1) respawn on destruction either where you started or ended your maneuver, then respawn with an ion token, no need for checkpoints then. Just need to work out which one would be better

3) I think 4 players would be OK. Normally we get up to 12 attendees so would be 3 tables (I'll set up a 4th anyway)

4/5) I did see your alternative decks idea and was toying with it. Can't get the cards printed nicely in time for any potential game.

6) I had forgotten about the striker and cloaking device. They shall be banned

7)the different classes would work I'd need to find a way of making sure I can get 3 rounds in 3 1/2 hours, the z95 idea looks fun, might make it a smaller course for that and have a grand prix track for some larged based antics!

8/9) no shooting for first 2 turns and designated starting gates will be good.

If it takes off I may get a vinyl/pvc mat or two made up with various track configurations.

I'd like to see how it works with the alternate death where you waste a turn being ionized. I could also see that you just start and don't move and get no actions that turn. That happens in Mario Kart and you can't be hit or damaged. So...you are being redeployed, but don't do a thing for a turn. That might also be a good idea.

Decks aren't that hard if you have access to a decent printer. Use one of those online Magic card makers. Then, print off. I think office supply stores do .65 cent prints. Glue to a cereal box and cut out. I need to make more, to be honest.

I think you only need to ban the Tie Striker with Ailerons (sp?) and Engine Upgrade. The Tie Striker is fine on it's own (and tough).

When J-bot is done tweaking different tracks, we are in touch with a mat making company that might start selling them! The J-bot series!

I have a crappy black and white laser jet lol.

I may get access to a colour one. I'll dig out the cards again and print something out.

Would you recommend an outright ban on engine upgrade? Or just the aileron/engine combo

I'll tweak the rules tomorrow and see how they play

I'd say just the aileron/engine combo. Engine Upgrade is pretty powerful, but I don't think it needs to be banned, especially if you use the different deck. That really helps with break away games where one person gets too far ahead or some get too far behind.

Super cheap to print at print shop. Then glue onto cardboard, like a breakfast cereal box or a manila folder.

Oh! I almost forgot something important! The cards should only affect people in front of you, just like Mario Kart. There should be no reason to punish the people behind you. That only makes the game worse.

1) I'd say just the aileron/engine combo. Engine Upgrade is pretty powerful, but I don't think it needs to be banned, especially if you use the different deck. That really helps with break away games where one person gets too far ahead or some get too far behind.

2) There should be no reason to punish the people behind you. That only makes the game worse.

1) Engine Upgrade/Boost/Barrel Roll/Ailerons by themselves aren't a problem, IMO. After our test game I think the real problem is simply being able to do two in the same turn. So really it's PtL that needs to be banned, and maybe one or two other things.

2) True. Small exceptions for Banana Peels and Green Shells.

8. Turrets shoot at everybody in range, not just the frontrunner. Turrets roll 4 attack die + range bonus. Ships roll defence dice and can use tokens. Turrets shoot first in the combat phase.

ALMOST FORGOT THIS ONE!!!!!

Remove the range bonus for the Turrets. It's nasty enough with 4 dice. Just try it with 4 dice and it will be ugly enough, I think. With range bonus is really nasty.

I generated a set of MK cards using Strange Eons and artwork posted earlier in this thread.

I'm going to work on a design for the back of the cards and a front side indicator to differentiate between the decks, but for now, these are very usable.

Edit (1/14/2017): I added Mystery Crate tokens to the 1st Place deck sheet.

Edit (1/22/2017): I've taken a simplistic route to differentiate between the three decks. I'm using the EPT symbol to denote the 1st Place deck (medal for the winner), the Team icon for the Middle Deck (a crowd of folks) and the Crew icon for the Last Place Deck (you are all alone). The deck sheet files in the google drive link above have been updated. Please note, although sheet for the back of the cards are provided, the pages are not setup for double sided printing. I'm still trying to figure out if Strange Eons will do this for me.

Edit (1/26/17): A few changes (and a typo) have been incorporated into the decks I have made. For the modified cards, I built an Errata Deck so for those that have already built a deck, you need only print the cards needed. The link above should still work.

I generated a set of MK cards using Strange Eons and artwork posted earlier in this thread. For those that would like to print cards to play, you may find the three deck sheets here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6btdl28vRrrSDFneFNOYXRrVFE

I'm going to work on a design for the back of the cards and a front side indicator to differentiate between the decks, but for now, these are very usable.

Excellent, just what i wanted Biff. Thank you my good man!!

i think i have settled on a Final rule set that should keep the game flowing in a tournament setting, i'll have a play through in the next week or so to fine tune them though.

Thanks for all your help Heychadwick with the suggestions. I've dropped the turrets to 4 dice and added an extra die to the defender (halfway house for the epic ship weapons) not sure how evil they'll be but still.

