This weekend just gone was the annual show for the Illawarra Plastic Modellers Association and, once again, our club was invited to put on a series of demo games to help showcase wargaming with pretty toys to a wider audience.
On the Saturday people put on games of Acting Panzer! and One Page Rules: Grimdark.
On Sunday there was a big Flames Of War game featuring the Russian advance on the Reichstag (which I will provide a link for if it gets written up on a blog anywhere) and, of course, Gaslands. I was responsible for pitting together the latter game, ably assisted by Caesar and with vehicles, terrain and play aids provided by Daniel and June.
We went for the same setup as two years ago, running a death race consisting of ten individual 20 Can vehicles with no sponsors. Each vehicle could choose perks from one class.
Here's the table setup.
And the route. It's a fairly long one, but we had around six hours of play time available and were quite happy if we didn't finish; it was a demonstration and all we needed to do was keep things happening all day and chat to people.
The ten vehicles.
Front Row (Left to Right):
Welcome To The Machine - Car - Arc Lightning Projector plus Dynamo (Front), Loader
Dreamline - Car - Ram (Front) Armour
Molly - Buggy - 2 x Shotguns, Schadenfreude, Outrun
Lola - Car - Flamethrower (Rear), Madman, Crowd-Pleaser
Second Row (Left to Right)
Marvelous Engines Of Resistance - Truck - Ram (Front) Caltrops (Rear)
Big In Japan - Bike - Minigun (Sides), Feel No Pain, Dead Weight
Perfect Day - Performance Car - Hell For Leather
Back Row (Left to Right)
Invaders Must Die - Buggy - 2 x Machine Guns (Turret), Dead-Eye
All You Need Is Love - Truck - 2 x Blunderbus, Grenades
Freeway Fighter - Machine Gun (Turret), Chrome Whisperer
Here's the start-grid from the side showing one of June's buildings, Daniel's gear-phase marker and Thomas, who always supervises such events (and attracts a lot of attention from the younger visitors).
Another picture of the terrain.
The order of the cars given above was the play order, with Welcome To The Machine having pole position. Whenever a vehicle with pole position passed a gate, it would move to the next vehicle in sequence.
I dressed up for the day (although the jacket and scarf were useful because the hall is cold!)
Caesar and I simply made decisions for each vehicle in turn. Sometimes we diced for them. A ram on the first turn was the result of such a roll.
This, of course, precipitated the usual start-grid chaos. Some of the vehicles at the rear of the grid wisely decided to make short moves on the hope that the mess in front would clear.
Big In Japan fist-pumped his way through the traffic-jam
The admin console. We had the (very small) data-sheets for each vehicle lined up in order, which made working through them pretty easy. One was marked with pole-position and the yellow dice beneath the sheet showed which vehicle we were currently activating.
Back to the game. Some vehicles had got through the first gate and were using weapons. Lola flamed Molly, who was making an early break.
Artistic version.
There was still a ram-induced jam behind the first gate. Big In Japan got rear-ended by All You Need Is Love and was destroyed. We allowed respawning; even without sponsors a vehicle gets an audience vote when they're wrecked and another two if they're not active at the start of a turn. The upshot of this is that if a new turn stats and a vehicle is wrecked then it gets to respawn.
Move vehicles made it through the first gate. Molly was on fire but, thanks to a perk, she got to dump all of her hazards which means that the fire went out. This was unfortunate for the other vehicles because she was currently the only one that had a clear path and which was facing in the right direction, so could zip ahead unopposed.
And did; she's already out of shot in this picture. But more vehicles were through the first gate, there was lots of shooting and some racers were heading the right way.
Molly was through the next gate and running along the back straight. However it was obvious that she'd have to run the gauntlet of an awful lot of tail-enders.
Big In Japan got back into the race as a new turn started.
Another collision as All You Need Is Love found its way blocked by Marvelous Engines Of Resistance.
A nice overview of things. In the centre Invaders Must Die and Freeway Fighter were free of the pack and running for Gate 2.
Lola did a deft swerve past the caltrops and collision.
The tail-enders passed the first gate.
Freeway Fighter and Invaders Must Die both had turret-mounted weapons, so were able to able to keep up a steady fire on each other as they ran through Gate 2. Both were taking a fair bit of damage.
The buggy succumbed first. Lola and Perfect Day were coming up as well.
Marvelous Engines Of Resistance was coming up on the inside of Lola, whilst the rear of the race consisted of Dreamline, Big In Japan and All You Need Is Love. Towards the top of the picture you can see Molly emerging from Gate 3. But audience votes had been at play; she was now carrying five hazards thanks to some judicious expenditure. And she had an area of hazardous ground plus some caltrops to get past.
A new turn saw Invaders Must Die back in the running.
Molly wiped out! The only positive from it was that she flipped over the top of the caltrops, so was saved any damage.
Freeway Fighter and Invaders Must Die continued their struggle. They now had a couple of gear phases in which to catch up with Molly.
We were well into the afternoon now, and the number of visitors was thinning out. We'd spent a lot of the day chatting to passers-by though. And kids loved the various cars we put on display around the track.
Big In Japan's finest moment! He fired his mini-gun and wrecked Molly!
Mind you, Freeway Fighter was now out of the running as well. So was Lola. This gear-phase was a bloodbath.
Big In Japan's got tailgated by Welcome To The Machine but, amazingly, survived.
Invaders Must Die was running well and actually in the lead (since Molly was back at Gate 3 waiting to respawn).
Big In Japan met its end again, as Welcome To The Machine abandoned ramming and simply went for overkill with its arc-lightning projector.
All You Need Is Love was still blundering around near the start. And it would have been rude for it not to have shot up Invaders Must Die as it went past. Invaders Must Die was wrecked.
The back straight was looking busy, with plenty of vehicles back in play. Freeway Fighter passed Gate 3.
But Molly was back in the running and there was nothing to stop her.
We called the game at that point since it was time to start packing up. Molly had pretty much led from the start. Freeway fighter was looking a strong possibility for second place. Invaders Must Die would have to wait to respawn and would end up too far behind.
Once again the game was great fun to run and attracted plenty of attention from attendees. A few people were surprised to discover that the vehicles were not 3D prints and were simply toy cars with extras.
Many thanks to the IPMA for inviting and hosting us, Caesar for helping run the game and to June and Daniel for providing terrain pieces, play-aids and vehicles.
I didn't get many photos of the models on display. I meant to do a circuit of the hall, but the game occupied all of my day and I never managed it. Still, here's a few things I snapped at the start of the day.
Russian ball-tank.
Felixstowe F2A. I feel that I really need to add some 1/600th flying boats and float-planes to my WW1 air collection.
Fokker EV.
This year a few members of the club decided to enter some models in the competition so we were taking a more active part in the show itself. Caesar's WW2 armoured car won best in category.
