Trashie Rampage – Our January 1GAM entry

Trashie Rampage is our first entry into the 1 Game a Month challenge. I expect you’re probably already looking for the link to click to play it? Sorry but not this time. Trashie Rampage is a turn-based open-plan ‘war’ game for 2 players (ideally one of them aged around 6).

I created the game one extremely wet and windy Saturday with my son. Like most 6 year old’s he is in to collecting all kinds of things. From Gormittis to Lego Minifigs to Moshi Monsters. Parents with similar age children will no doubt understand what I mean. Often sold in blind-packed bags you never quite know which character you’re going to get inside. Recently he had been saving his pocket money to buy Trashies. These are squidgy little creatures that live on a rubbish dump and have charming names like ‘Spew Getti’ and ‘Yucko Taco’.

Anyway the point is he’s got about 20 of these little things now. Which as any old-school Warhammer player will know is plenty enough for a skirmish battle on your carpet 🙂

Setting up Play

Grab whatever you’ve got to hand and makes sense. For this game we stole bits of toy food from his sisters shop set, used a trash truck he got for Christmas, some toy bins and a couple of chairs.

Arrange them into an interesting looking battle field. Ensure there are some ‘high’ places (that require the characters to jump up to) and open areas where multiple characters can fight.

Once you’ve built the level you need to place as many inhabitants into it as you’ve got. They are going to be captured by the rampaging trashies, so place them in strategic locations – such as hidden inside other objects, up on the chairs, inside a cup, etc.

Create the Characters

The premise of the game is that 4 trashies are going on a rampage in the city of Poo York. Each player controls 2 trashies who can work together as a team or go solo. Create a character card for each of the 4 characters giving them a name, picture and special move. Here are the 4 character cards we created:

Special Powers

Each character has a special move. This can be used in a fight with an inhabitant of the city but is limited in the number of times it may be used. Create the special move yourself and write it onto the characters card.

Next roll two six sided dice (2 x 1d6). If you get two numbers the same then re-roll until they are different. Take the smaller of the two numbers away from the larger number. This gives you the total number of times you can use the special power during the game. For example if you roll a 5 and a 2 the character would be allowed to use its special power 3 times. Draw checkboxes onto the character cards equal to the number of times they can use their special power. You’ll tick them off as you use them during play. Repeat the process for all 4 characters.

Here are the special powers my son created:

Character: Yucko Taco
Special Power: Magic lasso and boomerang hat

Character: Pesty Parasite
Special Power: Shoots out his eyeballs and turns you into stone

Character: Poop Monster
Special Power: Appears from nowhere and turns into a tornado made of poo (yes, really)

Character: Spew Getti
Special Power: Shoots spaghetti from his mouth and grabs

Start the Game

A note about dice colours: We used four different coloured 1d6 during play. Green represented how many action points you had. Red was used when attacking for attack points. Blue was used for defending an attack and Yellow was how much gold you received after a successful battle. You can of course play the game with just a single 1d6 but the colours seemed to help my son remember what to do next.

Each player places their 2 characters on opposite sides of the level facing each other. The players two characters should start standing next to each other.

The game is turn based. The youngest player goes first 🙂

A Game Turn

Roll the Action die. This is how many actions you can perform this turn. An action is either “moving” or “attacking”.

Moving

It costs 1 action point to move. You can move either of your 2 characters. When moving across flat terrain a character can only move the same distance as the length of your hand. Adults with bigger hands should compensate in order to play fairly! But I found it easier for my son to understand to use his hand for measurement. If you have a short slide rule available you could use that instead.

A character can move a hands-length in any direction. If they encounter an obstacle that is taller than them they can choose to jump up onto it at the cost of another action point. Jumping down from an obstacle also uses an action point.

Allow for free-form gameplay when it comes to movement. In the photo above my son has decided to use an improvised ‘spring board’ to propel his character across the room. Compromise and bend the rules a little as you go – such a powerful springboard move would surely use up all of your available action points for example, meaning he had to then weigh up the cost of springing vs. regular movement.

Attacking

Attacking costs 1 action point. You can only attack a character immediately next to you. You can attack either the citizens of the city or characters belonging to the other player.

To launch an attack roll 1d6 to represent your attacking strength. The other player should roll 1d6 on behalf of the citizen (or their own character), this is the defence value. If the attack value is equal to or higher than the defence, they win. If they lose nothing happens and the action point is lost.

If they win an attack against a citizen the citizen is removed from play and placed on the victorious characters card. That citizen is now captured.

Rolling for Gold

After successfully capturing a citizen roll 1d6. This is the number of gold you receive from capturing them. Make a note of it on a running tally of gold.

Attacking other Characters

If a players character is next to another players character they can choose to attack them. If they win the attack they can take one citizen that has been captured by that character and move them to their own card. If they haven’t captured any citizens yet (or have none left) then nothing happens other than gloating about the victory.

Using Special Powers

Instead of rolling you can choose to use a special power instead. Against a citizen this always wins. You instantly capture them. Once you’ve used a special power you should tick it off your character card. When no checkboxes are left you cannot use that power any more.

If you use a special power against another players character they have 2 choices:

1) They can either have a roll off against you in the same way as if attacked normally. If they defend successfully your power is wasted, if they lose you take one of their citizens.

2) They can use one of their own special powers to counter yours. Neither of you win or loose, but you both use up one special power from your card. This method protects your citizens, at the cost of a special power.

Winning the Game

The game ends when there are no more citizens left in the city.

When that happens total up all of the gold that has been won by each player. The one with the most gold is the richest player and wins that title.

Then add the total number of citizens captured by each player. The one with the most captured citizens is the most powerful player, winning that title.

It’s entirely possible for one player to win both titles (and gloat endlessly about it I may add)

Here is a picture of the final showdown from our game. In this Spew Getti is fighting a citizen (called Panicked Pretzel).

and our final score:

Needless to say my son won the battle. He won the gold total fairly and squarely with 27 gold vs. my 20. And due to some devious stealing of my captured citizens he ended with 8 captured citizens to my 6.

Posted on February 1st 2013 at 2:52 am by Rich.
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