Getting started with Gaslands

My brother told me about Gaslands, a post-apocalyptic vehicular skirmish game, and it piqued my interest. My elder son and I played several games of Frostgrave a while ago and really enjoyed it, although our campaign petered out without fanfare. (Wow, was it really two years ago? More on that later.) Both games are from the same publisher—Osprey Publishing—and just like Frostgrave is based on using your existing miniature collection, Gaslands is played with whatever old Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars you have. I ordered the rules and sped through them; my son saw me reading, asked about it, and read them as well, and we agreed that this sounded like fun. Vehicle maneuvers depend on movement templates, which we could have made ourselves out of paper or cardboard, but hey, I got promoted, so I bought some MDF templates and tokens from MRlasershop on Etsy.

I shared these short session reports on Facebook, and I decided to copy them over here to the blog, where it would be easier for me to revisit them later. In preparing this post, I looked back over the Frostgrave one, and it's hard to believe that was really two years ago. One of the reasons Gaslands caught my attention is that the BoardGameGeek page claims it's playable by ages 8+, compared to Frostgrave's 12+. My second son is 8, and he sits pretty well into the BGG recommended ages, so while I suspect Frostgrave is still too much for him, I thought Gaslands may be just in the zone of proximal development. (Yes, that's how we do things around here.)

The day my templates arrived, my older son had a class to attend, so #2 son and decided to jump into Gaslands' recommended starting game: two cars per player, each with a front-mounted machine gun, in a last-man-standing deathmatch.

My son's bedtime was not too far off, so we agreed to play a time-limited game. It was a little choppy as I was trying to sort out the rules. They are presented in the book like they were written by a programmer: concise, clear, in order, and decomposed into named procedures. This makes them easy to reference, if you know what you're looking for (that is, debugging), but it's not necessarily the best way to express the big picture ideas. I had printed up the official quick reference card and a convenient cars-only dashboard I found on BGG, and these helped smooth out the experience.

Toward the end of the first game. MDF movement template example shown behind the red and black hot rod.

We began in a tight grid formation for maximum carnage, and I only have that one picture of the game. This is a shot right before my son misjudged the tightness of a hairpin turn and smashed his grey car right into that orange gate. It let us learn the collision rules, and it took us right to bedtime. Play time was just under an hour, and we enjoyed it. #1 son was jealous when he saw the cars on the kitchen table upon returning from his meeting.

The next morning was Saturday, and we set up a three-player game with the same rules. We took two cars each and set up a pair of them—controlled by different players—at three points of a triangle. I took a few more pictures of this one, not really intending a full battle report, but it turns out I had enough to capture some of the highlights.

#1's gray car is about to move in and take a solid shot on my black car. My white car (bottom right) is thinking vengeance and swings in behind him. Out of nowhere, #2's red buggy (top) comes flying forward, sliding and spinning, ending up right in front of my white car. He blasts away with his machine gun, but now we're both in third gear and practically bumper-to-bumper: collision on one of our activations is inevitable.

Then, #1's white car (bottom left) comes careening toward us and rams #2's buggy! Neither one is destroyed, but my #2's car are still headed for inevitable collision.

My white car slams into the front corner of #1's white car. Neither driver tries to evade, and my car is destroyed. It flies forward, ramming into #2's buggy, demolishing it as well. #1's white car somehow survives this carnage, as neither my nor #2's car explodes.

Behind all this, here comes #2's orange hot rod, making an easy medium straight maneuver. The crew leans out with their pistols and put the last point of damage onto Alex's white car, destroying it. That's how we all lost our first cars.

Now that orange hot rod had pulled off a crazy sliding, spinning maneuver on its first activation, which had let it tear into one of my cars with its machine gun, but it's sitting on several hazard tokens. At this point, it's in fourth gear and headed toward the edge of the table. #2 drops his gear and tries to turn, but a really unlucky roll has him slide off the table, disqualified.

In truth, #2 son was having a hard time staying focused on the action. Even though the turns go quickly and—from my perspective—everyone has a stake in each turn, it was just a bit too long for him. He's also a really kinetic kid, and so he would go physically spinning off into the next room, making explosion and crashing sounds and throwing his arms into the air as anything exciting happened. Having him eliminated first was okay, and I think we'll have to take his developmental limits into consideration if we try to play any other scenarios. I'm wondering if he would be better served by a small custom game, something less than the recommended 50 cans.

Back to the session report. My black car spun around and tried to out maneuver #1's grey. I wasn't able to get it under control though and had to choose between ramming the pillar or his car. The choice was clear. We smashed into each other, leaving each with just one hull point remaining. He pulls of a crazy hairpin turn and spin, finishing me off with his front-mounted machine gun. #1 son is victorious!

The interlocking system of gears, maneuver templates, and skid dice is really excellent. It's pretty elegant: the higher gear you are in, the more moves you get, but the more dangerous the moves are. On any move, you can roll skid dice to attempt to shift gears, spin, or slide, but sometimes this goes very badly. I've seen enough post-apocalyptic movies to vividly picture the setting, and I've seen enough action movies to picture the crazy car maneuvering. Heck, I've spun and skidded out in my own cars, and so I know that feeling viscerally. My wife asked an interesting question about it: how do my kids envision it? How does someone with no cultural context around MadMaxian post-apocalyptic cars visualize the action?

This brings up another interesting piece of the game, and I've tried to capture this in the session report above: it is cinematic. It's turn-based, but it feels more like everyone is moving at once, but the camera keeps changing. One of my drivers sought vengeance for his team. The driver of the orange hot rod pulled off crazy maneuvers but overdid it and ended up careening off the cliff. Three different drivers headed straight for each other in high gear in an insane game of chicken. I think this dramatic sense is facilitated by the fast turns and what are really simple rules, once you get the basics down. To this end, the designer's suggestion of playing the two-car deathmatch is a good one.

My boys are all pretty crafty kids, and I think they will enjoy converting some old cars into Gaslands teams. The kids don't know it yet, but I ordered a bunch of 3d-printed weapons from FunBoardGames on Etsy, and those should be here this week. I'm thinking about seeing if they want to try crafting the rulebook's recommended team builds as a first try. I suspect a trip to Goodwill to look for more vehicles to beat up is in our near future.

Thanks for reading. As I mentioned above, I enjoyed going back and reading my Frostgrave report while writing up this one. This is one of those posts that is mostly for future-me, so I can look back and remember some fun family memories. Who knows how often we'll play this one, if it will fade out like Frostgrave, or if it can all come back to the table as the younger boys get a bit older as well.