"Racing Games with moving terrain" Topic

Hi all,

Does anyone know of any racing games where the terrain is moved down the board to represent the racers flying on past it?

The only time I've ever played anything similar is in my younger years at GW with Orc trucks and land speeders.

Machinas?

link

My son and I played in a Walt O'Hara balloon race game at a past Cold Wars.
It had scrolling terrain but of course very simple terrain.

I have been thinking of how to do that for a Lexington Concord game.

Winston;
I have ideas for that for Lexington and Concord. The retreat from Concord is quite feasible.

It does require either random generation as the forces move "down" the road, or a well prepared map.

I'd prefer the random generation, within limits.

Eric

The Two Hour Wargame chariot racing game does that. The chariots only move relative to each other, any terrain then flies by.

Car Wars

There is not necessarily any terrain in Machinas (or Charioteer on which it is based,) but the concept of the track moving past while the racing pack stands still is there.

I love the mechanic though, especially when there is little table space. This also allows the game to be played in just about any scale.

(Machinas does have the odd piece of road obstruction, though, that the racers have to dodge.)

I've played a racing version of Full Thrust where ships must go around pylons but you only reveal two pylons ahead of the furtherest ahead ship.

Pylon placement is randomly determined and the playing surface floats: ships and pylons sliding to accommodate next waypoint.

Sliding game terrain is a quite common mechanic in spaceship combat or naval wargames.

Sometimes also for land warfare, e.g. a recon operation along a valley occupying several wargame tables. The terrain shifts as the troops progress.

My Yet Another Giant Robot Apocalypse Game (YAGRAG) has a scenario where the players are assaulting/defending a moving train. It's not a racing game, but it has relative motion and terrain flying past.

Dear Winston

I helped Walt with design and design ideas for that game and was with him when he put it on at Prezcon. I guess he's reworked it because he was very dissatisfied with it back then. One of the problems I saw was that it was a pain to keep moving up the terrain.

I've tried this idea myself and never really got it to work at all, let alone well.