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I mean, there is beer and pretzels games, this is O'Douls and stale bread.

The models are fantastic. Simply a joy to assemble and paint. I will collect them all and GW has my money on merit of good quality model kits alone.

The rules are stupendously simple and the games break down into a Rochambeau almost immediately.

We played two games and we immediately needed to make house rules.

Game Start
Game starts off as a cluster and you NEED to get your Warbikes killed to free up dice. You need 4 of 10 dice in Speedin' and if you don't allocate more off the bat, in your tight deployment, you must activate the most forward model, if you don't or it stalls out, you have a pile of vehicles NOT moving. Dumb. Just really dumb. Happened both games.
So turn one is a no-brainer allocate lots of dice to Speedin' and give more to the lead vehicles just to get things started. Fine. So not much decision making up front.

Shootin' and Fightin'
Shooting and melee is almost pointless. Sure the game is focused on moving and racing, but we'll get to that cluster in moment.
Nary do did we hit each other. 2-3 dice at most with maybe a reroll vs 3-4 armor [defense dice] = rarely damage done.
Most of our dice rolls were "nothing happened". ......wow, such engagement and excitement.

Moving
So both games, turn one had an initial laugh of two or three vehicles ramming into each other, because well, the table size isn't that big and the main vehicles are big enough and usually close enough that they reach other (if you don't have a cluster from a single stall out) that they ram each other in angled directions that don't allow you to "drift" away on the next turn.
So, what this resulted in was a pile of vehicles stuck. Just stuck. I had to allocate 5 dice to the Shockjump dragsta in the hopes of teleporting, but only got that once in 3 tries, so for 2 rounds at a time it was us staring at a pile of vehicles that did ZERO damage in shooting and ZERO damage in Fighting.

Ramming is about 80% of the damage in the game. After we made a house rule that you could "push ram" a vehicle out of the way if you started off in Base to Base contact and couldn't drift away without immediately hitting another vehicle.

There isn't enough abilities, actions, or space to create any form of coherent narrative or imagery. A game that is light in mechanics should be high in imagery or narrative which Speed Freeks does not do well at all.

Driver's Tests
There is almost no consequence to spinning out. There is no press your luck, especially since melee has no direction, and most vehicles either have no shooting or if they do have a weapon that can shoot and you're not allocating enough dice to care, because to do any damage in Shooting, you're allocating ALL dice to a single weapon to get enough rerolls to maybe get 1 damage card.
The only time spinning out mattered was once with the Dragsta and forward shooting arc not able to target anyone, but another 2 times actually spinning out got me facing the right way. This was AFTER some house rules to allow the vehicle to move.

Otherwise again, its just two vehicles facing each other, shooting and melee and NOT doing any damage.

Damage Cards
The one positive thing to the game. The only thing that adds imagery to the game. I feel like this is where the rules could expand out and make meaningful changes, modifiers to the game.


These rules feel super rushed, an after thought. We like the models enough and the really miss Gorkamorka enough to just house rule up a whole new game or just scale up the table for GorkaMOrka.

I read through the rules, put them down, shrugged, and said

"to the Car Wars rulebook!"

One spinning batman logo and a "doodledooleoodleoodleoop" later, I had printed out movement trays and made custom rules for the different buggies.

Yep, it certainly seems like it's best as a nice collection of models for use with Car Wars or Gaslands rules.

Magno wrote:
I mean, there is beer and pretzels games, this is O'Douls and stale bread.

The models are fantastic. Simply a joy to assemble and paint. I will collect them all and GW has my money on merit of good quality model kits alone.

The rules are stupendously simple and the games break down into a Rochambeau almost immediately.

We played two games and we immediately needed to make house rules.

Game Start
Game starts off as a cluster and you NEED to get your Warbikes killed to free up dice. You need 4 of 10 dice in Speedin' and if you don't allocate more off the bat, in your tight deployment, you must activate the most forward model, if you don't or it stalls out, you have a pile of vehicles NOT moving. Dumb. Just really dumb. Happened both games.
So turn one is a no-brainer allocate lots of dice to Speedin' and give more to the lead vehicles just to get things started. Fine. So not much decision making up front.

