Zombie Bash!

Last night was Bailey's last regular visit to the Wollongong Wargamers, so he requested one last game of Gaslands. I though we'd try something a bit different, so despite knowing what vehicle I was going to use I decided that instead of rolling for a scenario we'd simply play the Zombie Bash. We haven't done that one for ages.

I picked up the Martians version of the Zombies boardgame on a bring and buy a few months ago, so had a pile of little plastic figures we could use. They're not zombies but previously we'd only used coloured counters, so it was certainly an improvement.

We'd been promised that Bailey's partner Laura was going to come along and play, so I was ready for a four-player game. Laura turned up but they decided they weren't up to learning a new game, so just cheered from the sidelines. That left three of us playing:

June, running a three vehicle Maxxine team consisting of the buggy, Milly, a car, Molly and a bike, Jenkins

Bailey, running his single Idris car, The Shimmer

Me, running the Mishkin sponsored Yellow Submarine.

Here we are set up and ready to go. This was a scenario set in the wasteland rather than an arena, so I mostly used my 'normal' terrain.

In this scenario your team collects zombies by driving over them. There's various conditions that end the game, at which pint you count up the total you've collected and highest wins. If a vehicle is wrecked you have to place five zombies around the wreck. So whilst June had the advantage of three vehicles for collecting zombies with, she also had the problem that if any were wrecked she could potentially lose a lot of the team's haul.

The Yellow Submarine whizzed around collecting zombies.

We all headed for the centre. I was keen to fire some weapons as this was the only way to pick up the audience votes I needed to help with hazard management after I started using my teleporter.

Bailey's car got dragged into the stream by the harpoon on June's Molly. She then broght in the buggy to machine-gun it.

The Yellow Submarine was harpooned next, and stuck facing the possibility of a collision with the spikey sides of Molly.

The same situation? No. This was after my move. I used the teleported to moved directly backwards so that my normal move put me back in the same place. I then got to shoot at June's car, using a few exotic weapons to rack up some audience votes. The primary one I used was The Thumper, which causes other vehicles to flip. So much fun.

The Shimmer chased after June's bike, Jenkins. This motorised penny-farthing is mostly scratch-built.

June's buggy had a serious run-in with the one building on the field of play, colliding with it, flipping over it, spinning and colliding with it again. It was spectacular to watch but not very healthy in terms of hits on the vehicle.

The Yellow Submarine was zipping around enthusiastically, teleporting to line up good zombie pickups. In passing it fired at Jenkins, inflicting damage with its guns ...

... and then seeing the bike flip to destruction at the hand of The Thumper.

By the rock in the centre you can see the pile of zombies that the bike deposited. June turned Milly to go and collect them. June ran a spectacular game, missing zombies by a hairs-breadth on every move with all three vehicles. But we were all building up a collection.

I decided to take the Yellow Submarine through some woods.

Milly took a shot at The Shimmer and scored a spectacular six hits by rolling a triple six. This left The Shimmer looking pretty bedraggled.

The Shimmer scooped up some zombies but found itself running head on towards Molly. With both vehicles travelling at high speed the end was inevitable; they demolished each other.

This left a big pile of ten additional zombies on the board. Milly turned to scoop them up.

There were currently only two vehicles in play, and the game would end if only one were left. I reasoned that if I could take out Milly before Bailey could respawn I could end the game, force June to lose five zombies from her total and win with my total of ten. But I needed to zoom into a decent weapon range, then fire up my Eureka perk (which allows me to count as having any one weapon in the game for one shot only) as an anti-tank gun and hit her with a massive 8D6 attack. I zoomed OK, but had misjudged the range (no pre-measuring allowed) and couldn't fire. But in closing into range I'd gone over the hazard limit and wiped out. I flipped and, with a nuclear engine, that means automatic destruction!

So I lost my vehicle and five zombies, leaving June with the lone vehicle (albeit that it was on its last hit). She had nine zombies to my five, so won! Bailey currently had no zombies.

This was June's first Gaslands win, and well-deserved. And it was fun to try this scenario again; I'm not sure we've played it under the latest edition of the rules. It offers a different set of challenges to the arena scenarios we've done up until now.