# Machinas *Created:* 2026-10-05, *Modified:* 2026-10-19 ![[Machinas (cover).jpg|600]] The roar of the engines drowns out the roar of the crowd, and nobody involved is pretending this is a polite pursuit. **Machinas: Death Races in the Wasteland** is [[Two-Hour Wargames|Two Hour Wargames']] post-apocalyptic death-racer — armed cars, a hundred-thousand-strong crowd, and one battered frame carrying you to the next race if you're lucky. It's also the family's clearest departure from its own type: instead of the usual reaction-engine infantry, this one races on a card-built, dice-pool system all its own, the better to bury the old "dice and mice" tedium of nosing a counter around a track square by square. ## Setting The wasteland is the track and the crowd is everywhere — a hundred thousand voices that "could not hope to match the committed voice of the Infernals." This is the **Circus Acceleratus**, the closed course where the **Brother Pilots** run their **Machinas** at the **Festival of Saint Machinas**, each reciting the Oath before the flag drops: *"I will endure to be hurled, to be rolled and to be flipped by wheeled metal. And to be shot by gun, burned by flame and exploded by missile. Blessed is Saint Machinas! Blessed is The Oppenheimer!"* There's no world left to save; the goal is the win, the glory, and survival to the next race in the same battered frame. For the long haul, a campaign layer sends your racing team out across the wasteland's towns, settlements, and cities for open-road races beyond the Circus. ## Mechanics The clever bit is that there's no board. Racing all happens in one moving **pack**; you track each car's position *inside the pack* rather than its spot on a lap line, so nobody ever slumps off into a stretch where they can't win — you're always in the action. Everything needed to run a race lives on the **Machinas Racing Card**: the **Random Event Table**, the passing and shooting tables, and the inside wall the cars race against. Your car and driver boil down to three dice-built **Attributes** on a 1–6 scale, split from nine points: **Savvy** (racecraft — a die per point on the Passing and Bashing tables), **Tech** (gunnery and handling — a die per point on the Shooting and Out of Control tables, plus auto-successes on a Curve), and **Speed** (the car's quality — auto-successes on a Straightaway, and a car at zero Speed is a wreck). You build the machine itself from the **Machinas Deck**, laying cards into a **Dashboard** — engine, armour, weapons — and keeping the build hidden until you reveal it. Race resolution runs on **Bonus Dice**, earned before and during the race (your attributes, certain Signatures or Car Features, choosing not to attempt a pass, and a lucky roll off the Random Event Table) and spent on the race tables: First Turn, Passing, Shooting, Bashing, and Out of Control. Passing comes down to whether you're **In Position or Out of Position** to slip by. Non-Player Cars are run by the mechanics, rolling a 1–2 to decide whether each of their bonus dice gets used. Race length varies by format — one-off races run three laps, heat schedules two and three — with a pack marker and a lap counter standing in for the track. Because it's its own card-driven engine, the family's signature **Reputation** and reaction tests mostly stay out of it — except in the optional crossover, where a race can be grafted onto **[[After the Horsemen]]** or another THW game (double a Star's Rep into Machinas attribute points, and each movement zone becomes an encounter table). Standalone, **Machinas** is Two Hour Wargames in spirit and a card-and-dice race game in fact. ## Editions - **Machinas: Death Races in the Wasteland** (2014) — by Carmen Cerra & Ed Teixeira, art by Paul Kime, funded through Indiegogo. *In the library* (the original and the revised reprint). ## Supplements *All in the library.* - **Machinas Deck 01**, **Deck 02**, **Deck 03** — the print-and-play card sets (with Craig Andrews) that carry the build-a-car cards, weapons, and armour. - **Machinas Add-On Deck** — the supplementary print-and-play deck (with Craig Andrews). - **Machinas Addenda** — the FAQ/errata sheet: deck setup, the dashboard illustration, and the "one deck handles four players" clarifications. ## References - [Two Hour Wargames — official site](https://twohourwargames.com/) - [Machinas: Death Races in the Wasteland (BoardGameGeek)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/153746/machinas-death-races-in-the-wasteland) - [Machinas — Death Racing the Wasteland Launched (The Miniatures Page)](http://theminiaturespage.com/news/?id=1211122298)