To start with, we have played a fun team game called Pit Crew. You race against each other to get your car ready to race as quickly as possible, and as soon as you're ready you can start rolling the dice and move your car each time you roll a 6. It isn't great odds, but the pressure it puts on your opponents is fantastic. Once they finish their car, you check both cars for mistakes... the pressure from you rolling probably made them make a few of those right? Well every mistake they make moves your car along the track more. However how did you manage to finish so quickly and start rolling? Oh wait, you missed a bit here...
Too many mistakes will crash you catastrophically out, mistakes move your opponents, although taking the time to get things perfect can earn you bonuses... but those can all be undone by your opponent rolling a lot of 6's while you faff around. Anyway, great game, takes the real time stress of Captain Sonar but gives simpler tasks. Great fun.
I got a new game and we tried it out on Saturday, it's an old classic called Formula D. You get to race your tiny little car around the streets of Monaco by rolling dice. Shifting up a gear lets you roll a better, faster dice, however if you go through the corners too fast, you damage your car. So you have to drop down in gears to roll slower dice for the corners to make sure you stop enough times within them to not basically do a Senna. We had some fun with the game, I was pipped coming out of the last bend as Emma was right on my tail, and I rolled an 11 and she rolled a 15, meaning she was ahead and would therefore roll before me next round, and with the finish line less than her minimum roll away, victory was hers. Simon wasn't too far behind us. Jake and Leo were smoking ruins being dragged from the track.
It was after this game that Jake said "I see in the longer version of the game, the two lap race, you can pit to restore health... wouldn't it be great to combine this game with pit crew?"
What, oh what has he done?
I'm still mulling over whether to use pit crew rules to fix the cars and then you leave with the health you have or the result from a game of pit crew determines pit exit order... I mean, what if some cars are way ahead of others? A good pit may catch them up a bit but overtake seems unlikely? And what if someone chooses not to pit? Do they sit this bit out and wait? Or do I make someone do a round of pit crew against an egg timer just to get their health points back? They do it solo with everyone else watching, laughing at them, and then deciding if they feel up to the challenge of making a pit themselves?
I fear we have created a monster...
