First Play: Midnight Death Race

Hello racing fans!

I was perusing the new offerings on Wargame Vault when I came across the title Midnight Death Race. It was free and the cover art grabbed my attention, so I ordered and downloaded the game. The description says it's a minimalist game and there really isn't a whole lot for rules; only 11 pages and many of those are mostly art. It's a game for putting your Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars onto your game table, or the floor, and racing them in a no holds barred death match. The game is described as gritty, dangerous street racing set in the '70s and recommends using cars that fit that aesthetic.

Each player choses a car, takes a d6 to keep track of what gear they're in, and fills out a character sheet. Depending on the type of car the player chooses to use, they have a certain number of points with which to buy driver perks and/or car upgrades (write these on the character sheet). Perks are driver attributes that give some kind of bonus during the game (for example, the perk Anxious lets the driver go first at the beginning of the race). Upgrades add defensive or offensive bonuses to vehicles, like a thrust-jumper, caltrops, or flamethrower. A player can also choose to add a flaw, limiting their driver in some way in exchange for more points to spend.

The game uses the Gaslands movement templates (you'll need two sets, I downloaded a free PDF from the Osprey Publishing website). On their turn, the player chooses a number of templates equal to their current gear, but the caveat is that the templates must be used in the order they are picked up and if you touch it, you take it. Lay them out and move the car along them to the end (reminds me of Wings of War/Glory). Collect hazard tokens for being involved in crashes or for pushing the limits of your car. Any turn a player begins with a hazard token requires a driving check to see if they complete their path as planned or lose control.

Gaslands looks so cool. However, from what I've seen of Gaslands (mostly people playing on YouTube), it has never really grabbed me. I think there's two main reasons I don't pull the trigger on that game that Midnight Death Race solves: 

1. Simplicity - it seems each player controls a team of vehicles in Gaslands and it's a bit daunting to me to want to modify six or so die-cast cars to prep for a two-player game (I've worked on three, only one is finished). MDR gives you one vehicle and there's not much for an arsenal available, so it feels okay to field an unmodified vehicle (none of the cars in the book art have guns and things sticking out of them). 

2. Physicality -  Gaslands seemed formulaic in its chaos. For example, if a player's car spins out, it seemed like there's a formula to it and they can sometimes plan it to gain an advantage. The chaos in MDR seems more authentic with the addition of actually letting the cars contact each other in a crash or a player being forced to manipulate their car in a way that they truly have limited control. For example, if a player fails a driving check and spins out, they flick their car at one of its quarters to actually spin it and then play it from where it comes to rest.

Anyway, after making templates from the downloaded PDFs, all I had to do was make a track on the kitchen table with some Jenga blocks and other terrain pieces and get the kids to choose their cars. In order to not overwhelm us, I told everyone to only choose from the perks list. We were playing within 15 minutes. We had a blast and a surprising come-from-behind win after the leader took a hard turn when he needed a hairpin and crashed into a wall.

Top center: The Jaguar that spent most of the game in the lead comes within millimeters of the Willy's Jeepster that found a chance to overtake it. Left side: You can see the polka-dot top of Toad from Mario Kart hugging the green divider wall. Toad was the underdog success story.

All the kids liked it and had a bunch of laughs. I'll definitely be introducing this game to my brothers next chance I get.

One note I should mention: when I ordered the rules from Wargame Vault, they were free, but it must have been a temporary promotion or something, because I looked again a week later and they were $5 (USD). Still not a bad price, though.

Note 2: The rules did not lay out how to decide turn order, so I chose order based on cars positions after every round, so leader first, then 2nd place car, and so on. Made sense to me and seemed to work well.