Game: Lunatix Loop

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Toynan — 2008-07-03T00:25:22+00:00

Very close up a the blue car

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Toynan — 2008-07-02T01:59:58+00:00

Close up on the six cars

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Toynan — 2008-07-01T22:50:53+00:00

The cars

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Toynan — 2008-07-01T22:46:20+00:00

Components inside the box

Thread: Re: Using boards from other games?

chris1nd — 2007-12-10T16:21:42+00:00

Okay, but as an Ameritrash Wannabe I totally miss the machine guns. I have tried and tried playing without them and it removes an important part of the "when do I move" decision that is confounded intentionally with "what shall my action be".

And no longer do we get to hear about Murderous Mike.....

Thread: Re: Using boards from other games?

mleacock — 2007-10-02T03:17:28+00:00

Quick correction: I have no plans on reprinting it *myself*. I'm open to licensing the game if the right publisher comes along.

Thread: Re: Lunatix Loop Review

King Kolrabi — 2007-06-14T00:34:24+00:00

Nice review which captures the spirit of the game very well!

Thread: Lunatix Loop Review

ronster0 — 2007-04-26T18:04:23+00:00

Lunatix Loop is a game that invites you to have fun. The premise is pretty silly: racing Trabants, perhaps the worst - and flimsiest! - cars in the world around a worn and potholed track. These cars bleed oil, drop the shattered shards of their fragile internal parts, and, on occasion, even the spit and glue that holds them together ends up on the track. It's a rough and tumble race and the drivers aren't always careful about keeping to their lane and the stress of competition often leaves them a bit, well, quirky, shall we say. But Trabby owners are a plucky lot and, like hobbyists the world over, they love to add gadgets to their cars.

Players take the role of lunatic Trabant drivers. Each turn they must choose between accelerating, braking, hitting a hard U-turn, ramming another car, dropping junk on the track, or, when appropriate, making a quick pit stop. Cars start out with a top speed of 140 MPH (or 14 squares on the board) and a current speed of 40 MPH (or 4 squares per turn). Braking and accelerating change the current speed up or down but you are limited by the car's top speed - usually. Severe (and often damaging!) acceleration is possible using turbo cards. But beware! If you rocket into turns too fast, you have to draw Hazard cards. These cards can cause damage - or worse! As cars take damage by bashing or being bashed by other cars, skidding into the wall, or driving over junk dropped on the track by vicious Trabant drivers, their maximum speed drops - eventually bringing their race to an anticlimactic end. Pit stops can restore the car to working order, refill its arsenal of junk, or even give the driver time to add new gadgets.

The junk dropped on the track and gadgets provide the strongest link back to the Mad Max universe. Players can drop oil slicks, caltrops, and glue on the track to cause skidding, tire damage, or slow other players. Gadgets allow cars to break the rules by leaping over junk (or even other cars!), ram with impunity, grip the road through oil slicks, and such. Some gadgets are one use things (like the rocket engine strapped to the roof of Urban Legend and Darwin Awards fame!) but most are new ongoing abilities. These aspects also provide an open door to later expansion. Several of the gadgets from early designs fell into the ultra-violent category and were cut for this release. We might see those reappear in R rated expansions, though.

Finally, the Hazards can be great fun, particularly the lunacies! Every now and then an unlucky Trabant driver cuts some turn just a little too close and goes a bit off their rocker! The lunacy cards restrict a player's choice of actions either by allowing only one (such as the Speed Freak, who can only go faster and faster) or by restricting the use of one (shy and retiring drivers cannot ram). These can throw a major wrench in a well laid plan!

The winner is the first player to make three laps round the Loop. And it is hard to choose between messing with the other drivers and just getting on with the race! It is a lot of fun to bash into the others, add gadgets and try them out, and to try to drop enough junk in the other drivers' path to cause utter mayhem. It is also a bit of fun to win, though. And therein lies the tension of the game.

Thread: Using boards from other games?

shawn_low — 2006-11-16T23:01:53+00:00

Hi,

I just acquired this game (after a long long search for it). It looks fantastic. There are some really interesting ideas that make it a little different from the usual race games.

I understand that Matt (the designer) has no plans on reprinting but is keen on perhaps making this a PDF pay-for-download and also has an expansion and extra tracks.

