What is it?:
Gaslands is a 20mm scale post
apocalyptic vehicular combat miniatures game made by Osprey Games. In
simple terms, it's like Max Mad: The Minis game. Or Carmageddon. Or a
newer version of Car Wars.
While drawing on all of these, Gaslands
appears to be something unique and interesting.
The setting:
In the far future of 2018, Earth has
been invaded by the colonists of Mars. After destroying many of the
cities and killing millions, the Martians now loot the planet for its
material wealth. Those who have any sort of means fled Earth to Mars
ages ago. Only the poor and bitter live in the ruins.
But, what is life without
entertainment? Some bright bulb on Mars had an idea for a bloodsport
that would give the hardscrabble survivors of Earth something to aim
for. And give the Martians some good TV.
And so Gaslands was born!
Powerful people on Earth and Mars
sponsor teams to compete in the violent races. These borderline
insane drivers and others compete for prizes and glory, addicted to
the speed of their vehicles and the thrills of the kills.
For the tenth season of Gaslands, the
winner gets a one way ticket to Mars. I guess you can finally get
your ass to Mars...
The system:
The system is fairly simple, relying on
D6s for any sort of rolls. Now, it does want you to use special “Skid
Dice” which is usually a no-go for me. However, converting normal
D6 rolls to their special thing is relatively easy, so they get a
pass.
The game is designed to be a racing
game, so you want to keep that in mind when reading all of this
stuff.
Each player builds a team of vehicles
to use in the game. One thing is picking a sponsor for the team,
which gives the team access to a variety of special abilities,
weapons, and even vehicles. At 50 “Cans” (read: points), you can
have lists with as few as one vehicle, which is going to one tricked
out car, or as many as four or five, which probably aren't going to
last long. It's all about finding what suits your play style. Are you
a racer, just wanting to hit the finish line as fast as possible? Or
are you a scrapper, looking to crush and burn the other vehicles,
finish line be damned? Or are you somewhere in the middle?
Playing the game is relatively easy.
Each turn is divided into six Gear Phases and vehicles can act in
each Gear Phase that it's in. Each vehicle has a “Max Gear” which
caps how many many times it can act if it's going flat out. So,
things like vans, buses, and tanks are not going to acting as much as
performance cars, buggies, and motorcycles. Picking what Gear your
vehicle is in is very important. Sometimes, you want to hit your Max
Gear as fast as possible. Other times, you'll find yourself staying
in a lower Gear so you have more options for movement and attacks.
You don't want to out pace your target, but you might want to outrun
the guy with the biggest guns...
Each Gear Phase is divided into
Movement, Attack, and Wipeout phases.
During the Movement Phase, each vehicle
uses a “Maneuver Template” for the vehicle. Some templates can't
be used in certain Gears. For example, if you're in the top gear, you
can't make a hairpin turn. And the higher your gear, the more at risk
you are for gaining Hazard Tokens, which aren't good (duh). Changing
Gears happens in the movement phase and depends on your Skid Dice
rolls. So, you can start in first gear, shift up to second. In
second, you shift up to third. In the third Gear Phase, you can shift
up again or shift down if you're coming up on a turn or are getting
too many Hazard Tokens.
In the Combat Phase, you finally get to
use all those wonderful guns and rockets and death rays you paid for
your vehicles! Weapons are varied and dynamic. You can buy rams for
your vehicles, if you want to smack the other cars around. Or, you
can buy machineguns (light, heavy, and mini). Or, even 125mm cannons.
Pretty neat, right? If you're strapped for points, it's okay. Your
driver (as well as anyone else in the vehicle) has a gun that they
can shoot. Unfortunately, it's just a little diddly. However, if you
have a bus full of folks, that's a whole lot of diddly...
Finally, there's the Wipeout phase.
Remember how I mentioned Hazard Tokens? Well, if you have more than
six when this phase rolls around, you're in trouble. You have to make
sure that you flip your vehicle like a coin. That would be bad.
While I've just covered just the
basics, there are rules for collisions with other cars and other
things, rules for spinning out and sliding (that's what the Skid Dice
can do), and some other things that might come up in a Death Race
2000.
A simple way of understanding Gears and
what they do is something like this:
If your vehicle is in first Gear, it'll
only get one move, attack, and wipeout per turn. But, it won't accrue
too many Hazard Tokens. Slow and steady. If you're in fourth or fifth
Gear, you'll get to move, attack, and deal with wipeouts four or five
times in the turn, but you'll be getting a lot of Hazard Tokens, and
you won't be able to use some of the movement templates because
you're going so fast.
Is it worth it?:
Yes. Very easily, yes.
The rulebook is very cheap (a physical
copy of the rulebook retails for $20, but you can easily find it
cheaper, plus the PDF is cheap) and all you really need is some
Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars. Those you can probably find in your
parent's basement, thrift stores, eBay, and dollar stores. They're
really not hard to find. And the rules seem to be able to accommodate
just about any type of vehicle you can imagine. Cars, trucks, vans,
motorcycles, tanks, helicopters, buses, and even monster trucks. And
there's a massive array of weapons. Plus Perks and upgrades and so
on. Each game is going to play differently.
One other this is that since the game
came out in late 2017, it's still getting support. Every few months,
they put out a little thing called “Time Extended” or TX that
adds new sponsors, vehicles, rules, and the like. Having these
keeping people interested in the game bodes well for the future of
the game. I hope.
In short, this is worth your time and
money, which it doesn't really require too much of either. While
currently a “beer and pretzels” type minis game, I have a feeling
they're looking to branch out, get some things going. What exactly
happens, only time will tell...