I've also looked at the damage rolls and am looking at assigning an ion token on a Crit with 1 face down damage card to simulate being spun by the shot, again i'll need to see how this plays out.

I'm planning my next track that I think will be a blast. It's gonna be a race through Kuat Ship yards. I'm planning on using large and epic ships as obstacles and turrets. I'll post the results.

Love this whole idea. Can't wait to get my students playing again this week.

So i think these tweaks to the rules will work, still needs a bit of play testing

Mario Kart Rules

1. Should your ship's base extend outside of the track it will re-spawn at the location it began its previous manoeuvre with 1 ion token at the beginning of the next planning phase

2. When destroyed you Re-spawn at place of death. Re-spawning returns your ship to play with full shields, 1 ion token and no damage, but does not return spent ordinance. Spent ordinance is only regenerated after each lap.

3. Bumping. Each bumped ship roll’s a red dice and suffers any rolled damage. Standard bumping rules apply (no actions or shooting the ship you are touching)
If during a bump one of the ships is destroyed the surviving ship can take their action if able. I.e, I move, bump another ship and then they are destroyed I then get my action since the ship is no longer in my way.

4. Mystery crates are placed around the map

1. Crates are refreshed at the start of the activation phase. When a ships movement or base overlaps a crate they pick up a card from the pile. If a crate regens under a player they still get a new card.

2. If you already have a card you must discard it and pick up a new card (this prevents people from sitting on the good cards).

3. Once all cards have been picked up, shuffle the discard pile and use again.

4. Card actions/attacks when used take effect immediately. For example the first ship to move uses the lighting card; all ships take the ion damage at that time.

5. Cards affect only the people in front of you (with the exception of Green Shells and dropping items)

5. Treat all walls using the Overlapping ship rules. I.e. if you bump the wall, move the ship back along its manoeuvre template.

6. Turrets shoot at everybody in range, not just the frontrunner. Turrets roll 4 attack die. Ships roll one more defence dice and can use tokens. Turrets shoot first in the combat phase.

7. Shooting across the track edge adds 1 green dice for the defender.

8. Deployment will take place behind the marked start line and will start with the ships with the fewest number of points, ties will be broken by pilot skill with lower PS placing first, further ties will be determined by dice roll.

9. Activation and combat phases use standard pilot skill rules.

10. The winner is the first ship whose base fully passes the finish line after the predetermined number or laps , or the ship that has travelled the furthest past the line in the event of a Tie. If no laps have been completed when time is called, the current round is played out and the furthest ship forward is the winner.

11. During the Combat phase, damage cards are dealt face down. Critical hits result in one face down damage card and an Ion token. Once your ship is destroyed follow the re-spawning rules above.

I've put these to me regular TO to see if we can get an evening tournament sorted with 3/4 maps running 4/5 people per map. hopefully we can squeeze it in somewhere.

Anybody think of reversing the move/shoot order by PS?

We did it one game and it felt like the Aces were better ACES in this format when reversed.

We took out the flipped order, both moving and shooting in descending PS order.

We also took out all unique cards, and had the winners in absolute order they crossed the finish line, which put an interesting new emphasis on higher PS generics.

I thinking having the "young guns" shoot first is good too. You don't want absolute emphasis on highest PS available. Firing first before everyone else who didn't PS bid is a strategy by itself. Also, if lowest PS shoots first they are firing against a target with tokens so it's already "punished" a little.

So i think these tweaks to the rules will work, still needs a bit of play testing

Mario Kart Rules

1. Should your ship's base extend outside of the track it will re-spawn at the location it began its previous manoeuvre with 1 ion token at the beginning of the next planning phase

2. When destroyed you Re-spawn at place of death. Re-spawning returns your ship to play with full shields, 1 ion token and no damage, but does not return spent ordinance. Spent ordinance is only regenerated after each lap.

3. Bumping. Each bumped ship roll’s a red dice and suffers any rolled damage. Standard bumping rules apply (no actions or shooting the ship you are touching)

If during a bump one of the ships is destroyed the surviving ship can take their action if able. I.e, I move, bump another ship and then they are destroyed I then get my action since the ship is no longer in my way.

4. Mystery crates are placed around the map

1. Crates are refreshed at the start of the activation phase. When a ships movement or base overlaps a crate they pick up a card from the pile. If a crate regens under a player they still get a new card.

2. If you already have a card you must discard it and pick up a new card (this prevents people from sitting on the good cards).

3. Once all cards have been picked up, shuffle the discard pile and use again.

4. Card actions/attacks when used take effect immediately. For example the first ship to move uses the lighting card; all ships take the ion damage at that time.

5. Cards affect only the people in front of you (with the exception of Green Shells and dropping items)

5. Treat all walls using the Overlapping ship rules. I.e. if you bump the wall, move the ship back along its manoeuvre template.

