Return To The Arena Of DEATH

We played yet more Gaslands last night, and rolled the Arena of Death scenario once more. We actually use a different scenario table to the one in the rules, which emphasises the non-race scenarios. And yet we always end up rolling (i) Arena of Death or (ii) a Race. Oh well.

We had six player - myself, Jason Ed and Caesar (of course), plus Caesar's offspring Kaleb and Kannika, who were allowed out on a school-night. I didn't really get the details of the teams as such. I think we had three Idris teams, because the easy pickup of Audience Votes is attractive. Kannika ran a Slime team, Caesar went for some heavy gun-toting Rutherfords and I got Thomas out, in his piratical Scarlett Annie mode.

We had plenty of gun-turrets to deal with as well. Although they only shoot with 2D6, they can slowly whittle a player's vehicles down if not dealt with.

I didn't take photos to cover the whole narrative, so you'll just get snapshots of the game along with a few comments on things that were happening off-screen.

Caesar had an A-Team van armed with a tank-gun. Keen to use it he engaged one of Jason's vehicles, and destroyed it with one shot. It wrecked, exploded and almost took out the van in return. Quite impressive.

I moved in to pick up the pieces, harpooning the van and dragging it towards Caesar's other car. However it wasn't the collision with the van that did for Caesar's car; it was Thomas's fearsome broadside of cannon and small-arms

Thomas finished off the van with the front-mounted buzz-saws.

Kaleb was running a nippy performance car and a couple of bikes. His bikes ran into Jason's bike in our first ever bike-on-bike combats. His car did less well; caught in a collision he used the performance car's ability to take an extra move, but ended up in a gun-turret crossfire and was wrecked.

Kannika and Ed sparred on the other side of the arena. I never got a photo of one of her cars; it took a wrong turn, collided with the arena wall, wiped out and, before it could get going again, Ed destroyed it with rockets.

Meanwhile Thomas had a corner of the table all to himself. Caesar had lost both of his vehicles and Jason, not wanting to tangle with Thomas alone, nipped off to another part of the arena.

In fact he encountered what was no Kaleb's sole-surviving bike

And flamed it.

But he took some hits from a gun-turret.

We were now down to just three vehicles: Thomas, Jason's flamethrower car and Ed's Batmobile. I harpooned Jason's car, and dragged it into Thomas's buzz-saws. And that left two of us.

A cloud of steam helped throw off Ed's aim. Or that was the plan.

Ed rolled a blinding set of combat dice and, despite my being covered by both a wreck and the steam, eliminated Thomas, to give him the win.

Thomas performed a lot between in this scenario than he did in the Death Race a couple of months ago, and it was fun to use the full range of weaponry he's equipped with. Especially satisfying was getting in two good solid harpoon hits. Harpoons in Gaslands are fun.

Thanks to all and sundry for a great evening's gaming.