Trying out Axles and Alloys

Over the weekend myself and a number of friends got together to give Axles and Alloys II a try. The get together was  a little impromptu so I had to throw some terrain together the night before, basically just some polystyrene covered with sand and quickly spray painted red/brown.

For the game itself I modified the rules slightly so we could use a bunch of micro machine cars (about n scale/15mm). Although it doesn’t quite have the impact on the table it did make the game much easier to transport. For using the micro machine cars I used the tried and true method of converting inchs to cm and it seemed to work out well with the rules still holding together very well. The board we played on was only about 45cm x 75 cm ( 1.5 x 2.5 feet) and it did get a little crowded with 7 players, but this just meant more mayhem. I wrote up some quick vehicle cards and for each game we shuffled and dealt the cards out so no-one had the same car twice.

We played a total of two games with basic race to the finish goal. The first game resulted in all player vehicles being out of commission by the end of the 5th turn, except one. This was mostly caused by the figure 8 track design and a rather cramped first turn which resulted in much ramming, weapons fire and collisions with terrain as skids and drifts were misjudged, also a lack of anyone using the brake pedal didn’t help 🙂 :

The above photo was taken just after the second turn at this point the Orange and Green cars driver had been killed after a wicked burst of MG fire from the rear by the blue car. The blue car had been savagely rammed by both the yellow 4×4 and orange and green car in the 1st turn. As you can see even though it was our first game a mountain of mines and spikes had already been dropped.

Similar time as the above shot but you can see the field was fairly well spread out the purple dragster in the middle went on to win the game.

This was near the end of the game, the yellow 4×4 slide into the towering rock cluster after I misjudged drift. The two blue cars ended up ramming each other and then getting out of control and colliding with each other a second time. We were unsure if this meant another ram but we played it that way and it destroyed both cars, one due to driver death. You can just see the purple dragster in the background heading of to win the race.

Final positions of everyone at the end of game 1, the lime green car on the right edge had tried a massive drift circle and had been planning to try and cut off, then ram to death the purple dragster but came unstuck on some rocks. This left the purple dragster as the last car alive.

For the second game we changed the board layout so it was a simple Horseshoe track with 1 lap to win. This seemed to help with 4 cars still surviving when one crossed the finish line.

Cars lined up at the blue start finish line for race 2. Three cars are obscured by the terrain in the lower left of the shot.

Just after the 1st turn with a few cars having moved for their second, two cars used the ramp suffering a little damage but it was a heap of fun for the players and to watch.

This was at the top turn, once again the purple dragster was in the lead. Just after the purple dragster passed around the turn, there were 2 head on collisions which knocked out a couple of cars. The purple dragster itself was rammed head on to try and knock it out and slow it down but unfortunately it didn’t quite work and the purple dragster once again went on to win.

As part of the setup one piece of terrain had a hole in it and we designated the leading edge a ramp, so a car could fly up the ramp and jump out the hole. The purple dragster did this but due to the ramming damage incurred and then hitting the ramp to fast was almost destroyed on landing. The dragster crossed the line with 2 damage box’s remaining.

Much fun was had by all over the two games and the rules themselves are written very well, we only had a couple of minor spots were we weren’t quiet sure what the rules should work, but we simply worked something out. Due to the success of the game I plan on mounting the micro machines to bases permanently and giving them a quick coat of paint. As a group we are more likely to do pickup one off games and so to randomize the vehicles a little more we may put in place some form of random weapon assignment mechanism. The only other minor change we might make is to double the weapon damage we found ramming was much more deadly than weapons and want to encourage weapon use a little more.

If your looking for a fun car game, which doesn’t take itself to seriously give Axles and Alloys II a try, for the price (free) I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Have Fun 🙂