Playing Dark Future

I finally got around to trying DF out today with my wife (and kudos to her for playing one of my games!). I used the introductory/tournament rules that came with the game (not to be confused with those in white Dwarf 110). Basically the game involves rolling start race between 2 renegades both armed with a hood mounted machine gun and 6 mine counters - two are real and 4 are dummies. The race is the first to complete 8 road sections.

Well it was fun - and brutally quick. So much so we played a second game. I ended up winning both under quite different circumstances. In game one I started quicker and caused most of the damage that destroyed my wife's car by laying mines whist she tailed me firing machine guns at me most of the time (when she could of course). I didn't have many points left at the end of that game but the two real mines I laid did their work due to high damage rolls.

In game two it was the opposite after two early sideswipes (my wife copped damage each time whilst I copped it in one - i.e. I won one of the sideswipes and the other was a draw). My wife then put the foot down and I trailed after firing my MGs when possible. Again lucky damage rolls did the trick for me before my wife could lay any mines.

Anyway here are a few pics of the first game:

Sideswipe - I came off second best on this one

A mine does some serious damage

Ram!

The second mine destroys my wife's car

And a pic from the second game just before my wife's car exploded in a hail of MG bullets:

So what did I think of the experience? It was fun. I can see problems with the movement rules simply due to the "I go, you go" type of movement. It probably works OK when one car is going quicker than the other but it was a bit random when one had to roll for who would move first. And that can be important for shunts and sideswipes - and it makes a difference for range too. I did like the rule which limits you to a single action each phase though. And the weapon damage was realistic - after all even an armoured car would struggle to last long in such fights and each game turn represents only a few seconds of real time. As such one cannot do more than one action in each phase of each game turn. Makes perfect sense to me and it appeared to work well.

So what next? I'm going to have a look at the tournament rules in WD 110 and see if I can arrange a game with my wife and some mates of mine. Whether I graduate from that to the full on rules will be seen - guess it depends on whether they like the game or not...