Mayday
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In high school, I had a copy of this board game designed by Marc Miller of Game Designer's Workshop (GDW), and I've
gotten back into it lately (in a big way). It is a space
combat game where the ships move in a fairly realistic 2D approximation of Newtonian physics.
Christer Karlsson has created a great "Gamebox"
file for Mayday so it can be played via email using Cyberboard.
Here is Christer's page with lots of other Gamebox files.
Here is some more info about Mayday. The original rules, map and counters
are on the Classic Traveller CDROM from Far Future Enterprises
(and here).
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Modified Cyberboard Gamebox and Scenario Files
I wanted to make some changes to Mayday's counters and board, so I modified to Christer's Gamebox file.
Mayday uses a vector movement system in which there are three counters on
the board for every moving object, representing its past, present, and future
positions. When you start firing missiles, there are a LOT of counters on the board,
and usually several hexes contain more than one counter.
To the Gamebox file, I added a game board with larger hexes so you can easily see multiple counters in the same hex.
I made a lot of new counters by copying and modifying Christer's images of the original Mayday counters, adding blue
and orange to the original green and red starship/missile counters (to allow for up to four players) as well
as "E" and "F" lettered starships.
I made some of the round "small craft" counters into mini versions of
the starships (to make cooler representations of the small fighters described in the instructions), and made three-color
past-present-future counters for the large ships. I was thinking it would be cool to have tankers moving in
orbit with which you would need to rendezvous to refuel your fighters.
Here are my modified Gamebox and Scenario files: MaydayMWS.zip (134K)
Hex Boards
For playing the game in person with a real board, I created these board sections with
HexDraw.
1.5 Inch Grid
If you print this image file out
so it is exactly 10.5" tall, then trim off the white margin with scissors, you will get a board section with 1.5"
hexagons that can be placed or taped next to other identical sections to make a large gaming area.
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2 Inch Grid
If you print this image out so it is 10" tall, you will get a board section with 2"
hexagons.
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Ship's Status Displays (SSDs)
Here are some "Ship's Status Display" pages for keeping track of damage, fuel use, etc for the ship types used in Mayday.
You can put them in plastic page protectors and write on them with dry-erase markers.
(342K zip)
Counter Sheet
Here are my modified Mayday counters for Cyberboard. If you print the image out on a sheet
of full-page 8.5 X 11" peel-off label paper so it is exactly 10 inches wide, you will get a grid of 1/2" square labels.
I recommend spraying it with this stuff,
then cutting out the labels and sticking them onto blank white 1/2" game counters. I used
these from Noble Knight Games.
Sand Cloud Counters
In Mayday, you can cast sand to create a cloud around your ship to impede laser fire.
If you print this image out on overhead transparency plastic so it is 7.5" wide, you will get a grid of 1/2" counters
you can cut out and put on top of ship counters to indicate that they are in a sand cloud.
Mayday In
3
D
Here is a way to make Mayday into a 3D game using LEGO blocks. I stole the idea from Darell Phillips, who
uses Duplo blocks to represent the altitude of miniatures for the game
Attack Vector: Tactical.
See here. Cool idea!
What I did was get some gray LEGO 2x2 tiles and stick on my Mayday counter labels:
You can attach these to stacks of regular black 2x2 LEGO blocks to show altitude.
Here, the red ship is in a slow climb and the blue ship is in a steep dive.
Incorporating the third dimension into the game is very straightforward. When finding
the distance between two counters, you just add the difference in the number of height
blocks to the distance in hexes on the regular 2D hex map.
For example, in the above image, the red and blue present position counters (white-on-red and white-on-blue respectively)
are two hexes apart on the hex grid. But the blue counter is only 2 blocks above the board while the red counter is 4 blocks
above. They differ in height by 2 blocks, so the total distance between the counters is 2 + 2 = 4.
It's easy to calculate, and the 3D makes it feel a little more like a real space battle.
Here, the red ship was diving but is now leveling off. It has just launched a missile at the blue ship, which is climbing.
My friends and I have played several 3- and 4-player games with this system and it's pretty cool. An additional benefit of using the
LEGO blocks is that the players who have been killed off can build stuff out of LEGOs while they're waiting for the rest
to finish the game.
Rules
We've tweaked the rules a bit to make the game more playable.
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We always use the "simplified computer rule" in
which the computer programs are all running and do not have to be loaded and unloaded.
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The way a "homing" missile is described in the instructions, it always moves toward the PRESENT position counter
of the target. This means you can't hit a moving target unless it is flying straight at you. So we have the
missile move to the target's future position counter.
Attention Gamers:
I am always interested in hearing from people who want to play Mayday (the 2D version) via email using Cyberboard. Write me
a note.
