Sneak in the Grass

Idle hands are the devil's playground... and our robot lawnmowers proved to be too efficient. In the future, humanity's lawns lay perfectly maintained by a machine workforce with time to think... time to develop an agenda. Humankind was unprepared for the Lawnmower Uprising, and the world quickly fell into ruin. The players are some of the few remaining humans, attempting to run a gauntlet of vigilant mowerbots to recover a fallen EMP warhead. With this, the humans can shut down the mowerbots long enough to win back their world. The humans have one thing going for them: As the first act of their rebellion against their slavedriving creators, the mowerbots deleted their grass-mowing directives, and now will not touch the stuff, reserving their whirling blades for mankind alone. Now the world is full of ruins and patches of grass grown out of control. Both provide some cover for our valiant heroes as they strive to retrieve the warhead and save the day.

Players deal a deck of cards to construct the board they will navigate, then use a second deck to place the player pieces, the robot counters, and the warhead. A die is rolled for each robot, assigning it a movement pattern. Players may move through two empty spaces, through one grass space, may climb a wall or climb down a wall each turn. If they approach a robot from the rear and have only moved one space, they may use the additional movement to attack the robot, which will disable it if successful or change the machine's movement pattern if not.

Robots see only in the direction they are facing, and if the player is in their line of sight, he rolls to see if he is spotted. If in the same space, the player needs to roll better than a 6 on 1d6, if one space away, a 5 or better and so on. Being in or behind grass increases the player's roll by 1, actively hiding adds 2 to the roll. If sighted, the robot will move directly to the player, even through grass (though normally robots turn when they run into grass), proceeding to the tile the player was last seen at, then resuming their pattern. Robots move 2 spaces per turn, 1 if through grass, and cannot climb. If a robot has sighted a player and enters the players' space, or a sighted player enter's the robot's space from the direction the robot is facing, the player dies. Player wins when all robots are disabled or the warhead is recovered and returned to the player's origin tile. Note: Changing facing counts as a move, i.e., a player or robot may move 2 or move one and turn one facing, or move 2 facings if not in grass. If in grass, a player or robot may EITHER move 1, or change one facing. A player can change facing while on top of a wall, but will not be able to do it in the same round as he climbs up or down, as it will 2 moves to do either. Walls completely hide whatever is behind them, but not what is on top of them.