Capture The Flag

Our first Gaslands of 2021!

There were just the three of us and we played with 30 Cans, which meant everyone opted for a single vehicle. You can do two for that cost but they'd need to be small and/or cheap. However we also randomly determined the scenario, and we got one we'd not played before - Capture The Flag.

Basically one vehicle on each team is carrying a flag. If we had other vehicles then there's the option to pass the flag between friendly vehicles. Not an option for us. If a vehicle is wrecked then their flag is placed adjacent to the wreck. You pick up a flag by driving over it. And if a vehicle is ever carrying two flags, then it wins.

So, basically, we had to destroy an opposing vehicle and collect its flag whilst avoiding losing our own. Seemed pretty straightforward.

Here was our arena. Note the cheap-arse packing material that I haven't worked out how I want to paint yet.

Jason ran a Verney car (Escort Services), Caesar a Warden ice-cream truck (Deadpool) and I ran a Rutherford car (The Fountain of Lamneth). Jason's car had some technological perks plus a pile of dropped weapons, Caesar's truck had a mini-gun and lots of attitude whilst my car had a rocket-pod and a crew that knew how to use it.

Early on Caesar performed a slide-turn whilst firing his mini-gun at my car, but he missed. My rockets didn't and his van was seriously damaged.

I made the mistake of turning towards Caesar. Aside from the mini-gun he had a ram, and I didn't really want to be on the receiving end of it. In this picture I was about to choose my move.

What would you do?

Correct answer! I swerved and rammed Deadpool amidships! With it being an ice-cream truck (one of the new additions to the game that I hate) I take no hazards for doing this and I was willing to risk the damage.

What I didn't anticipate was Caesar's willingness to throw Deadpool around in tight turns when it came his turn to move. This was a worrying template placement ...

... but he missed. Just.

We circled around the arena like sharks. At the top left you can see an orange area where Jason had dumped napalm.

Jason and Caesar both had rams, and went head to head. 

Escort Services survived. Deadpool didn't. The brown marker next to the van is the flag.

(We actually made a mistake here. Deadpool was wrecked by a collision, so should have been removed from play afterwards, reappearing at Caesar's spawn-point when he brought it back with Audience Votes. We forgot this change in the new edition and left the van in place.)

Caesar was able to respawn almost immediately, and had placed the flag in front of his vehicle, so he picked it back up straight away.

In the background I took The Fountain of Lamneth through some sand rather than run through the napalm.

Once again I found myself facing Deadpool, who turned sharply into another ram ...

Somehow I survived. Deadpool didn't, wrecking for the second time.

The Fountain of Lamneth tootled off out of the action for a bit, unable to turn and pick up Deadpool's flag. Deadpool respawned (we did it correctly this time) and tried to ram Escort Services. Through a pool of napalm.

So that was Deadpool wrecked for a third time.

It would be a while before Deadpool respawned this time, and I'd turned back into the fight. I took a gamble; if I could ram Deadpool's wreck hard enough, I would wreck The Fountain of Lamneth. But the movement forward that the wrecking process gave me would take me through Deadpool and over the flag, collecting it for a win at the moment of my destruction!

Sadly my move left me just short and with enough hazards that I simply wiped out. And I didn't even manage to flip, which would have achieved the same result. I just ended up stopped in front of Deadpool's wreck.

Deadpool respawned and drove off to another part of the arena. I got The Fountain of Lamneth back into action, and performed a neat turn and slide to line up a rocket attack on Escort Services.

Escort Services was wrecked, but exploded. And the explosion took out The Fountain Of Lamneth, which also exploded.

So now there were two free flags in play, and only Deadpool to collect them. However Caesar's truck was badly placed to get to them quickly.

I respawned first, and lined up a run to one of the flags.

Jason had also respawned and used a slide and a spin to get there first. I unloaded rockets and an SMG into his vehicle. And wrecked it ...

... and the wreck move was enough for Escort Services to pick up the second flag for a win, just before it exploded whilst the crowd cheered.

So that was a silly mistake on my part, but there wasn't anything I could do to stop Jason. His final spin lined him up on the second flag, and he would move before me. So whether I let him move or destroyed him, his vehicle would always move forward onto the flag. The only thing that could have stopped him would have been something that gave him enough hazards to wipeout and for him not to flip, and I couldn't do that from the position I was in.

We thought this scenario would end quite quickly, but it lasted longer than we expected, since wrecking an opponent didn't guarantee that you could pick up their flag. Multiple vehicles would be fun, since the aim is to have two flags on the same vehicle, and you then have to make the decision about whether to use your flag vehicle to collect the second one, or hide it away and collect with another before trying a transfer between the two.