However, that might never see the light of day...as such, does anyone have any thoughts about using boards from other race games?

I will check it out as I own a few. A quick look at Formula de Mini gives me hope: the track looks a little too long but might be ok. I am also going to pull out Ave Caesar and Augebremst (these two have shorter tracks and the latter has variable track construction).

All we need to do is to put in speed limits on the curves and in the pit. I will look into it and let you all know if it works.

Does anyone have any ideas in the meantime?

Thread: Lunatix Loop with five

burninator23 — 2006-04-07T04:33:20+00:00

I received my copy of Lunatix Loop in the mail a few weeks ago, and it's been patiently waiting it's turn in the queue. It was wet out tonight, cancelling my soccer plans, so I went to try and scrape a game together.

For an independantly produced game, Lunatix Loop (LL) looks quite nice. Good little plastic cars and chips, and colorful cards. The cards are printed on somewhat flimsy cardstock, however, and should probably be sleeved. I also had a strong yearning to go find a cheap old boardgame at the thrift store to glue the track to.

We ended up with five players: Drew, Tim, Eric, Dan, and myself. None of us are big race game fans, however we've been working a lot of variety into our boardgaming lately, so this was a nice addition to the last few weeks of railroads, power systems, desert caravans, and colonial trading...

On the first turn, several people chose the ram card, and the beatings started right away, albeit mildly. Dan braked, to get behind us all, which was a pretty good move. I decided to be the bunny, and ran out in front of everyone with turbo. Drew and some of the others had some fun coming up with different ways to announce the turbo choice...

Over the next three turns, I kept running out in front and getting bashed by rams. I was first around the last bend, but had to pit. Tim had held back and lurked near the end of the pack during the initial ram-fest, and used this opportunity to surge ahead on the finish-line straightaway.

I came out of the pit a little slow, with people making progress difficult by dropping glue, oil, and tacks in the way as they passed through on lap two. The ramming and chaos continued, and everyone except Tim and I had to pit on their second lap. This allowed me to hit some good acceleration, and start to close the gap on Tim, who was out in front. The guys in the pit were slowed down enough that they couldn't catch up, although Dan would make a good run for it.

In a bid to close the gap, I accelerated, ran through a curve too fast, ran through some dropped tacks and oil, and ran into a second curve too fast, picking up a lunacy that would make me choose my action card at random the next turn. I had a luck chip left, and could have used it to get a new hazard, which would almost certainly have been better (I had a gadget that would repair damage), but, I thought, what could be more fun?

We had a huge laugh, on my turn, when it turned out that I randomly drew the one action which was terrible for me - the u-turn. I ended up drawing 6 hazard cards, but coming out of it relatively unscathed, albeit facing the wrong direction going zero mph. This effectively took me out of the race, and was equivalent to "spinning out."

Meanwhile, Eric got stuck in the pit, sucking dry fumes on turbo ("click") trying to come out. Drew went out the other exit, going the wrong way, hoping to head-on ram Tim. The ram proved unattainable, though, and Tim stylishly used his jump-jets to hop over obstacles and opponents on his way accross the finish line.

We finished in a little over an hour and a half, with rules explanation and setup. The time ran pretty well, but we actually thought the track could have been bigger. I'm hoping to soon aquire the desert track Mr. Leacock made to go with the game, and see how that works.

Overall, we had a pretty good time, including some good laughs. This is definitely a game that rewards some spirit of fun in it's players. That said, the only die rolling is for damage, and the random card draws are generally somewhat predictably good/bad, especially with the luck chips to switch them up. You're generally left with simple strategic choices about car position, and tactical selection of actions for each turn.

The group generally concurred on the following:

-It would be nice to have a "wrecker" rule to get inopperable cars back to the pit. We all hate player elimination and, although it's very unlikely in this game, it is possible.

-Turboing is a little too easy, and maybe needs some more damage with big apeed rewards type cards.

-There were a few too many non-harmful cards in the hazard deck. We'd like to be really on-edge drawing them, and felt there could be a few, and bigger de-celerations, and maybe some more creative things like spin-outs, slide-aheads, etc..

I look forward to playing the game again, with different numbers of players, and perhaps some of the optional rules. I'd recommend the game to anyone looking for something fairly light, with a healthy pinch of quirky randomness, that also has a flavorful amount of strategic investment, and a chance for some belly laughs.

