fanged it) to ram him from the rear.

Despite being bashed earlier in the game, the Ford used the push to speed up to take an early lead.

My Autocar managed to catch one of the bikes and bumped it.  The damage from this was one crew member, so the passenger with the LMG fell off!

So we swapped out the model for a bike with driver only.

Pierce-Arrow catches up to the Ford, and side-swipes it!  The turn doo-hickey combined with the Fate/Fortune rolls resulted in lots of fun results, with cars skidding into other cars, bashing each others' armour and paint.

The biker pushed ahead and opened up his lead!

Arthur tried a shortcut through the rough terrain.

Race around the halfway mark!

Pierce-Arrow skids around the turn.  Lisa avoided the Ford, but still slammed into the big rock.

Legion's biker opens the throttle, accelerating to Speed 4, which we celebrated with a cloud of dust for those behind him to choke on!

Having cleared the rough ground, Arthur's Autocar slides into Lisa's Pierce-Arrow!

Legion's biker, having dropped his passenger much earlier, speeds across the finish line!

The other bike gets ready to jump, Dukes of Hazzard-style, across the toe of the hill slope.

The Ford wins second place!

The second bike (with the RPG) takes third, then the Pierce-Arrow is fourth.

The game was fun.  I don't know if it will be a regular part of our gaming rotation, but if we try again, I may push to rate most vehicles as Jalopies rather than Junkers, and we will pay more attention to things like extra armour, and balancing points (vehicle costs) to make things a bit more fair. And now that we have an idea of game mechanics, I can put more thought into scenario design, although even with the improvised scenario in last night's game, we had some fun narratives emerge.