Birthday Gaslands

Caesar and I decided to celebrate our respective birthdays with a game of Gaslands last night. Bailey (who was not celebrating his birthday) joined us.

We used minimal terrain (because I forgot to pack some of the bits I meant to), and 50 Can teams we'd prepared earlier. We randomly determined a scenario and got ... Flag Tag!

In Flag Tag, each team has a flag in their section of the board opponents can drive over it to capture it. The first team to drive over opponents' flag three times wins. So you have to defend your flag whilst attacking that of your opponents. All very good, you say, until you realise that both Caesar and I had opted for teams consisting of a single vehicle.

Here's the setup. Caesar was running a single Idris bus - loads of guns and a ram on the front, lots of crew with handguns and then extra speed and handling. Bailey was also running an Idris team, although this was a more conventional one with two cars armed with a selection of weapons and useful traits. I ran my James Bond Aston Martin DB5, because both 'Goldfinger' and myself debuted in the same year. For this game Bond was sponsored by Verney, and I'll include the stats below.

Here's Bond, ready to go. The pink markers are the teams' spawn points, whilst the purple marker is my flag.

With two cars, Bailey had a distinct advantage, although technically each one was individually a lot weaker than either Caesar's vehicle or mine.

Caesar sent his bus after Bailey's flag but getting there quickly and actually being able to drive precisely enough to pick up the flag are two different things. He missed it, despite throwing the bus into a spectacular slide. His positioning did allow him to unleash his massive firepower on Bailey's vehicles, damaging both.

Bailey's performance car took more hits from the bus, whilst Bond, also heading towards Bailey's flag, received a volley from the bus's front guns. The DB5 is solidly built, though, and shrugged off the damage (the Feel No Pain perk meant that I ignored the two hits that got through - it's expensive, but worth it).

Bond retaliated by dumping caltrops in front of the bus. Fun Fact: The DB5 in the film was supposed to have caltrops, but the makers decided not to include them as they felt people might be inclined to copy it. It had the oil-slick dropper instead. 

The bus took damage from the caltrops, which was nice.

Bailey lined up a precise run on Caesar's flag which just clipped it whilst avoiding a collision with the shipping container. This was a beautiful move, which would have been more spectacular ...

... had the car not slid at the end of it, lost control, flipped, wrecked and exploded.

The explosion took out Bailey's other car.

Bond drove coolly and calmly and collected Bailey's flag. I got good rolls on the skid dice in this game.

Caesar tried a tight turn with the bus ...

... misjudged it and collided with a concrete pillar.

So that was more damage on the bus, but not enough to stop him collecting my flag.

A collected flag is replaced in the next Gear Phase. Bailey positioned his behind me, but I pulled off some tight turns to collect it again, albeit that this time I damaged some paintwork bouncing off a concrete obstacle.

Bailey had respawned one of his vehicles and, at some stage, had collected my replaced flag, giving both he and I two flags each. However whilst I turned for a third pass at his flag, Bailey was on track to pick up Caesar's flag again. 

This he did, albeit that immediately afterwards his victory was sullied by the car wrecking in a collision with a container. But he had the third flag and claimed victory!

Final positions. Caesar's bus was a deadly foe, but not best suited to collecting items by precise driving. The DB5 performed admirably, even if I didn't get to use all of its abilities. I was happy to get a couple of flags. And with two cars Bailey was well set for a win, even if, to be fair, he did a lot of it with one respawned vehicle.

Here's my build:

James Bond Aston Martin DB5 - 50 Cans - Sponsored by Verney

Performance Car - Heavy Machine Guns (Front), Oil Dropper (Rear), Caltrops (Side), Micro-Plate Armour (x2)
Perks: Whizzbang, Gyroscope, Feel No Pain, Mobile Mechanic, Eureka!