Let's Review: Gaslands

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...