Saturday Night Live

Thursday saw me playing Gaslands for the first time in nearly six months. The past couple of times it had come up as a game at the club I had been otherwise engaged, so missed it.

We were supposed to have five players, but two couldn't make it at the last minute so ended up playing with three, 50 Cans each. And two of us had gone for 50 Can single vehicles. So this was a small game by Gaslands standards.

We rolled up Saturday Night Live as the scenario, which basically involves grabbing Audience Votes by any means possible, including via a number of scenario-specific spot prizes. The teams were:

Caesar, running two Mishkin buggies
Other Daniel, running a single truck sponsored by the fire-themed Order Of The Inferno
Me, running a single Rutherford heavy truck with a turreted tank-gun (Siberian Khatru)

Here's Casar's opening move, as his best buggy zipped forward.

Siberian Khatru lumbered into life and blew the buggy away with a single shot. This scored Audience Votes for me (lots of damage) and for Caesar (having a vehicle wrecked).

Caesar's other buggy lasted one gear phase longer before being flamed by Other Daniel's vehicle. Don't worry; this scenario has respawn rules, so one of Caesar's vehicles could come back.

I plodded around firing my big gun, and picking up votes for damage. However I was running out of ammunition.

At this moment the ever-changing spot prize was for performing a t-bone ram on another vehicle. Ramming a heavy truck is never sensible, but points are points. Even if  Other Daniel scored them accidentally.

Look, I don't pretend that these photos tell much of a narrative. We had three vehicles in play and it didn't take long before we'd all been destroyed and had to respawn. Essentially we chased around the arena trying to pick up spot prizes (Lose all hazards? Done. Perform a hazardous manoeuvre? Easy). It was great fun, but hard to keep track of.

Here's a nice head-on collision that was no fun for either vehicle.

A lull in the hostilities when, for a phase or two, none of us had an active vehicle in play.

My big gun had limited ammo (although I could use Audience Votes to buy more, and did), but with a crew of four and some hull-mounted machine-guns I could still dish out damage without the main armament.

Into the closing stages of the game and I was doing well on points. A few good damaging shots would see me pick up the win. At that point I then failed to reach the point-score damage threshold with any shot; my gunner just couldn't do it. 

We chased around an obstacle for a bit.

Siberian Khatru was briefly inconvenienced by being destroyed. Again.

But it was soon back in action and failing to score damaging hits.

Actually I was still picking up plenty of votes thanks to my vehicle being a crowd-pleaser. This meant that I got an Audience Vote every time I wiped out from getting too many hazards. And having a low handling heavy truck with a big gun meant that I was wiping out a lot. Sure I sometimes flipped and took damage, and often ended up facing in odd directions, but when your gun is in a turret direction is often meaningless. 

Anyway, there was drama towards the end. Caesar had a good run of spot-prizes and reached a score on a par with mine (you need 15 victory points to win, with each Audience Vote you earn being worth one - so long as it's earned close to an opposing vehicle. There's no hiding in the corner and doing fancy shit in this scenario). He then collided with the central pillar, and was wrecked. 

I failed to wipe out or score any major damage in the interim, so couldn't pick up the ONE VOTE I needed to win. However on my next activation I would.

And then Caesar respawned. The spot prize was to be at maximum gear. So he used all of his spare votes to ramp up to full speed from the off. That left him with one Audience Vote required to win.

You get an Audience Vote if a vehicle is wrecked. So he drove at full speed into an obstacle, the subsequent twisted metal of his vehicle winning the event for his team.

Sneaky. And pure Gaslands.

Final scores were:

Caesar - 15 points
Me - 14 points
Other Daniel - 5 points

Other Daniel had problems with his team abilities in that he scored Audience Votes for setting other vehicles on fire, but none of the vehicles he did it to lasted long enough aflame to actually score he points. 

Anyway, for a small game with (mostly) three vehicles it was a lot of fun, with all of us finding creative ways to pick up points and lots of cat and mouse manoeuvre. Siberian Khatru proved to be a useful vehicle in this scenario, with it's many limitations kind of working to its advantage.

Siberian Khatru

Rutherford - Heavy Truck - 50 Cans
Max Gear - 3
Handling -2
Crew - 4

125 mm Tank Gun (Turret) - 4 Ammo
Machine Gun (Sides)

Perks: Headshot, Crowd Pleaser