Shootin' and Fightin'
Shooting and melee is almost pointless. Sure the game is focused on moving and racing, but we'll get to that cluster in moment.
Nary do did we hit each other. 2-3 dice at most with maybe a reroll vs 3-4 armor [defense dice] = rarely damage done.
Most of our dice rolls were "nothing happened". ......wow, such engagement and excitement.

Moving
So both games, turn one had an initial laugh of two or three vehicles ramming into each other, because well, the table size isn't that big and the main vehicles are big enough and usually close enough that they reach other (if you don't have a cluster from a single stall out) that they ram each other in angled directions that don't allow you to "drift" away on the next turn.
So, what this resulted in was a pile of vehicles stuck. Just stuck. I had to allocate 5 dice to the Shockjump dragsta in the hopes of teleporting, but only got that once in 3 tries, so for 2 rounds at a time it was us staring at a pile of vehicles that did ZERO damage in shooting and ZERO damage in Fighting.

Ramming is about 80% of the damage in the game. After we made a house rule that you could "push ram" a vehicle out of the way if you started off in Base to Base contact and couldn't drift away without immediately hitting another vehicle.

There isn't enough abilities, actions, or space to create any form of coherent narrative or imagery. A game that is light in mechanics should be high in imagery or narrative which Speed Freeks does not do well at all.

Driver's Tests
There is almost no consequence to spinning out. There is no press your luck, especially since melee has no direction, and most vehicles either have no shooting or if they do have a weapon that can shoot and you're not allocating enough dice to care, because to do any damage in Shooting, you're allocating ALL dice to a single weapon to get enough rerolls to maybe get 1 damage card.
The only time spinning out mattered was once with the Dragsta and forward shooting arc not able to target anyone, but another 2 times actually spinning out got me facing the right way. This was AFTER some house rules to allow the vehicle to move.

Otherwise again, its just two vehicles facing each other, shooting and melee and NOT doing any damage.

Damage Cards
The one positive thing to the game. The only thing that adds imagery to the game. I feel like this is where the rules could expand out and make meaningful changes, modifiers to the game.


These rules feel super rushed, an after thought. We like the models enough and the really miss Gorkamorka enough to just house rule up a whole new game or just scale up the table for GorkaMOrka.

Thanks for the mini review. I confess I'm a little worried now since I have persuaded five friends to do a full campaign which will culminate in 'da big race'.

Which scenarios did you play? What house rules would you recommend? I'm wondering whether giving players more dice to distribute would combat the inertia you describe. Or perhaps each vehicle is automatically considered to have 1 speeding dice allocated to it and the remain 10 can be allocated as you choose.

We played two games and we immediately needed to make house rules.

That good huh?

In the videos I've watched, the most certainly are consequences to spinning out - even if you're not left facing an imminent automatic collision with a scenery element, you're left facing the wrong way, requiring special gubbinz to turn round, or being left unable to attack.

Did no-one want to reverse out of a collision in your games? That seemed fairly common in the ones I watched, with the "three-point turn" allowing rammed vehicles to back up and then circle their erstwhile opponent on some occasions.

Hopefully I'll get a game in this weekend to find out.

Having looked at the mechanics a little more I think the modest return on shooting/melee may be intentional. It is interesting that the only 'attack' that bypasses armour is a ram.

I would wager that in order to make Speed Freeks more about racing and moving around that they have intentionally made shooting and melee damage output inferior, otherwise they just end up with another battle game rather than what speed freeks should be about...crazy ork vehicles going too fast.

Two of the scenarios are a straight out race and one other has a strong moving element with the aim of destroying the weaker terrain pieces.

Replicant253 wrote:
Having looked at the mechanics a little more I think the modest return on shooting/melee may be intentional. It is interesting that the only 'attack' that bypasses armour is a ram.

I would wager that in order to make Speed Freeks more about racing and moving around that they have intentionally made shooting and melee damage output inferior, otherwise they just end up with another battle game rather than what speed freeks should be about...crazy ork vehicles going too fast.

Two of the scenarios are a straight out race and one other has a strong moving element with the aim of destroying the weaker terrain pieces.

I mean yes. That rule is straight out of Gorkamorka (melee and shooting attacks against vehicles and bikes have to hit, penetrate in a very similar manner to 7th ed and earlier 40k, and get a save.

