Gaslands - Death Race Birthday Game!

Last Thursday (my birthday!!) I hosted the lads for a game of Gaslands. We tried "Death Race" again, we'd played the scenario before but not all the way through, but this time I arranged the "start" in a bit better way. Conscripts Greg, Mike F., Dave V. and myself each fielded a team of two cars (40 cans). Conscripts Byron and Kevin spectated.

The Death Race comprised three gates - the first at top left, the second at centre right, and the third (finish line) at top right. Starting grid is at bottom/centre right of the picture. The gates have to be crossed in order, with each car's weapons activating only after it passes Gate 1.

I rolled the high die and scored pole position for Team Babypoop Brown, so I placed car #56 first on the grid with my #13 Miura directly behind. Mike, Dave and Greg lined up accordingly. Dave's cars were the Plymouth Fury ("Christine") at bottom left and the black Interceptor. Mike had the blue car at top left and the "MFP" Alpine, while Greg gridded the black-and-white camo prototype and the blue buggy.

Car #56 gets the holeshot and screams off towards the first gate.

(Gratuitous shot of a billboard here)

My team got off the line well but there was some chaos elsewhere in the field. Some execrable dice-rolling from Gaslands noob Greg had hime somewhat frustrated off the hop, and hazard markers accumulated rapidly on his and others' cars with some wipeouts happening even before they were halfway to the first gate.

Mike's MFP Alpine takes evasive action off the line!

Had to include a closeup pic of this car - outstanding work Mike!

Team BPB in the lead passing the first gate. The #13 Miura got a screamer of a start and was into 5th gear, overtaking the polesitter before they reached Gate 1.

Behind them, things were a bit hairier with cars pointing in every direction.

See what I mean??

We've skipped ahead a bit here, but what happened was that #13 ended up wiping out into the wall just past the gate, and was turned 180 degrees by Mike. Above we see him moving off into a collision with Mike's blue car. Dave's Interceptor has overtaken both and left caltrops behind.

More caltrops made the gate a bit dangerous!

#56 passes Gate 2. Although he'd taken some fire after weapons were activated, reducing the car's Hull significantly, things were still looking good.

Meanwhile, just past Gate 1, things were a mess. Car #13 had dropped mines but then wiped out again, and was spun around to face his own minefield - awkward. Greg's buggy was definitely making its presence known with HMG up the fundamental aperture of the MFP Alpine. Mike's turreted car sprayed bullets everywhere!

Car #56 crosses the line to earn the win. Dave's "Christine" had done a u-turn after passing Gate 1 and was manouevring to line up a shot at the leader, but missed. The driver of #56 certainly savoured the victor's champagne!

This was a super-fun game. Death Race works better with lots of space on the grid, and as any player knows, the play slows down significantly through collisions etc. when cars are being operated in close proximity. Once the field spreads out a bit things start to rattle along more quickly.

I'm still quite excited about Gaslands and many of the lads share that enthusiasm. Half of the fun is converting and painting the cars, of course, and I need to get back to the worktable on that score!

Kill Team and Gaslands

Since Kill Team came out I've been putting together a few teams from my very random collection of impulse buys and forgotten minis. So far I've put together a chaos renegade/Alpha Legion team and an Eldar team. The Eldar models are among the first models I ever bought way back in the early 90's! I realize that many of you started collecting in the 80's and before, but it's still a depressing realization for me.

Chaos Marines build from random bits I had lying around.

Bought during Last Chance to Buy. Arms, legs and weapons from Victoria Miniatures

These were bought in either '95 or '96 and just painted them now. The grav platform is from a 15mm vehicle kit.

Even older is my collection of Matchbox and Hotwheels cars. My mom kept them around for my nephews when they were young and planned to do the same for my daughter. She's only 5, but she's been very curious about all the guns and spikes I've added to the cars for Gaslands. Luckily she hasn't asked why the cars need guns and spikes.

Perhaps Dallas will recognize the paint job for the first car in this line-up

Gaslands! Cars, Terrain, Battle Report!