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King Kolrabi — 2005-02-16T01:37:08+00:00

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trnardo — 2003-09-05T13:08:14+00:00

Box cover

Thread: User Review

hvogel — 2002-11-29T20:09:17+00:00

This is an odd little game about racing Trebants. A Trebant, for those of you who don’t know, is an awful little car that came with a two-stroke engine. It was produced in the former East Germany. Obviously all the German auto engineers stayed in West Germany… Anyway, the person behind Locust Games had the sick idea of creating a racing game featuring this fine example of automotive engineering. The resulting game was desktop published with a print run of 200.

Each player has a speedometer and, of course, a car on the race track. The speedometer has two pawns on it, one marking your current speed and other marking your car’s current maximum speed (which can change as your car receives damage or is repaired). Each player also has four action cards: Ram, Brake, Accelerate and Drop. Before a turn begins, players select the action card they wish to use that turn and place it face down in front of them. Cards are revealed at the same time. The cards also have numbers printed on them and these numbers control turn order. The player who played the lowest numbered card goes first and so on up the line. Ties are broken based on speed and track position. The Accelerate card allows you to change your car’s speed by 0 to 20 mph, in 10 mph increments. You may also choose to use the Turbo boost, which may accelerate your car more than 20 mph in the turn or, possibly, damage your car. The Brake card allows you to decrease your car’s speed by 0 to 40 mph, again in 10 mph increments. The Ram card, as you might guess, allows you to ram an opponent’s car, doing, one hopes, more damage to the opponent’s car than you do to your own car (dice are rolled to determine damage for rammed and ramming cars). Finally, the Drop card allows you to drop spikes, oil or glue on the track. Spikes, the more useful thing to drop in my opinion, damage any car that runs over spikes. Glue slows a car down for the turn it runs over the glue. Running over oil forces the player to draw a Hazard card. Hazard cards may do nothing or may indicate some kind of trauma – always mental (thus, the “Lunatix” in the title) – suffered by your driver. These traumas may reduce your maximum speed or make it impossible for you to choose a specific action card. Hazards may be eliminated by visiting the pits, where your driver can pick up motivational tapes to help him overcome his trauma. Really, I’m not making this up! Each player has three luck chips, which may be discarded to allow the player to ignore a card that was drawn and draw again.

Movement is very simple. A car moves one space for every 10 mph of current speed. A car traveling at a speed of 100 mph would move 10 spaces. Curves have maximum speeds associated with them. Unlike most other games, though, taking a curve at a higher speed doesn’t do damage to you car. In Lunatix Loop, you must draw a Hazard card for every 10 mph your car is over the maximum safe speed.

Not a game to be taken seriously, Lunatix Loop is lots of strange and wacky fun.

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chris brought out Lunatix Loop. This is a very silly and over-complicated stock car racing (with Trabants). The components are well-designed and brightly coloured, but produced on flimsy stock - apart from the plastic car playing pieces. The game itself is like a cross between Formula 1 and Circus Maximus with lots of dice rolling and card-drawing. Lightweight fun - do not take seriously.

Thread: Session Report

gschloesser — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Another race game. I should have known better. I'm not what you would consider a huge race game fan. Oh, there's some I enjoy (Formula De, Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix, Circus Maximus), but by-and-large, I tend to find them a bit boring and anti-climatic. Lunatix Loop falls into the latter category.

It's Deja Vu. I guess I'm a bit cynical, but if I ever invented a game, I think I'd want to invent a 'fresh' game; i.e., a game which contains a bunch of new and unique mechanics. With Lunatix Loop, I kept thinking, "this has been done before". The game contains elements from a variety of other games and the composition is, well, boring. Further, there are many flaws which eliminated any chance of me enjoying the game. Glad I tried it so now I know to avoid it.

Again, we injected humor in our efforts to squeeze some fun out of the time we were investing. Our biggest laughs were the names on the cards which allow you to attempt extra speed (I forget the name of the cards). Charles was the first to notice the similarity in the words, so we injected Arabic accents into the names: Haroom, Kaboom, Varoom, Zazoom, Zoom, Boom and .... Click.

Charles captured the victory, followed closely by Ted and I.

Ratings: Ted 5, Charles 4, Craig 4, Greg 3, Clint 2

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2000-11-09T02:46:32+00:00