Gaslands At The Illawarra Plastic Modeller's Association

This weekend was the annual show for the Illawarra Plastic Modeller's Association and, as regular readers of this blog will know, our club gets invited along to put on some demonstration games. We were quite ambitious this year, putting on four different games over the two days (two on each day). On Saturday some members put on a big game of Bolt Action on one table, and a game of Nimitz on another. I was involved on the Sunday - one table had a Team Yankee Game set during the Iraq War, whilst Caesar and I put on a demonstration game of Gaslands.

This was the setup. We decided on a nine car Death Race, with no sponsors and each car built to 20pts. You could choose perks from one class.

The course was a loose figure-of-eight - from the start a straight run to Gate One, then a crossover to the other side of the table to Gate Two, back across the far end in a curve to Gate Three, then another crossover to Gate Four. From there it was a clear run to the finish.

Most of the terrain was the stuff I've been painting for the past couple of weeks, although the lovely gates are Caesar's.

And here are the racers. 

Front row (from the left)

Fat-Bottomed Girls - Motorcycle w/Sidecar - Minigun (Sides), Headshot, Loader, Grenades
Welcome To The Machine - Car - Ram (Front), Armour
Perfect Day - Performance Car - Delicate Touch, Fenderkiss

Second Row (from the left)

Fantastic Cat - Performance Car - Tracks, Caltrops (Rear)
Bulls On Parade - Car - Grabber Arm (Sides), Boarding Party
Bad Blood - Car - HMG (Front), HMG (Rear), Loader

Third Row (from the left)

Natural-Born Killer - Car - Tracks, Ram (Front)
A Farewell To Kings - Car - Flamethrower (Front), Molotov Cocktails, Road Warrior, Powder-Keg
Mr. Bean - Buggy - Bazooka (Turret), Schaudenfreude

We ran activation from the front row to the back, left to right. If the vehicle with pole position passed a gate then it was automatically passed to the next vehicle in sequence. This kept the sequence of play simple; important when two of us were running nice cars by committee.

The first gear phase saw a fairly orderly run from the start.

Perfect Day started off the more complex moves, mostly due to some bad skid dice rolls.

Welcome To The Machine and Fat-Bottomed Girls were first to reach Gate One and get active weapons.

Welcome To The Machine edged ahead and shot up the bike with handguns.

Bulls On Parade finished off the bike with a tailgate attack.

Fat-Bottomed Girls crashed and exploded. The explosion did little damage, but even at this early stage the blast effect was enough to cause a couple of vehicles to wipeout, front-runner Welcome To The Machine amongst them.

The other vehicles jostled to get through Gate One. Natural-Born Killer ran a slow and steady race, tailgating anything that got in its way with its spikes.

The early stages. The two lead vehicles were wiped out and currently immobile, whilst everything else was working its way through the first gate.

Bulls On Parade made aggressive use of its grabber arm, throwing Fantastic Cat to destruction, and clearing a path for some of the other vehicles.

This gap allowed A Farewell To Kings to make a break for it, and take the lead.

Natural-Born Killer continued to bulldoze forwards.

Welcome To The Machine was now in second place.

With a new turn Fantastic Cat got back into the running, but almost immediately fell foul of Bulls On Parade, who also took out Bad Blood ...

... throwing it into the path of Natural-Born Killer.

Welcome To The Machine was active now, and rammed A Farewell To Kings, but did surprisingly little damage.

The halfway mark! A Farewell To Kings played a safe game, driving steadily and without any tricks and maintaining its lead. Welcome To The Machine took a risk and went up to top speed in order to close the gap. This made maneuvering the big vehicle quite hard, but the risk was worth it.

Natural-Born Killer, whilst the slowest vehicle in the race, edged into third place, mostly by surviving.

Perfect Day had wiped out and Bulls On Parade was bearing down on it.

A disaster for A Farewell To Kings as steady handgun fire from Welcome To The Machine saw it wrecked. Fortunately it was late in the turn, and it also crossed Gate Three as it wrecked, keeping it in contention once it respawned.

Bulls On Parade was wrecked, whilst Fantastic Cat, now back in the race for the second time, sowed some caltrops in order to slow down the leaders

If anything happened to the front-runners, these would be the contenders - Bad Blood was now in third place, Natural-Born Killer was in fourth and Fantastic Cat was being blocked into fifth.

Bulls On Parade got back into the race just as A Farewell To Kings did. The respawned leader wasted no time spraying Bulls On Parade with its flamethrower. Bulls On Parade burned and crashed again.

A Farewell To Kings was still in the lead, but was approaching Gate Four at too sharp and angle to clear the support so had to swerve across the width of the gate.

Bad Blood, Natural-Born Killer and Fantastic Cat were in hot pursuit.

But it was Welcome To The Machine that was able to exploit A Farewell To Kings' first driving failure of the game. It took the turn into Gate Four perfectly, spinning into a clear and straight run to the finish to take the win. A Farewell To Kings moved first, but finished just short of the line - a wipeout with a flip, or a slide would have seen it take the victory. So it was a close race.

The winners!

The also-rans. Of the other four vehicles, the bike Fat-Bottomed Girls was still negotiating the back turn, whilst the other three were wrecked and awaiting respawn. Two of them had yet to pass Gate Two.

What with chatting to the public and a few breaks it took Caesar and I all day to run the game, and it was fairly tiring. But well worth it. People loved what they saw; there's no denying that Gaslands is an attractive game. Here's a couple of shots from Ralph of Caesar and I in action.

The 20 Can format was perfect for a demo game; it moved quickly without too many special rules, and allowed us to have an interesting variety of vehicles in play. We thought that, having got pole position, the bike would shoot ahead and get an easy win, but it was stymied at the first gate, and never really got back into the race. The two performance cars were also tipped strongly to finish well, but neither was able to fully exploit their capabilities, and make a break for it. As it was the race was won by two fairly conventional cars  that just drove in a safe and steady way.