MAJESTY 2015

Mobile Armour Jousting pits two mobile armours - the agile mechanoid suits you see on the news putting down Jovian revolts and guarding the President - against each other in one-on-one combat. The aim isn't so much to kill your opponent as to force them out of the ring, sumo-style; once you damage their engines a bit they'll probably do it themselves just by accident, MAs are hard enough to control at the best of times.

A lot of colonists think that the MAJ circuit is their ticket Earthside, and the prizes are certainly magnificent. But the tricks you learn docking with fuel ships or dodging bandits under the rings of Saturn don't prepare you for a Mobile Armour. There's nothing like it; these beasts are as twitchy as they are powerful. And that's not to mention that the Extra-Solar Tournament is the only open tourney that unranked knights from the colonies can even enter, and that's held right the way out in the Reaches where you're just as likely to be hit by a lump of floating rock as a missile from your opponent...

MAJESTY - Mobile Armour Jousting: Extra-Solar Tournament - is a dexterity game in which you move little cardboard tokens around on a hex map. Players take turns to flick discs on their control boards - one for Throttle and one for Manoeuvre thrusters - which determine whether their Mobile Armour executes a perfect slide behind the enemy mecha to deliver a solid shot to the rear or spins wildly in place before careening off in the wrong direction. Players' mecha retain momentum from previous turns' acceleration, and half the challenge is to stay in the arena while being buffeted by cannon fire and homing missiles.

The use of small control boards means that unlike many dexterity games, MAJESTY doesn't require a large, flat and smooth surface upon which to play.