"Machinas: Death Racing rules" Topic

Two Hour Wargames is working on a set of rules for death-racing on the apocalypse. There's no release date yet, but it will be Kickstarted first.

Info on the game can be seen on my blog here: link
My first race report can be seen at the 2-Hour Blog here: link

I'm in.

me too

Not opposed to a new game and I readily support 2Hr but I'm already playing Warlands and I obtained permission from Jada to officially use those cars in the game. :-)

Jada cars will work in Machinas, too ;)

Carmen, you already have me collecting mercs and caddies! Very excited about this.
Cheers

Don't forget Buicks!
:)

Lap 2 of the race report has been posted at the 2-Hour Blog for those following along: link

Will we be limited to 4 color coded factions for team/campaign games or can we have more if we wanted?

You can have as many teams/factions as you have players. So if you have a league/campaign involving 20 players, you could have 20 different factions, though not more than 5 or 6 would be racing at once. I'm only using the basic colors to simplify writing the race reports.

When you play a campaign, you'll be part of a faction, gang or team that can have any color or unifying theme you want. You'll be a driver, and there'll be some teammate NPC drivers (operated by the rules.) You'll also have multiple cars in your team/faction.

The color or theme helps you identify your own cars in a race, especially if you have more than one racing at once. In campaign play, your team/faction will have multiple drivers and cars.

I'm working on two factions of my own, the Vestal Mechanics and Slade's Silvers:

So only 5-6 cars on the track at once? OK I was hoping to be able to have more for larger races but I don't know if I'll ever have a game that big any ways. Plus the abstract pack racing system would make it easy to run multiple races on one table if I ever were to run larger games.

Personally, I run 5-6 cars, but you absolutely yes, can run more. Just keep in mind, the more you add, the more downtime will be added for players who are not taking an action or responding to an action. Still, I think 8 to 10 is doable.

Theoretically, the rules will support as many cars as you have space for. 50 cars? Sure. If you have patient players, then larger races are no problem.

Quick note: It takes me (running a solo game) about an hour to run 4 cars around 3 laps (a usual race.) So I guess, with multiple players, you could easily do 8 cars around 3 laps in under two hours (to keep with Two Hour Wargames' mantra :)

Yeah I can see downtime being a problem with larger games,Ive had that happen with just 5-6 player playing speed rally. Combine that with the cars getting too spread out (not a problem with Machinas )and games can be quite boring.

This just in: Rules added for motorcycles, sports cars, buses, RVs and big rigs.

If you haven't already read it, I've posted a race report for a 3-lap race at 2-Hour Blog: 2hourblog.blogspot.com

Keep an eye out there for race/battle reports. At my blog, I'm continuing to build and paint Machinas cars: link

(By the way, here is the rest of my Slade Silver's team)

Big rigs you say? Excellent,we can have the dreadnought from the death race remake in our races.

Oh and here's a question,why a kickstarter campaign? I'm still willing to take part when it starts I'm just curious as to what makes Machinas different from other THW products that it requires crowd source funding.

You'll have to ask Ed why Kickstarter. Part of it at least is to fund some weapons (lead/pewter) for folks to modify their Hot Wheels with.

Very cool, I like the fact that you can play it at Hot Wheels scale. Love kit bashing and you can get into this pretty cheap by picking up a bag of old cars at the flea market or garage sale.
--
TAZ

So when do you think you'll be kicking off the kickstart?

Not sure yet. That's Ed's department. We're still working on a couple things, but the main rules are written.

Are the rules going to allow for those of us that want the big track layout?

You could do the full track layout, but you'd simply be moving the pack around the track together.

To give you a better idea of how the game works: The game has a reference sheet with an illustration of the track layout on it. You move a marker from track section to track section on the sheet to help you remember where the pack is on the lap. So if you don't mind moving the whole pack from section to section on a full-scale track, then I guess you could use a full layout.

The cars would still be in a pack, though; I could see cars falling back on a full-layout race, but there's no rule mechanic for the leader to pull away.

The game is less about racing with pure speed, and more about jockeying for position using momentum and big, angry guns to achieve the goal of being at the head of the pack when it crosses the finish line.

This is matchbox car/dark future scale?

There will be some cast metal weapons at Hot Wheels scale (1/64-ish), but the game itself can be played with any scale of car- and I mean ANY scale (2mm to 1/18 scale.)

We just chose to emphasize Hot Wheels-sized diecast cars because they are the cheapest, most diverse and most widely available, allowing players to buy a full race set of cars for just a few dollars.

(And all the photos above are of 1/64 die cast cars.)

That's how I figured the track system would work,guess the idea I came up with to use cards to create randomly generated tracks will work.

The rules also provide a simple method for creating a random road course (for those races and battles through the wasteland.)

What I have in mind is making up a set of small cards that represent track segments showing either a turn or straightaway. I figure this might be a good way to create a randomly generated track as the race progresses. lay out maybe 5 segments at the start and at the end of each turn more card are placed down to add to the course.

That method will work just fine with Machinas :)

By the way, Ed has posted a race report detailing more specific rules (including how we generate our own road courses.)
link

A little more news just came through the pipeline:

More info on Machinas.

link