AMR4 - Week 4 Challenge

Simon has spoken. Henchman has been eliminated. Now there are only seven teams left for this . . the Amazing Mutant Race 4!

Congratulations to the winner of last week’s leg - Jan the Intergalactic Aviator. As the winner, she gets to choose another team to Yield. The Yielded team must delay their start by half an hour.

In addition to winning last week's leg of the Race, Jan also lost another teammate. Surprise, surprise. I was going to impose a start penalty on her for putting another partner in the infirmary, but apparently a lot of people still perceive Magneto as a terrorist. The letters that the producers of the Race have received overwhelmingly express gratitude for any suffering Magneto experiences, therefore she will be spared. This time. Jan does need a new partner though. I was going to assign her my most indestructible mutant, Colossus, but there was another that has pestered me incessantly about playing. Just to get him out of my hair, so to speak, I am giving her Toad. Just FYI, he keeps muttering “revenge” under his breath.

The teams start this leg of the race on the Starcore space station. Each team will be assigned a dropship which they will steer towards the star craft landing field just outside of Doomstadt in Latveria. A tracer signal will be beamed from the port for you to home in on. Due to budgetary constraints, your ships will not be powered. The bodies are lightweight and the wings do have flaps so you should be able to use the ships as gliders. If that doesn’t work, there are functioning parachutes onboard. I’m assuming their functioning. They are confiscated Iraqi surplus.

At the landing field, each team will be given, in the spirit of keeping the Race green, tandem bicycles. You will peddle to Castle Doom. In the throne room, Dr. Doom will give you your Detour for this leg of the Race.

A Detour presents a choice between two tasks, each with their own pros and cons. Once a task has been completed, the contestants must then race to the Pit Stop. In this Detour, the teams must choose between Dead and Red.

In Dead, the teams will enter the Transference Chamber in Doom's castle. Doom has devoted much of his life to attempting to rescue the spirit of his mother from the realm of Mephisto. In this challenge, each team will be sent to Hell to convince Mephisto to release a spirit of their own choosing. Mephisto has quite the collection of souls, so choose wisely. Doom will be studying your technique of negotiation with Mephisto so that he might try to use it to try and free his own mother.

In Red, each team will use Doom’s time travel machine to journey back to the year 1504 to the Western Meditteranian Island of Djerba where Redbeard the pirate had his main base. Once there, the teams must locate and secure one of the several hidden treasure hoards of Spanish gold that Redbeard had hidden around the island. When successful, the team can activate the signaling device that will trigger the time machine to return them to Castle Doom.

Once back in Castle Doom, the teams will then make their way back to the throne room, the Pit Stop for this leg of the Race. As always, the last team to arrive will be eliminated. Posts are due by Saturday midnight, your local time. And remember, as I always tell my students, no one likes a loser.