The following article, “The End” is Part 4 in an Apocalypse Road After Action Report series from Stig Morten Breiland. To read Parts 1, 2, and 3, go here, here, and here.

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The previous installment of this After Action Report left off with 3 teams tied at 7 points and the Bakers stuck at 4 points.

Gelato car number 9 decides to RAM Derek of the Hazleton Mountaineers, which currently sits at one sector past the finish line. A successful Ram now will mean that not only will Gelato score a point for the eliminated car, but also score a point for crossing the finish line, since you enter the sector of the removed car when it is taken out with a RAM.

But of course a 0 is drawn and that means no point for the RAM, no point for crossing the finish line, and generally a miserable activation all around.

The Bakers, 3 points back, has a bunch of cars about to cross the finish line and as such is in a good position to make up the points they are behind and maybe even move into the lead.

Bakers have no way of getting the 17 car on the inner lane and the draft line in the Joker Lane over at the same time. They activate Tori Murdock “TOR” and she pulls along two other teammates over the finish line to make it a four-way tie at 7 points and she even ends up next to “Dasher” Carsten in the 71 car. You might remember he already has 5 damage tokens on his car and a hit from Tori’s machine gun will take him out of the race and bring The Bakers into the lead.

Tori of course draws a card that gives “Dasher” a single but lethal damage. He joins his teammate Ad79 in the pile of wrecks and we have a new leading team.

“444” The Fearless Jarl of the Deadbeats doesn’t like to be left out of the Lead and as you can see in the image above he is in the middle of the Bakers train. His turreted auto-cannon is aimed towards MOX just behind him and delivers a solid 3 damage hit that eliminates a sure point for Bakers and gives it to Deadbeats. His subsequent move across the finish line takes the Deadbeats into the lead with 9 points.

We are getting closer to the end of the race and Deadbeats needs only 2 more points to win, but as we know the Bakers has an unactivated car that will be able to cross the finish line soon. Who will take this race?

Soonsin Lee of the Mountaineers unsuccessfully tries to take out Gelato number 3. Gelato number 5 unsuccessfully tries to take out The Fearless Jarl of the Deadbeats and those misses probably took them out of the running when we see in this next image how strong The Bakers and the Deadbeats look.

Looking at the Bakers first. 17 is about to activate and will pass the finish line taking the team to 9 points. We also see that they have the 15 car unactivated in this bunch and the Blue 2 car is a 1 defense car and as such becomes a target to be exploited this late in the race.

Deadbeats have 2 cars in the top of the image that will be able to get across the finish line on their next activation at the start of the next turn. They also have OWL unactivated and able to score points by eliminating cars.

A thing that is in favour of The Bakers is that turn 3 will have Mountaineers as the starting player and that means Bakers will get to activate before Deadbeats can bring those 2 cars from the top of the image across the line for 2 points.

The 17 car, equipped with a EMP gun blast over the line to tie the score on 9, before targeting the 2 car with the EMP. The EMP hits but it only causes a loss of activation on the next turn for the 2 car.

Situation now looks like this with the Deadbeats, Gelatoes and The Bakers with one car left to activate this turn. Mountaineers has lost unactivated cars and is done for this turn.

OWL just misses his shot and Tyrone The Monster from Gelato Division exits the Chute into loneliness and does nothing that can affect the game at all. The Bakers activate last and just brings his draft line of cars forward and creates a good huddle of cars before what will surely be the last turn.

The turn ends,  “Armored Missile Of Ultimate Revenge ”  (or yellow pencil as it is also known) drops one step on the scoresheet, all cars are readied and we are good to go for the third turn.

Only one more point is needed for the win. Can The Bakers get that point on their first activation to steal the win from Deadbeats which will most likely be able to get a car across on their first activation?

But we need to get The Mountaineers and Gelato out of the way before a possible winner can be determined.

Mountaineers put 5 damage into a Gelato car, but suffers 2 themselves in the process. Since the Gelato car was in pristine condition there will be no point for Hazleton this time around. Gelato crosses the finishline to move one point ahead of Mountaineers, but fails to put enough damage into the 2 car to eliminate it.

Bakers is up and with the 5 car of the Gelato one damage away from elimination, the target now is obvious.

15 of The Bakers, as of yet unnamed, with a Diagonal Solo Move card with +3 which gives him a 9 MP move sets out to hunt.

He enters the draft line just behind the, also as of yet unnamed, 5 car of Gelato and pushes him forward

Armed with a forward facing machine gun with a targeting computer a 1 is needed on the attack card to put damage into 5 and eliminate him.

A 2 card with 2 damage is drawn and The Bakers secures the winning point in this 7.62 MM Full Metal Derby” at Black Widow Hollow.

The final scoreboard.

Baguette Bakers: 10 points

The Deadbeats: 9 points

Gelato Division: 8 points

Hazleton Mountaineers: 7 points.

The final pile of wrecks. With 3 cars in this pile that might explain why Gelato didn’t win. You can also see that only 1 and 2 defense cars are to be found here, but The Bakers won the race without using any of its 3 defense cars.

The board at the end of this exiting race. You can see the two Deadbeats cars all alone just waiting for a chance to cross the finishline for the win, but alas, it wasn’t to be this time.

This concludes my Apocalypse Road AAR and would like to thank those that have followed it these weeks.

I also want to thank Jeff and Carla Horger for their continued support of the Thunderverse that started with Thunder Alley, continued with Grand Prix and will hopefully soon include Apocalypse Road.

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Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4