Gaslands is a post-apocalyptic vehicular combat game by Mike Hutchinson and published by
Osprey Wargames. It is mainly playable with standard Hotwheels/Matchbox size 20mm scale vehicles but is scale-able to just about anything. You can also get it as well as token, templates, and a whole lot more from Mike Hutchingson's website
here.
I played a lot of Car Wars in my teenage years but it was a little cumbersome at times but very detailed for car construction. This game system turns it on its head and provides simple car construction and simple yet elegant mechanics for playing a more relaxed format of game. Add to that the ability to modify toy cars and I was sold.
The book is only 64 pages and is mostly meat and potatoes with only a half page for the background of the world. As the author says at the end of the book, the them players want can change from full Max Max to wacky races to NASCAR and everything in between.
The phases of a turn are divided by gears and cars move and shoot in gears they are at and lower gears. Therefore if you are in gear 3, you go in gears 1, 2, and 3. Also if you speed up in one of those gears, you also go in the higher gear too. When you move, you select a movement template and what you tough you must use! Some templates give shift bonuses at lower gears and hazard results for high ones. Then you roll the amount of dice equal to your handling score; 2 to 5 depending on the vehicle. The Shift result removes a hazard token, shifts up or down a gear, or cancels another result. Hazard results give you a hazard token and if you get 6 of them you might flip and wipe out. Slide means the slide template must be added to the template chosen and you get a hazard token. Then you move the vehicle and check for flip if you have more than 6 tokens. Then apply any Spin result and gain a hazard token checking again for a flip. There is always a chance of collisions (intentional and non-intentional). If the vehicle is fine after all this, then it can attack with whatever weapons it has as long as it has one crew per weapon.
Vehicle creation is detailed enough for lots of variation which makes me look forward to come creative hobby design.
There are various scenarios to play as well, from races to running over zombies to monster truck smash...etc.
The designers
website has lots of helpful downloads so you do not have to photocopy from the back of the book. Templates too.
Here is what the designers templates look like. Very snazzy.
Here is how the slide template looks like next to a swerve template. a sucsessful roll would mean the vehicle goes from one end of the swerve template to the other side but if an uncancelled slide result happened then they would go sideways at the slide template end.
Here are the tokens sold by the designer.
Lastly the dice. You don't need them but they are more handy than looking up the results on normal dice.
I bought this toy car haul while waiting for the rules for $50 and they will be a fantastic way to make factions and gangs.
