Skip to main content

The Fun and the Fury: Mad Maximilian 1934



I've been so busy at work these past couple of weeks that I have had no time to prepare a proper recap of our most recent Second Saturday Scrum Club gathering at which we took Maximilian 1934 out for a test spin. I'm sure that there are trademark issues preventing the game's designers, Mana Press, from calling it Mad Maximilian 1934, but that will be how I will always refer to it because fuck the corporate overlords at Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Unfortunately, I am still completely overwhelmed with work deadlines, so this post will be short on verbiage and long on photos from our game. Check out fellow Scrum Clubber Walt O'Hara's blog post for a fuller game night summary, with the extra insights he brings as the person who organized it for our club to play. All of the cars, terrain, and miniatures in these photos are his handiwork, and they were a delight to play with on what was a fun break from our usual skirmish-level battles.

In attendance was Steve Braun, Jared Smith, John Sears, Rick McKee, Walt, and myself. Besides being an all around good time, the evening also served as a dry run for Walt, who is GMing this game at the upcoming Fall In convention in November.



Most of the pictures taken below are by our club's incomparable combat photographer and my wife, Ellen, without whom my Scrum in Miniature blog wouldn't be half as interesting. A small handful of the below photos were shot by my feeble hand with a cell phone. (Click any of them to enlarge.)

Walt putting together some of his terrain for the night's race.
(left-to-right: Ellen, Walt, Rich, John)

One of my two junkers with a "hillbilly rocket launcher" strapped to the side, and a harpoon gun on the back.


My other vehicle: a fast little jalopy, but less well armed or armored.


Just before we start Death Race 1934.

A decent shot of the entire table.
(clockwise from top: Walt, Rich, John, Jared, and Steve)



And...we're off!

Perhaps the most ingenious part of the game's mechanics is the nifty radial dial that acts as a measuring stick (6"), tracks the penalties for attempting turns at different speeds and angles, and also measures arcs of fire for different mounted weapons. It's an elegant multi-tool.

Walt's blog has a bit more on the backstory he concocted for our game world, but one element was that after the recent apocalypse, religious wars have broken out across Europe. So in addition to spinning out of control and dying in a fiery car crash, or being shot to bits by an opponent's vehicle, we also had to contend with various religious factions on foot roaming the wastes intent on dealing death to anyone of a different faith.






Some of my Spanish Neo-Inquisition fanatics on a rocky plateau taking pot shots at passing racers. The guy laying on the ground with the red wound marker had attempted to jump from his perch onto a passing armored car but missed. Walk it off, buddy, and try again next time!




Jared came to the game late so instead of getting to race cars around the track he played a variety of pedestrian "spoilers," like this dynamite lobbing yahoo waiting in the wings to spring out on us in an upcoming round.










A sniper played by Jared...perfectly placed to give us shit at the far end of the course we were running.




Collisions were a lot of fun in this game. One of Rich's giant racing cars is ramming my little red jalopy in the back, causing me to speed up from the impact and him to slow down, which had all kinds of repercussions as tightly packed as we often were on the course. 



These crazy Hasidic Jews scrambled off their outcropping to try to pull the crew off of this stalled out motorcycle.


One of Steve's endearing traits is how much he likes our cats...Gigi is trying to decide just how endearing she thinks this is.








I'm looking to Walt for a ruling on some maneuver I'm hoping to pull off.


Walt is not sure what he thinks of felines-as-wild-card in his game.

Steve will eventually win Gigi over...it's inevitable.

"Hey, guys...can I sit here and watch? I promise not to touch anything. Honest!"

"Repent for your sins or be gone, you foul abomination!" 
Another one of Jared's sneaks.



Crossing this stream without stalling out was a challenge.













Each vehicle had a laminated card for tracking things like damage to armor, engine, steering, etc. as well as general stats on how well the car handled and the general skill levels of the driver and gunners.


It was clear near the end of the game I wasn't going to win the race, but I wasn't going to deny myself the pleasure of running over this pistol-toting rabbi trying to shoot me dead.


When one car stalls out in this damn stream, it creates quite the log jam. Better start firing those guns, boys, and try to clear a path!