6. Turrets shoot at everybody in range, not just the frontrunner. Turrets roll 4 attack die. Ships roll one more defence dice and can use tokens. Turrets shoot first in the combat phase.

7. Shooting across the track edge adds 1 green dice for the defender.

8. Deployment will take place behind the marked start line and will start with the ships with the fewest number of points, ties will be broken by pilot skill with lower PS placing first, further ties will be determined by dice roll.

9. Activation and combat phases use standard pilot skill rules.

10. The winner is the first ship whose base fully passes the finish line after the predetermined number or laps , or the ship that has travelled the furthest past the line in the event of a Tie. If no laps have been completed when time is called, the current round is played out and the furthest ship forward is the winner.

11. During the Combat phase, damage cards are dealt face down. Critical hits result in one face down damage card and an Ion token. Once your ship is destroyed follow the re-spawning rules above.

I've put these to me regular TO to see if we can get an evening tournament sorted with 3/4 maps running 4/5 people per map. hopefully we can squeeze it in somewhere.

Might be worth taking another look at the item cards. Many of them state "deal face up damage card", and the rule tweak makes that impossible. Maybe just reword to "deal one critical damage"?

How is that respawn mechanic working out? I kind of liked the checkpoint system as a balance to people getting all the **** way out in front and staying there. Wondering how well the respawn-in-place works out.

I haven't had chance to play test it yet! Will hopefully get a chance tomorrow with my eldest (my local TO is playtesting as well to see if it'll work as a Friday night tournament)

I've updated my deck sheets to differentiate between the three decks.

Played another couple test laps last night. It was awesome! A couple well-timed items once again stole the show: the perfect execution of a Golden Mushroom zooming around a corner to catch up a thread the needle between a "rock and a hard place (wall)"; a Star allowing a ship to blast through some Cluster Mines and escape a Turret and a pursuing B-Wing. A few rules and cards have been updated. See below.

Mario Kart Rules

Obiwanka, I've got a few questions/comments:

2) I think you should ban Lone Wolf as an option. Also, why did you change it from 24 pts to 25? I'm just curious. Another question....Daredevil can still be taken if you have Boost, right?

5) No actions for first 2 turns? Not even a Boost or something? I'm curious as to why that. How has it made a difference?

6) We have been wanting to punish people for hitting the walls. Just rolling a damage die seems light. We had them getting Stressed and Ionized, but that was too much. We are changing it to Stressed and 1 auto damage.

12) How are the turrets working out with those rules? We have been doing 4 dice with no modifiers of any type. No range bonus or anything. It's worked out well.

==============

J-bot and I ran a game last night and really learned some things. We are trying to play test as we are going to be running one of these events at GenCon. Time is going to be a serious issue for us as many of these games end up taking a lot of time. So, we are trying to tweak things so that they run smoothly. We are going to an Open event that has 24 pts to spend and a Stock event that uses a stock ship with 5 pts to spend on anything. You can get multiple EPT's, but no zero point ones. There will be a ban list for some items.

We made a different course. It was a lot crazier than the square one that we have been using. Some people said it didn't look interesting enough. I found I preferred the square course. The simplicity is not necessarily boring. The problem we found was that it took too long to get anywhere. We went for over 2 hours but only made it half way through the course. We also had 5 racers when we really think it needs to be 4. One more just makes it deadly.

The idea of Stock Racing is to take an average ship and have it be based on the pilot's skills and abilities. We have been play testing with a Z-95 and really liking it. The 2/2/2/2 stats are good as it can't be one shot, but isn't too deadly, either. The dial is the most mediocre dial there is. Some play testers suggested we try T-65's and we did last night. It was really bad. Everyone died all the time. The extra firepower was too much. We talked about also trying out Scyks or Tie Fighters as options. Personally, I lean towards Scyks as they are Scum and more likely to be in a racing format than a military vehicle. I think we give them an illicit slot, as well. The Scyk has the 1 hard turn which is HUGE on the crazy map we tried last night. I think we might do different Stock ships based on the maps.

We played with the new deck (that Biff used above) for the first time. I really liked them and it really prevented someone from getting too far ahead. J-bot put more boxes out than normal this time, too. I think it was too many. There were several times I would get out ahead and get royally screwed by the cards. I think they were a little too effective and too readily available. I think they should be rarer than they were listed.

As I stated above, hitting the walls was a little too brutal. We want it to be a bad thing, but the current rules we were using gives an Ion and a Stress. With the hard turns of the crazy map, we often found someone would be out of the race for 3 turns as they hit a wall, reoriented, hit the next wall, reoriented again, and then finally were able to move after their next Ionization was gone. We are changing it to being Stressed and one auto damage (can hit shields). I think this will work out better. If we find the damage is too much, then we will change it to rolling a die, but I think that might be too light.

Oh....I have more to add and even photos, but work calls.

