Back from the Future - a Pulp Alley Game

Dr Veruckthaar has decided that today's technology is not enough to fuel his schemes for world dominance. Technology from another time and place is what he needs. He builds four time portals to draw unsuspecting beings from another time and place. Four groups of suddenly homesick, technologically advanced warriors, all arriving at once, all wanting to know how to get back home...what could possibly go wrong?

A five player game at the club. Four teams start at the dimensional portals, one on each side of the table. To get back home, they must grab one of the temporal inversion crystals from the centre of the table and get it back to their portal. Simple? Well, it's a peril to grab one, and a peril to fit it correctly onto the portal. And once you do fit it on, only one character can get home at a time. The next character has to reactivate the crystal and the portal (another peril). Oh, and at any time, the crystal might be rendered unstable - you have to drop it immediately and wait for it to stabilise.

For Dr Veruckthaar, the task is far more straightforward: harvest the technology by grabbing (defeating in a brawl) one chosen character from each of the teams.

I controlled Dr Veruckthaar.

Master M ran the space smugglers.

Rhys (who had painted all the other leagues), deployed his brain creatures (didn't quite catch what he called them).

Trevor played the Daleks.

Sangeeta ran the robots.

Half way into the first turn and it was pretty clear that Dr Veruckthaar's encounter with futuristic technology would involve less harvesting and more being harvested by...four out of six characters already down or out.

As they closed in, the leagues began trading shots with one another.

To add insult to injury for Dr Veruckthaar, the black cat honed in on Stanley.

Robot on robot carnage.

The leader of the icky brain critters (that's the scientific name) is the first to grab a temporal inversion crystal. He/she/it speeds back to the dimensional portal and successfully activates it. Home sweet home!

Meanwhile, one of the other crystals has become unstable. Will insufficient supply drive up the prices? No, we'll just reduce demand.

Davros motors in and grabs himself a macguffin temporal invertor crystal.

After numerous attempts, Master M finally grabs a crystal, only to have it go unstable on him. Serves him right for relentlessly attacking his Dad!

Davros makes it back to the Dalek's dimensional portal and both he and the white Dalek get away despite Dr Veruckthaar's attention.

The smugglers and the robots are left scrapping over two unstable temporal invertor crystals as the end credits roll.