Gaslands

So I have found a new miniatures game to play, Gaslands a game of post-apocalyptic vehicular mayhem.  I watched a few battle reports of it online and decided straight away I wanted to try it.  I have just finished reading through the rule book but at the time of writing this have not had a chance to play it yet.  However I decided to write a little about what the game is and why I decided to get it.

So basically Gaslands is a death race style racing game where players will race teams of cars around the table all the time trying to win the race and avoid getting shot by the other teams.  What I really like is that there is no model range for the game, instead it is played with Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars that are converted to have all sorts of guns, armour and special equipment attached to them.  This does make it one of the cheapest miniatures games to get into since a box of 5 cars is only about £5-6 and if you are like me you will already have a bits box full of spare guns and mods from other games like Warhammer 40K.  With only 2-4 cars per team in a standard game you can easily have a whole team for the price of lunch.

A Death Race

It's game play looks simple and fun, it is more of a quick game to play while having a beer sort of game than other miniatures games I have tried.  Most of the battle reports I have seen have only been about 30mins long and that has included deployment and intros.  A miniatures game that only takes 20-45mins to play and is easy enough that even none wargaming friends could enjoy it was really something that attracted me to it, plus the first rule is the "rule of carnage" which means that whenever there is a rules conflict or you can't decide (say you can't work out if you collided head on with another car or as a T-bone) you pick the outcome that causes the most destruction...and who doesn't want that as a rule in your game.

Once you have picked your cars and their equipment the cars are deployed.  Each turn is then split into gear steps 1-6.  Players will take it in turn to activate a car from their team that is in the current gear or higher to move.  Once all the cars that are in the current gear or higher have been activated the gear step moves to the next one and players start again activating any cars that are in that gear or higher.  So a car in Gear 2 will be able to activate in gear step 1 and gear step 2 while a car in gear 6 will be able to activate in gear steps 1,2,3,4,5 and 6.

The official Token and Template
set from gaslands.com

When a car is activated first you pick one of the movement templates.  These are all different and effect how the car moves.  Some can't be done in certain gears or might give extra bonuses or hazards if they are used by a car in a certain gear.  You then place this template down in front of your car and that gives you the route you are trying to drive.  One rule I really like is that you can't pre-measure anything and when you touch a template you have to use it, this means if you thought that a gentle turn was enough to get you past the car in front of you safely but it wasn't by the time you find out it is too late and you are going to crash.

Once the template is placed you roll your handling dice.  The number of these depends on what type of car you are.  The results are either "shift" which lets you change gear up or down, "skid" which forces you to take a hazard token and skid to a different finishing point for the move than you though, "spin" which forces you to take a hazard and spin your car up to 90 degrees after it has finished moving or "hazard" which makes you take a hazard.  You can also use shift results to discard hazard tokens or negate other dice rolls so you don't spin or skid.  Only then do you move your car to its new position and deal with any collisions that might have happened.

Movement Example from
gaslands.com

After moving the active car can shoot any weapons it has at other cars.  The weapons in the game are really cool ranging from machine guns, hand guns, molotov cocktails and rocket launchers to electronic pulses, mortars, mines and glue puddles.

Cars will then have to take wipe out tests if they have 6 or more hazard tokens, this can cause cars to take damage, flip over though the air and crash into other cars causing even more mayhem.  Once the active car has done, the next player picks are car and they start over again.

Some of the models people have done for this game look great and it is definitely one for people that want to make really cool looking cars, you could go as simple as just gluing guns to a Hot Wheels car right up to completely converting and painting it to look like a crazy Mad Max style road warrior car.

I really think this game is simple and fun enough that I could get friends that don't wargame only play boardgames to play it and I am really looking forward to making some cars now I have read through the rules.  I still don't think I'm a great painter so might not show off any cars I make here but might show off some cool conversations I make.  The models are so cheap I actually plan on making enough for 3 or 4 teams so I can just lend people cars to play with if they don't have their own.

The Gaslands Rule Book

The book is very well written and the rules are clear, I managed to read through the whole book in a day and understand all of it.  The artwork is great and really inspires you to make your own cars.  There are plenty of different types of car and weapon list for variety between lists.  There are also a number of different sponsors that give your team special bonuses or access to special equipment and quite a few different scenarios, ranging from a standard death race or destruction derby to a zombie collection game, so the games doesn't get boring.  For a cheap, quick and fun miniatures game I am not sure you will find better.