Rams, swipes, and rakes deal automatic damage (to both vehicles involved, less to you if you have a ram or are a bigger vehicle hitting a smaller one)

Reversing out was not an option for one of us as we were up against he side of the map and that would have taken the vehicle off map. In other instances, reversing would be the ONLY Gubbinz because they rolled 1 Gubbinz on 2 dice.

Until you are down to 1 vehicle, allocation of speed dice is spread too thin. We house ruled that you ALWAYS get 1 Gubbin' because stalling out often led to a scrum being gummed up.

The game needs GorkaMorka's momentum transfer and moving of vehicles.

Lemme get this straight. Speed Freeks is subpar because the Orks all get into pile-ups, crash into each other and their fighting each other is largely irrelevant in terms of damage done.

I dunno man, sounds like that's exactly how Ork racing events would turn out!

Breaking news, GW writes a boring and shallow board game, film at 11

I feel that the game had potential , but GW didn’t pay enough attention to movement rules. RAW I think you can keep ramming something while facehugging it if you get the initiative. It says that if you touch a base of a model while moving your vehicle alongside the gubbinz path you immediately stop and ram. However there is no restriction on building path with gubbinz that says that you can't put it directly under enemy model. I don’t think it was intended at all.

A bit of houserules could make it better:
- If you have rammed or have been rammed you must move at least 1 complete gubbinz before performing another ram to show getting back up to speed.To clarify with that you can move in such a way that would normally be a ram if you don't have enough space to maneuver but you stop the second you come into contact with the other model and no damage is done to either.
- Have different armor values for sides and rear
- Add difficult terrain that adds penalty to driving tests when crossed until end of turn
-Scale damage of a ram depending on how many gubbinz was used to represent damage from crash. Like +1 dice for both for every gubbinz used
-Add something to imitate car inertia, like for every special gubbinz that you've used you gain 1 speed until your next turn movement phase or until you ram. For every speed token on vehicle you HAVE to use one of common gubbinz during movement phase even if engine has failed to start this turn(also it can’t be reverse gubbin). In addition both vehicles add +1 dice on head on ram for every speed token they have.

 JawRippa wrote:
I feel that the game had potential , but GW didn’t pay enough attention to movement rules. RAW I think you can keep ramming something while facehugging it if you get the initiative. It says that if you touch a base of a model while moving your vehicle alongside the gubbinz path you immediately stop and ram. However there is no restriction on building path with gubbinz that says that you can't put it directly under enemy model. I don’t think it was intended at all.

A bit of houserules could make it better:
- If you have rammed or have been rammed you must move at least 1 complete gubbinz before performing another ram to show getting back up to speed.To clarify with that you can move in such a way that would normally be a ram if you don't have enough space to maneuver but you stop the second you come into contact with the other model and no damage is done to either.
- Have different armor values for sides and rear
- Add difficult terrain that adds penalty to driving tests when crossed until end of turn
-Scale damage of a ram depending on how many gubbinz was used to represent damage from crash. Like +1 dice for both for every gubbinz used
-Add something to imitate car inertia, like for every special gubbinz that you've used you gain 1 speed until your next turn movement phase or until you ram. For every speed token on vehicle you HAVE to use one of common gubbinz during movement phase even if engine has failed to start this turn(also it can’t be reverse gubbin). In addition both vehicles add +1 dice on head on ram for every speed token they have.

Agree, there is a good game waiting to burst out, but it needed more fine tuning (excuse the pun).e
Some good ideas here and definitely think the area to focus on is the inertia of the vehicles. For a game with speed in the title you sometimes don't go very far and just end up in a grind of crashing into each other.

However from the few games ive had ramming already seems to be the way to do the most reliable damage so i'd be cautious about increasing its damage potential, as fitting as it might be from a fluff point of view. House rules I am considering:

Allowing vehicles to carry on moving through gaps that are bigger than half the width of their base. Resolve a ram as normal for anything contacted but then carry on moving with a +1 driver test at the end.

If a model starts its move in base contact with another vehicle and its subsequent move would cause a ram simply push the opposing vehicle out of the way. No ramming roll is made but does add +1 to driver test.