We have to admit to having been a bit remiss lately in updating the blog. Blame summertime, work, life, or what you will... but there has been some stuff going on, honest! So what's going on in the picture above? GASLANDS, that's what!

Gaslands is a miniatures game of vehicle combat, published by Osprey, that uses Hot Wheels/Matchbox-scale cars converted with guns and other fun stuff.

Conscript Kevin H turned me on to the game a few months ago and wow- is there ever an active online community for this game. In fact, it's so popular that the package I ordered directly from the game's author (including the rulebook, templates, dice and markers) was significantly delayed in being delivered.

However, this did little to temper my enthusiasm which was still running at a high temp...

One of the things that I find really exciting about Gaslands is that the barrier to entry is so low, you can go nuts doing all the stuff that makes the visual aspect of the game so cool.

Case in point - the "arena terrain" that I've done up for the game. My vision of Gaslands really tends more towards the classic "autoduelling" I grew up with - Car Wars and the like - rather than the "Mad Max" kind of vision that the game also supports. Don't get me wrong - that's amazingly cool as well and I'll probably go that way too!

This amazing piece is from a company called Corvus Games, and while it may look like a resin piece it's actually a plastic 3D print! It painted up very quickly and looks great. There was even room for some graffiti on the concrete base, visible above.

The barriers are from a Disney/Pixar (!) CARS (!!) playset I saw used on one of the Gaslands facebook pages. It takes two sets to do a 4x4 table but the cost of those sets is only around $25 each, plus time and effort in painting of course. I used photocopies of the playset's advertising decals on the walls, just to dull down the glossy kid's toy look.

Rather than repeat the same billboards twice, I went with graffiti on two of the walls which turned out well. The "tags" are decals marketed to HO-scale train enthusiasts for their freight cars.

I tried them at first on a darker coloured background but they didn't "pop" nearly as well as on the light background. Easy fix.

Back to terrain and the cars... I wanted some LOS-blocking terrain for inside the arena and stacks of wrecked cars suited that perfectly. I smashed some cars with a hammer just to flatten them a bit, then superglued them to each other and to a card base. Sprayed the whole lot black and drybrushed up faded colours, dust and rust.

Here are some cars! One of my favourites - Lamborghini Miura with corrugated iron windows and weapon from the old Dark Future game.

Ford GT40 with gubbins from a 15mm kit of an '80s Soviet tank.

2015 Mustang with DF gun.

Pickemup truck with DF minigun and rams from the 15mm tank kit.

Late '70s-looking cruiser with DF weapon.

So with all this prep work done it was time to have a game! (Note that some of the terrain shown in this post only got finished later)

Conscripts Indo, Byron, and Kevin were over for the inaugural run at Gaslands.

The game itself was controlled chaos, which is perfect for a vehicle combat game! We found the mechanics to be very easy to pick up, and with a view small exceptions they appeared to make sense in terms of vehicle physics.

One of the fun things about the game has to do with the movement, which is all done by templates a la X-Wing and other games of bodies in motion. Players select a template for their move, based on their speed (i.e. templates for different maneuvers have restrictions as to how fast a vehicle may be going to use them). There's no pre-measuring though, and in order to speed play, there's a rule that if you touch template when it's your turn to move, you MUST use that template! and if the speed of your vehicle does not allow you to use that template, the player to your left gets to pick a maneuver for your vehicle, then move your vehicle accordingly! This simulates a momentary lapse in the heat of combat driving, and when it happened to Indo in our game it was most amusing :-)
 

Kevin arrived late from work but got to roll out his ancient "Team Anarchy" vehicles he painted to use with Dark Future when it had first come out (!). They did acquit themselves well!

Without going into a ton of detail on the game (which I have forgotten anyway), it was a great one and fun was had by all - so much so that I'm going to tee it up again this week for the group. I think that this would be a great "convention" game and I'm planning on running it at PrairieCon next year, if not Legio-Con as well. So if you like Gaslands, definitely stay tuned here for more!