Another one of Jared's surprises. This little fella had a dynamite harness strapped to his back, tasked with running out in front of traffic. Nice knowing you, Fido...

Parting Shots and Final Thoughts

I had a really great time, and looking through these photos made me want to play Mad Maximilian 1934 all over again. Before we met for the game, I had actually bought the rule book, a couple of the turn dials, and a cool looking jalopy. I didn't get my car put together in time for the game (Walt had about 15 at the ready for us to choose from), but I'd really like to finish assembling and painting it so that I can get it into play.

We found the rule book could have been a bit better organized, and it wasn't until halfway through our game that we had figured out and remembered the basics well enough for everything to start humming. A quick-reference sheet in the book would have been immensely helpful, and frankly, I'm amazed by any game of this sort that doesn't come with one. Walt reached out to the game's designers after our session and they had actually put one together subsequent to publication. They shared it with him, which will be immensely helpful the next time we play, and it'll save Walt and I the trouble of having to cobble one together for his Fall In game in November.

I'd be curious to know what the other Scrum Clubbers thought of the game. It went a bit late, so we didn't have much chance to linger around to discuss afterword. Maybe my club mates will share their impressions in the comments below.

Regardless, Walt put on a fun game, and he's going to run it with 10 player slots at Fall In, so I encourage you to get in on this action!

Post Script

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the game is slightly harder to procure in the United States than it should be. It took some digging on the Internet, but I eventually found that it can be ordered from Eureka Miniatures USA. Their site is not confidence inspiring, but my order arrived quickly enough. The book-and-dial bundle is a bit pricey, but I'm still glad I picked it up. You can also order some of the model cars from Eureka Miniatures USA, too.


Comments

  1. Great looking game, sounds like piles of fun! I really like the religious fundamentalists seems like they added a lot to the game.
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, the religious fundamentalists were a great addition to the game and provided some nice narrative flavor. Those figure's belong to fellow club member Walt, but after playing with them in this game, I'm going to seek them out myself. Having nuns, rabbis, etc. running around the battlefield armed to the teeth definitely ups the fun quotient.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for the kind words. Re: the availability of Max 34 in the US. The vehicle models were available for a solid year before the rulebook, which was initially available as a commercial PDF from the Wargame Vault. When Mana Press finally published it in hardcopy, they inexplicably withdrew it from WV, I guess to not compete with themselves?? I don't understand that at all, but I'm glad I bought a (legal) PDF.

      The religious groups were sold by Sergeant Major Miniatures, at one time run by my friend Andy Turlington, but I'm not sure where they ended up when he closed shop.

      Delete
    3. Thanks for the info, Walt. That's a bummer about Sergeant Major. I tried to buy a few fantasy minis from them just before they closed shop a year or so ago, but I must have been too late because he refunded my PayPal payment and didn't fulfill the order. Would love to know how to track some of those down for my own collection someday...

      Delete
  2. This game really caught my attention, and it's the interesting mix of characters, including the Religious Fundamentalists, which has obviously struck a chord! I could see all sorts of interesting characters running around in this game.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Well-thumbed posts

Scrum Con IV: In Your Face!

The Second Saturday Scrum Club rejoined the fray on April 8, organizing and hosting Scrum Con IV in Silver Spring, Maryland. Although we ran a surprisingly successful virtual convention in 2021 that took advantage of its online format to invite all sorts of participants we couldn't have otherwise (Dirk the Dice of Grognard Files  in the UK ran a game, and I interviewed wargame/RPG historian Jon Peterson via livestream ), Scrum Con IV marked our return to an in-person format. Because  Scrum Con 2020 ducked right under the pandemic lockdown on the last weekend of February that year, we were anxious to see if anybody would remember us. Turns out any fears were misplaced...because Scrum Con sold out again this year! In fact, every in-person convention we've organized has sold out, but this year's Scrum Con IV was almost 70% sold out of its 225 badges in the very first week, a pace that frankly caught us off-guard. About a week before the show, we had sold enough badges that