There is an issue with speed dice being scarce to begin with and meaning that each vehicle usually only has one dice, two at most. As the game progresses this changes dramatically due to less vehicles being on the board. I'm going to try your suggestion that a previous move involving a special or snazzy gubbinz adds a token to your sheet which allows an extra dice to be rolled for speedin in your next move. First turn may still be a little sedentiary!

I have an issue with the Dragsta being a little under powered compared to the others. Mainly that it's shokk engine very rarely goes off. Adding the speeding tokens may help this.

Lastlyy, i'd recommend the 'da race' rukk as the standard. I like how it focuses on the racing element.

Replicant253 wrote:

Agree, there is a good game waiting to burst out, but it needed more fine tuning (excuse the pun).e
Some good ideas here and definitely think the area to focus on is the inertia of the vehicles. For a game with speed in the title you sometimes don't go very far and just end up in a grind of crashing into each other.

However from the few games ive had ramming already seems to be the way to do the most reliable damage so i'd be cautious about increasing its damage potential, as fitting as it might be from a fluff point of view. House rules I am considering:

Allowing vehicles to carry on moving through gaps that are bigger than half the width of their base. Resolve a ram as normal for anything contacted but then carry on moving with a +1 driver test at the end.

If a model starts its move in base contact with another vehicle and its subsequent move would cause a ram simply push the opposing vehicle out of the way. No ramming roll is made but does add +1 to driver test.

There is an issue with speed dice being scarce to begin with and meaning that each vehicle usually only has one dice, two at most. As the game progresses this changes dramatically due to less vehicles being on the board. I'm going to try your suggestion that a previous move involving a special or snazzy gubbinz adds a token to your sheet which allows an extra dice to be rolled for speedin in your next move. First turn may still be a little sedentiary!

I have an issue with the Dragsta being a little under powered compared to the others. Mainly that it's shokk engine very rarely goes off. Adding the speeding tokens may help this.

Lastly, i'd recommend the 'da race' rukk as the standard. I like how it focuses on the racing element.

I do agree that I might have gone overboard with ram damage and gubbinz, probably it should be limited to +1 dice to both if ramming vehicle had 2 or more speed. You gain a speed token for using 2 common gubbinz, snazzy gubbin or speshul gubbin. I still think that head on collision should be deadly AF to both cars though, but it'd require giving bikers some limiting special rules, otherwise head-on ramming death torpedo bikers would be the norm, which seems cheesy.

Pushing cars aside seems like a great idea to avoid "traffic jams". However it could get wonky, without clear definition. Ram that results in enemy car being pushed aside as your vehicle keeps moving through the created gap is called "Light ram". You can do multiple rams in a single turn this way. Light ram can benefit from speed tokens like normal ram, however damage from light ram only happens when a lighting bolt is rolled.

If during ram, imaginary line from the middle front notch of your vehicle's base does not cross rammed enemy's base, then it counts as a light ram. During light ram you move enemy vehicle to the apropriate side and continue moving as normal, getting a -1 driving test at the end. In case If moving enemy model to the side is impossible due to terrain or other models, stop your vehicle at ram point but still resolve it as a light ram. Enemy model keeps it's original position, but has to resolve a light ram attack against whatever was preventing it's movement to the side. Each time you do any kind of a ram, you lose all speed tokens you previously had and ones you'd have accumulated for the next turn. In addition, you can't use reverse gubbin if you had at least 1 speed token at the start of your turn.

Speed dice problem could be solved by giving all vehicles 1 common gubbin that they can always use(so you always have access to reverse gubbin) and +1 mandatory common gubbin for every speed token they had (these gubbins do not contribute to speed tokens gain)

I've yet to try out the race, but it seems that there is not that much insentive to actually race and instead just start trying to destroy opponents from get go. If others decide to win by completing laps, they have to go through checkpoints constantly being fired at, while players who want to shoot other contestants can just ignore checkpoints and cut corners in order to keep shooting instead of actually racing... Which turns it into a boring deathmatch instead of actual race.

I like the concept of the light ram. Thanks for fleshing out. I agree that it needed a bit of definition but as a casual game just letting players move their models out of the way by the most logical way by pivoting (no forward or backward movement) should do the trick.

