Circuit Of Death

We played Gaslands at the club last night. I'd put together six teams for people to use (which would be randomly assigned) and we'd planned to randomly determine the scenario as well. But whilst waiting for one of the players to turn up I was fiddling around with track/arena layouts and came up with this:

It was decided that we'd run with it and try a variant of the Death Race. Each team has their own start line, and must do 1 1/2 clockwise laps (effectively treating the gate opposite their own as their finish line. Weapons still activated after the first gate the team had to pass through. The idea of the circuit was that a team which gets too far ahead would run into the team in front of it, so you would be forced to interact with the other teams as you went round. 

(And, yes, that's two egg-boxes in the middle there. I forgot the cardboard packaging I usually use to make arenas with, and had to improvise*.)

In the picture above you can see the four teams on their start-lines. Clockwise from 12 o'clock they are:

Caesar, running 'Fantastic Cat', a Miyazaki hover-car.

John, running a Warden team of three explosive coffin-cars called 'One', 'Two' and 'Three'

Me, running a single Scarlett VW bus 'All You Need Is Love', loaded with crew and short-range weaponry

Bailey, running two Idris cars, 'Lola' and 'Mr Apollo', with nitro and machine-guns.

And they're off!

Bailey's Idris team got off to a bad start, spinning and sliding out of control before they even got to the first gate and, in the case of Lola, actually wiping out. But everybody was making good running to the first gate, and armed weapons.

Caesar quickly got to grips with the insane maneuverability of his hover-car (a performance car with tracks, in game terms), and was soon heading towards his second gate. However it was at the same time as John's intimidating Warden team was passing through as well.

Fantastic Cat threaded its way through the mob of coffin-cars, but each one had a trait which put hazards on any vehicle that ended close to it, and soon the Miyazaki vehicle was struggling.

Peppered by gunfire and harassed by grenades from the penal team, Fantastic Cat spun out and crashed.

Meanwhile Bailey was getting his act together with his Idris vehicles, whilst I plodded sedately around the course in All You Need Is Love, doling out mines and caltrops from time to time.

The Warden cars got themselves into a bit of a tangle as Fantastic Cat respawned.

An overview. Fantastic Cat had now passed three gates, whilst the other three teams had all just about got past their first. Thanks to the catchup mechanism this meant that we had a ton of audience votes, which we all happily used to ditch hazards as much as possible. 

I think there's a gap in the photos here. Fantastic Cat crashed again on the home straight, and would be out of action for most of a turn, giving everyone else a chance to catch up. Warden car Three failed to ram All You Need Is Love, ending up performing an ineffective tailgate instead of the devastating T-bone it was hoping for.

The other two Warden cars were still trailing, but Bailey now had Mr Apollo well in the running, having finally got to grips with combining nitro, and the ability to use the Long template on every turn.

A Warden car smashed itself up with a spectacularly uncontrolled slide into a patch of Scarlett mines.

By now Fantastic Cat was back in the running and there was little we could do to stop it.

Bailey tried, but a Warden car rammed him, exploding in the process. Amazingly the Idris car hung on with its last hull hit.

Warden car Two failed to ram Fantastic Cat, but did take it to its last hull point with some well-lobbed grenades.

Fantastic Cat crossed the finish line, just nudging into the wreck of Lola as it did so. The Miyazaki car survived the ram but would have won even if it hadn't.

Bailey came a close second, finishing in the same gear phase with a spectacular nitro-fueled zoom and slide over his finish line. Hitting an oil-slick he wiped out, crossing the line as the vehicle flipped to destruction. Pure Gaslands!

We all felt that this style of circuit was a great way to run a race, although it's slightly harder to keep track of how many gates ahead the leader is, and I probably need to have a small chart for that the next time we play. We avoided the complex scrum you always get on the run to the first gate, and the 'chase' setup meant that it was hard to avoid interactions with other teams by simply driving fast. A single-Miyazaki car is still a superb racer, although the close-finish shows that it didn't have things all its own way. To be honest my bus was never going to win on speed, but could have won simply by being the only vehicle still operational at one stage.

*We have chickens. They produce more eggs than we can eat. So we box up the excess and give them away to friends and neighbours. This includes taking a couple of boxes down to the club each week for anyone who wants free eggs. Since we pay for the boxes some people are nice enough to return them afterwards, and last night was one of those nights. So now you know.