Take the High Road: Making Cheap and Easy Dirt Roads

I have wanted some good roads to add to my games for a while now. My first attempt was a couple of years ago when my standards were a bit lower and I wasn't sure how much I was interested in investing in this new hobby. I bought some PDFs of cobblestone roads that I sized, printed, and glued to felt. The result was okay, but the way my laser printer  produced the roads ended up being quite reflective to the point of almost being glossy looking. The combination of glue, paper, and felt also meant the roads had a wavy consistency and almost always curled at the edges. I used them once or twice but was never happy with them. My sub-par first attempt at making roads for my games using felt strips, glue, and printed designs. You can see how shiny and how wavy and curled at the edges they turned out. I never felt good about putting them on the table for our games and eventually stopped altogether. I've been meaning to take another crack at making some roads now that I have

Candid Photos From "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

This post is barely gaming adjacent, but the Conan stories have informed much of my fantasy gaming since my first forays into the hobby. I've seen the John Milius adaptation more times than any other movie (probably over 50 times, though most of those viewings were on VHS or HBO as a teenager). The 1982 Conan  film was the first R rated movie I saw in a movie theater (age 12). The first convention game I ever played in was one in which I played the barbarian himself. The first convention game I ever ran as game master was an adaptation of Howard's "Beyond the Black River." For good or ill, I've spent a lot of time in that fantasy world. When I stumbled on an online trove of about 400 candid photos from various sets of Conan the Barbarian shot by somebody on the crew, it was oddly visceral for me. It generated a warm feeling getting to see these actors and sets from new angles, both in character and out, in situ and behind the scenes. Seeing Sandahl Bergman, Ge

Lost Art of D&D No. 2: Games Workshop's Holmes Basic (1977)

After Games Workshop attained the license to print a co-branded edition of TSR's 1977 Dungeons & Dragons basic rules book, they set about putting their own stamp on it, designing a new cover and replacing a number of the illustrations they deemed too crudely drawn for their U.K. market.  The cover art was by John Blanche at the very start of his career as a fantasy illustrator. Blanche went on to be a mainstay at Games Workshop, producing countless illustrations for them. His fannish enthusiasm for the material--as an artist as well as a lifelong gamer--has deservedly made him a favorite over the decades. I first encountered Blanche's work in the David Day compendium, A Tolkien Bestiary (1978), to which he contributed five illustrations that sit comfortably alongside the book's chief illustrator, Ian Miller. I have a special fondness for this book, having coveted it as a child during my incipient Middle Earth fixation. My parent's procured an out-of-print copy of t

Playing with Yourself: 'Rangers of Shadow Deep' vs. 'Sellswords & Spellslingers'

As the year crawls to an end, I'm looking through this blog and noticing a couple of posts I started and never finished. This is one of them. Back in July 2019, I placed the photos on the page, jotted down a few bullet-point placeholder notes, and then never actually went back and wrote anything to post.   The post was meant to be my informal review of Rangers of Shadow Deep after my first game of it with Josh O'Conner, who set it up for us to try in his basement. I think I never finished this post because I was not very impressed with the game but I knew Josh was, and we hadn't been gaming together long enough for me to be sure my candor about the game wouldn't hurt his feelings and sour a budding gaming friendship. I consider Josh more than a gaming friend these days, and so I'll go ahead and post this with some very short notes fleshing out the bullet points I had left as a reminder for myself back in 2019 (at least the one's I can still decipher the

Chainmail: Battle of Emridy Meadows

In my imagination, Chainmail has always been that shadowy precursor to Dungeons & Dragons that I was both intrigued by yet leery of. I loved the idea of a game involving mass battles in a fantasy setting akin to those depicted in the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , but I also had a sense that Chainmail , released in 1971 a mere year after I was born, was likely a clunky wargame that would be too frustrating to bother mastering. It also didn't help that my first inkling of its existence was around 1980 or so when I could never dream of amassing the miniature armies needed to play out these massive conflicts. No, back then I was pretty sure Chainmail was the province of grizzled old grognards who had started wargaming before I was even born. Even after my gaming rebirth decades later in 2016, I was fine with letting the dim past remain so, and was more than content during my first couple of years back in the hobby exploring rules of a more recent vintage and managea