34 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

Obiwanka, I've got a few questions/comments:

2) I think you should ban Lone Wolf as an option. Also, why did you change it from 24 pts to 25? I'm just curious. Another question....Daredevil can still be taken if you have Boost, right?

5) No actions for first 2 turns? Not even a Boost or something? I'm curious as to why that. How has it made a difference?

6) We have been wanting to punish people for hitting the walls. Just rolling a damage die seems light. We had them getting Stressed and Ionized, but that was too much. We are changing it to Stressed and 1 auto damage.

12) How are the turrets working out with those rules? We have been doing 4 dice with no modifiers of any type. No range bonus or anything. It's worked out well.

Thanks for the questions.

2) I actually forgot Lone Wolf, it is banned. 25 felt less arbitrary to me (quarter of a normal list) and I'm planning on trying out 5-point increments at some point (30 points for sure, maybe 20 and 35). Daredevil is probably fine if you have Boost, I'll change it to "no Daredevil unless you have Boost".

5) No actions, not even boost, can help prevent someone getting a lead too early. We've also found it lets the first couple turns move very quickly and build excitement for the third turn, when the shooting begins.

6) There has been far more than enough carnage in our games without the walls helping people along with more than a die roll.

12) Turrets are at a great place now. Lots of shots fired with a good mix of 2 hits and 3. Previously they were too strong, now they're still mean, but not completely brutal, and they are also consistent and not swingy.

One more note: I'm debating whether or not to double the item decks. This will let a second Blue Shell come into play at some point, and allow me to tweak the balance by, say, adding more shells and bananas to the 1st deck, lowering the % of speed-boosting items.

Are you using Biff's deck for the types and amounts? We used it last night for the first time and liked it. Only 1 Shroom in leader deck.

For the sake of speeding things up, we might add more checkpoints to the maps. Lots of dying.

When people can't do actions early on, doesn't that just mean on Turn 3 you guys are all clumped and blast the living heck out of each other? We did the actions so that people can Boost or BR to get ahead a little. It spaced things out, but not too much. Otherwise, there is a lot of R1 shooting on Round 3.

My decks are in the spoiler (reveal hidden contents) tags. We've always used 3 checkpoints plus the start/finish line. Still plenty of dying and respawning, but not so far back that you can't catch up and/or get some shots. The clumping varies, some people gun it, some people slow roll. We ended up so clumped half of us weren't able to shoot each other, but that also meant the guys that did die weren't a full checkpoint behind the leader upon respawning (close, but it would be worse with early boost/barrel rolls). IMO, if everyone can boost/barrel roll right from turn 1, there's less incentive to stay behind and get shots instead of everyone just running flat out.

The Z-95 with boost has won more races than any other ship when I run Mario Kart. The no double reposition rule is interesting but perhaps just make it so you can't advance on BR instead of NO action + BR.

Also, did anyone test out reversing Shooting and Move according to PS (High PS moves first, Low PS shoots first). The two games we did it allowed the Aces to ACE and made it easier to line up shots for the lower PS to snipe them.

I have 3 maps and they all play differently. The figure 8 leads to less shots on leader and makes blow outs bigger. The twisty map is the fairest and leads to more interesting game play but Duchess is nuts on that map (with or without the 25pt cap). We have one "double" map and it's probably the best of the three balanced with ion, flechette and regular turrets. Keeps things spicy!

For wall hits it's auto damage and during the end/clean up phase if you're touching a wall you get to boost backwards or BR off it. Keeps folks in the race and gives options.

50 minutes ago, Rakky Wistol said:

1) The no double reposition rule is interesting but perhaps just make it so you can't advance on BR instead of NO action + BR.

2) ion, flechette and regular turrets. Keeps things spicy!

3) For wall hits it's auto damage and during the end/clean up phase if you're touching a wall you get to boost backwards or BR off it. Keeps folks in the race and gives options.

1) Was thinking "no passing except with a maneuver" could be interesting, but it would have to be oddly specific to prevent using Mushrooms to pass people. I think "no more than one reposition" is sufficiently simple and gets the job done.

2) Now that sounds neat. Flechettes would be able to pile on a second stress, unlike Flechette Cannons, right?

3) I thought about the reverse or barrel roll as well. Parallel to the wall has worked out well enough that I'm not inclined to change it unless something drastic happens (though I'm not opposed to testing the others, either). We did have on player use a wall to turn himself parallel so he could squeeze by a Proximity Mine, that was pretty funny.

I think the stress pile is important and makes MK more interesting. I've pretty much hated that restriction on the flechette cannon from the beginning. Without it, that card would see play. Ion is also great at reigning in the leader.

I'm not sure about no actions first 2 turns... We do no shots first turn but after that it's game on.

Other low point ships that are fun: TAP with Proton torp, Named Ties or FOs, Awings...