Forget the Arena - Let's Go to the Circus

The Circus Maximus, that is. Actually, the Hippodrome may be more appropriate, given that I've been on a Byzantine kick.

Time for a long winded intro. Scroll down if you want to see some ugly pictures.

Anyway, I've been dragging my feet about digging out my minis and experimenting with gladiator games. Instead (as a result of my Byzantine kick), my thoughts have turned to chariot races. I'm normally not a fan of racing games. I previously tried Machinas for post-apocalyptic Mad Max auto mayhem, but it did not really work for me (I wanted less racing and more combat). But Machinas had some interesting ideas, which inspired me to check out its (I believe) forerunner:

Charioteers was originally released by Two Hour Wargames but is now distributed by Rebel Miniatures. It is also available at Wargame Vault.

I'm not going to get into details about Charioteer. If you follow this blog, you'll know that I have a love/hate relationship with Two Hour Wargames (THW). I think their games have many excellent ideas, but I just hate the base resolution system that they use in all their games. Thus, when I buy their rules, I tend to strip out the ideas I like and bolt those onto a different resolution system. My chariot experiment is no different.

The innovative aspect of Charioteer is that chariots don't physically go around a track. Instead, each turn they maneuver in relation to each other. This allows play in a very small space, a key for my games. I adopted that part and then added my MicroBattle Resolution Test mechanic. That's basically all I had sorted out when I decided to play around. Let's see what happened.

The Race

I don't have chariots so I used some tokens.

Four teams, red, white, blue, and green, line up at the start.

I rolled a D6 each and then placed them in order from high to low. I assumed the chariots were equal, but I imagine including bonuses or penalties depending on quality.

Blue and Green ended up next to each other. They tried to bash each other. I used MicroBattle's Combat system to determine the results. Both bashes failed.

The chariots moved into the first turn. I decided to add a control test. Red failed, giving him a Disadvantage when jockeying for position.

Jockeying involves a Res Test. Red still succeeded and was able to maintain his lead. Green failed so he dropped back in the pack.

No change in the straightaway. Now on to the second turn. All the chariots lost control and dropped back. Blue, however, failed really badly. He had one last chance to regain control, but blew it and wrecked!

This leaves three chariots in the running. Red pulls ahead for an easy win!

Aside - I don't know why, but I seem to have the most luck with red. Even in my battles, my red armies win more often than not.

Analysis

Anyway, not a bad first start. I like the THW mechanic of moving the chariots relative to one another. But substituting my Res Test system sped up the process. I was able to resolve movement for a turn in one roll of four dice.

I shortened the track a bit - a straight, turn, straight, turn, and then home stretch. I only did one lap for this experiment, but for multi-lap races I will only do the home stretch on the final lap.

One issue I see is that it is hard to make up ground. I thought about it for a moment, but then realized that Charioteer has the answer - bonus dice. I can allocate bonus dice to the chariots to gain extra movement. For example:

• White finds himself behind Red. 
• Both pass their movement Res Test for the turn, so White does not catch up. 
• White decides to expend a bonus die. He passes, allowing him to move up. Now he is neck-to-neck with Red.

I'll try it out next time.

By the way, here is the turn sequence I used:

• Determine Positions (1st game turn) - place chariots in D6 roll order, high to low. Ties = adjacent
• Control Test (on turns) - If fail, roll to determine what happened:
• 4-6 = Disadvantaged in Jockey Test
• 2-3 = Fall back
• 1 = Possible wreck! Pass Res Test to Fall Back instead
• Jockey Test - Move up if successful
• Combat Phase - Adjacent chariots may whip or bash each other
• Make a Res Test to attack
• If successful, Target may make a Defend Test
• If Defend fails, . . . (haven't really worked that out yet)