Check out the exciting game that has been dubbed Table Top Twisted Metal that plays like X-Wing that, so far, a lot of people may have not heard of yet!
Jstove here, and today I’m jumping off the 40k ship to talk about Gaslands. If you were looking for 40k stuff, go back and read over Vigilus and or Chapter Approved some more, lol.
What is Gaslands?
Gaslands is an indie game that has no official miniature line or products. The only official Gaslands product is a $12 rulebook that you can download or order a hardcopy version of from Osprey Publishing. Since Gaslands doesn’t have any retail presence, you’re not likely to find it at a local hobby shop.
Obviously, because there’s nothing for them to sell. Gaslands is a skirmish combat game in the vein of Mad Max. You and your opponent control teams of deathcars in vehicular deathmatches, races, and demolition derbies.
What’s the Buy-In?
At the LOWEST POINT, it’s theoretically possible to play Gaslands with just the rulebook, some Hot Wheels cars, and a handful of dice. That will all probably run you about $20.
At the HIGHEST POINT, expect to spend maybe around $60, FOREVER. This is if you buy custom templates, dice, rules, and a pile of cars. You can easily play Gaslands for the rest of your life for less than a hundred bucks.
The most essential components of the game are cheaper than dirt. You only really need one template set and the game miniatures are Hot Wheels cars, which you can pick up anywhere for a buck.
How Does it Play?
If you’re already familiar with FFG’s X-Wing, then you’re already familiar with maneuver templates. All ranges and vehicle movements in Gaslands are determined by using a series of maneuver templates to move the car on the table.
Or determine the range of a weapon. The templates available for a car to use are determined by the car’s speed. If a car is going super fast, it’s easy for it to travel a long distance in a straight line. But performing a hairpin turn becomes more dangerous.
A Game of Gears
There are six gears in a round, and gears are initiative steps. With each gear, players take turns activating one vehicle at a time and moving it, shooting it, or crashing it into a pile of dust. Every car in the game moves in the first gear and they can choose to upshift into faster gears or downshift to slower gears.
Once all the cars have moved in the first gear, players again take turns activating one vehicle at a time in the second gear.
This continues until gear six. Not every vehicle can operate in every gear. Performance cars, dune buggies, and motorcycles can operate in all six gears, but slower vehicles like trucks and buses cap out at 3 or 4. This allows the smaller and faster vehicles to run circles around the slower ones. as they’ll still have activations in later initiative steps.
As vehicles move around the table executing dangerous driving maneuvers, getting hit by explosions, or smashing into rocks or wrecked cars, they accrue hazard tokens.
The crazier and riskier you drive, the more hazard tokens will stack up on your car. Driving more conservatively and playing safe will allow you to bleed off hazard tokens. Once a car collects six hazard tokens, it’s in danger of losing control and must take a wipeout test.
If it fails, you’ll roll the car in a spectacular crash and take damage, and go back down to gear 1. Smaller vehicles like motorcycles and sports cars are unlikely to survive being rolled and totaled, but larger vehicles with a lot of hit points like buses will probably just back up and drive away. Dune buggies can drive as risky as they want because they have a roll cage that prevents damage from wiping out.
How Are The Models?
Gaslands is a hobbyist’s game. Since the game is played with Hot Wheels cars, the options for modeling are as unlimited as they are cheap. Your entire fleet of vehicles might only cost you five bucks. Whatever your favorite car is, if you can find a Hot Wheel of it, you can play it.
Vehicles can be armed with a variety of weapons of a post-apocalyptic or sci-fi nature. Some weapons and cars are limited on a faction basis. (Only one faction can buy a tank and only one faction can buy experimental electronic weapons.) But every faction has access to a wide variety of rockets, grenades, oil slicks, land mines, machine guns of every size, Molotov cocktails, and even explosive rams to make suicide bomb cars.
The only limitations to which vehicle can carry which weapon is the number of slots required and the number of crew members on the car to operate the weapons.
You could easily build every car from Mad Max, including the War Rig. Or you could build a variety of other crazy nutcase cars like a prison bus full of inmates that throw mountains of Molotov cocktails out the windows at anything that gets close.
Certain vehicle classes obviously favor certain weapon types- You wouldn’t put an explosive bomb ram on a dune buggy that would be unlikely to survive a collision… Unless of course, you didn’t mind sacrificing it! But rules as written, there really aren’t a lot of hard and fast locked-in build options, and the variety of build options is deep and viable.
Why Should you Play It?
-It’s cheap
With a $12 rulebook and the models are Hot Wheels cars, it’s even cheaper than trying to play 40k with green army men.
-You can go crazy
Helped along by the fact that it’s cheap, committing to Gaslands isn’t difficult. Any time you want to try something different or make a new army, you just buy more Hot Wheels.
-You’re an X-Winger
If you already enjoy X-Wing’s novel maneuver template system, then try it in a more low budget and post apocalyptic flavor.
-You’re a Mad Max fanboy
You will ride eternal, Shiny and Chrome.