I'm torn whether tokens should give an extra gubbinz automatically or an extra dice. I'm leaning to the latter, simply because the card stock is limited in numbers and by rules already. It also helps out the Dragsta that way and makes its special rule more likely without having to alter the stat card itself.

I was referring to the 'normal' race Rukk, which is called 'Race to Da Horizon'. On the subject of the 'Da Big Race' you only use your wagon so they will at least be moving with no other competition for the speedin dice.

I agree it seems a lot of work, but I really think that with two or three core house rules this is a fun game and the effort is worth it.

Replicant253 wrote:
I like the concept of the light ram. Thanks for fleshing out. I agree that it needed a bit of definition but as a casual game just letting players move their models out of the way by the most logical way by pivoting (no forward or backward movement) should do the trick.

I'm torn whether tokens should give an extra gubbinz automatically or an extra dice. I'm leaning to the latter, simply because the card stock is limited in numbers and by rules already. It also helps out the Dragsta that way and makes its special rule more likely without having to alter the stat card itself.

I was referring to the 'normal' race Rukk, which is called 'Race to Da Horizon'. On the subject of the 'Da Big Race' you only use your wagon so they will at least be moving with no other competition for the speedin dice.

I agree it seems a lot of work, but I really think that with two or three core house rules this is a fun game and the effort is worth it.

I haven't considered that lightly rammed vehicle should pivot until you can continue your ride, instead I was thinking about it as just putting model to the side, with no pivoting. Your suggestion is more immersive.

Speed tokens providing extra Speed dice sounds solid. What irks me though, RAW, it'd make it so you can stop your vehicle instantly, killing the feeling of car inertia.
Let's say you've done a lot of show-off drifiting at high speed and because you have failed drive test, you wagon got pivoted right into the obstacle all while you've drived fast enough to have 3 speed tokens next turn, so next turn you will ram it at huge speed. In rule version where you mandatory have to use normal gubbinz for every speed token, collision is unavoidable - as it should be in described situation. In case of Speed Dice - you can make a choice of not using any gubbinz whatsoever and just instantly stop to avoid the crash. Also I think that it'd make usage of speshul gubbinz a bit too common.

Either it has to be 1 mandatory CG(common gubbin) for every ST(speed token) or 1 speed dice for every ST, but you HAVE to use at least a common gubbin while building your path, no matter the dice roll. As for dragsta, it could become more flavorful while fitting with these houserules with something like this: If you have 3 or more ST at the start of your movement phase, you may roll a speed dice. On any roll other than Fail, you can teleport while keeping your ST.

I'd make it that ST have to be used in the next turn or discarded (slamming the brakes on). They cannot be stored up. Agree that you cannot use the reverse gubbinz in a turn where you have used ST (either as a dice roll or CG).

From the core rules I thought you had to complete a move where you have rolled dice resulting in gubinz? You cannot opt to stay still.

Replicant253 wrote:
I'd make it that ST have to be used in the next turn or discarded (slamming the brakes on). They cannot be stored up. Agree that you cannot use the reverse gubbinz in a turn where you have used ST (either as a dice roll or CG).

From the core rules I thought you had to complete a move where you have rolled dice resulting in gubinz? You cannot opt to stay still.

I'll recheck the rules when I return home.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yeah, you were correct, you have to use up all gubbinz that you've rolled. So ST = additional speed dice sounds fair. I'd say that there should be limitation to how many speed dice you can drop per turn before rolling (vehicle brakes have their limits), maybe make it so you can't drop any if you've failed your driving test last turn.

So far I think we have some solid ideas for houserules, it just needs some polishing. Probably in a separate thread as this one's OP does not sound that inspiring lol

Thanks. If I am following correctly you will never have more than 2 ST to use, one from using a special gubinz and one from using a snazzy gubinz. I wouldn't award multiples for multiple same type gubinz use . So you either use them next turn or discard.

I also think that vehicles should, as standard, always receive one speedin dice on top of any allocated from the dice pool. With this rule, plus the ST, plus the light ram rule you will see a lot more dynamism in movement and orky craziness occurring.

I'm going to write these up at some point for our planned campaign. I'll try and share.