-
Anthony Boydell
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
1st! 2nd! Right sev 2! Up to 3rd, 4th, 5th 800 yards! Down to 3rd, Left sev 3. 4th! 5th! Over the roundabout! Waheeeyyy! Left Sev 3 down hard. Tank it! Jump caution! Left sev 4 at the lights! Up the gears to the finish!
Strapping ourselves in for a session of Rallyman, the Conegra Road assemblage double-checked their pacenotes, scanned the bodywork for any dangerous dangling bits and (vigorously) polished their helmets. Tony in the Little Red Card, Carl in the Tiny Blue Car (now THERE’S a juxtaposition), Ray in the weeny Grey car and Blaine (bringing up his rear) in another miniscule vehicle – I don’t remember the colour because, to be frank, Blaine would’ve logged a better race time if he’d gotten out and PUSHED his car around the track rather than have tried to DRIVE it!
For the uninitiated, Rallyman has a simple movement engine involving the rolling of gear dice – the higher the gear, the more chance of rolling an ‘exclamation mark’ – three ! rolled in a turn and you crash out. You can either move up gears in your turn or down, with a couple of ‘coast’ dice to move you on a little more; each gear change/coast moves your minute carriage along the race track toward the finish. In a nice touch, players aren’t racing EACHOTHER on the track, they’re racing the CLOCK! The turn order is a little ‘bouncy’ to allow the starters to get a little ahead on the board, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get overtaken!
You can end your turn either when you crash (and take a 1 minute penalty and, possibly, some damage to your nano-scaled charabanc) OR you can ‘just stop’ and take a time card for the gear you’re in (5th gear = 10 seconds, 1st gear = 50 seconds). When you reach the finish line, you add up all your times and log the total on a pad. Simple! Add to that a board with corners showing max gears to be in when you move round ‘em (or you crash!), bumps and muddy short-cuts for that slide-y, moto-X feel. VERY atmospheric, VERY fun! Of course, there’s a whole lot more waiting in the box for the addicted – snow courses, tyre changes, more severe damage etc etc.
I was slightly lucky in the final stage to end up pipping Carl by just 10 seconds overall, after my over-cautious Sunday afternoon cruise (I got overtaken by EVERYONE) – still, the margin is unimportant – the winning is all! Vrooooom!
Carl had requested I bring my prototype of Mountain Railways, so we duly replaced the speedy, gear-grinding glory of Rallyman for the more sweaty and manual labour pursuits on Snowdon mountain. I had mocked up the Darjeeling scenario…
Interruption: For the love of Yahweh! There’s a woman in the seat across from me on the train as I type this up who has NOT STOPPED TALKING (or even taken a breath) since she got on 10 minutes ago – irritatingly LOUD yabbering and moaning about school dinners (IS pasta and cheese sauce REALLY a main meal?), nursery hygiene and general bloody moaning! Shut up, you yabbering harridan! SHUT UP!
…but didn’t want to put Ray through a play-test of something new in a game he’s only played the once (and that was 18 months ago). I’d also got myself in a twist mulling over a particular rule and confidence in presenting it ‘as is’ left me – more noodling and card reprints needed this weekend.
Ray struggled with a plan but came in a healthy second by sticking to the most basic of strategies in this game: fulfill your bonus card bonuses! Carl and I were buying trains, messing about with conversions and timely excavations etc but failed in that key strategem. Blaine played a track-laying blinder – exploiting an uncharacteristic stream of excellent sunny weather.
With an hour before Ray’s ‘last train home’, we upped our construction game from a wonder of the Welsh Mountains to the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World – Bauza’s ridiculously simple, elegant and addictive drafting distraction! In game one, I shame-facedly hobbled home in last place with a derisory 69 points and we won’t even bother with evaluating game 2!
Afterword: A few of us got to play most of a game of Feudality on Tuesday – the German on the event cards defeated us, with Richard taking an action to get everything translated onto slippy sleeve inserts ASAP – all of us thoroughly enjoyed the play-through and can see it being a filler favourite in the coming months; I’m certainly going to get the English edition if-and-when it comes out in early 2012!
Geddadaway, arma cummin' troo! Beep! Beep! BEEEEEEEEP!
|
|
