Gaslands - Petrol Heads and Zombies

For our 2017 Christmas game the members of THAGG (that's the The Honourable Arbroath Gamers Guild) decided to play Gaslands which had not long been released by Osprey as part of their Blue Book Wargames series. 

Children's toy boxes were duly looted and spare bits boxes raided to create a selection of wacky and weird over the top vehicles.

The kingsleypark meat wagon

The Arena

Much mayhem ensued, if I remember rightly I don't think I made it past the first corner and if memory serves me right, I think Gary the Shark won, although Roo seems to remember that everyone's cars ended up wrecked. Anyway we all agreed it would be good fun and that we would have to play again soon.

Best laid plans and all that.......

So dawns 2019, and with the THAGG long running D & D campaign finally finishing and Kev and Paul more inclined to spend their Wednesday nights playing some online game rather than taking part in the pure art of tabletop gaming, the committed THAGGers decided it was time to dust down the motors and so it was that the Cabin was set up last Wednesday for the Zombie Bash.

Neil's recently acquired track mat

The Protagonists - from left to right- The kingsleypark meat wagon, the Stevomobile, the Roo Bug, Neil's Rammin' Time and the Gary the Sharkmobile.

The secnario objective was pretty simple. The track was infested with Zombies and the players had to drive their vehicles skillfully and "collect" as many zombies as they could. Once the last Zombie had been "collected" the player with the most Zombies was declared the winner. If a vehicle was wrecked then it would spill 5 of their zombies and we agreed that the player could re-enter the track once with a new vehicle and carry on in the game.

The gates were built by Gary using the sprue frames from his Shadespire figures. 

They looked really good!

We had agreed a 30 can build limit. The meat wagon counted as a pick up truck so that gave me 3 build slots so I kitted out the meat wagon with a turreted rocket launcher and a rear firing machine gun and gave my crew grenades and handguns. The turret rocket launcher seemed like a good idea  at the time but it's a 3 shot weapon and then you are out of ammo for the rest of the game so perhaps not the wisest choice.

Under starters orders

Unfortunately for me, Roo won the initiative for the first turn so got to move first. He claimed he was trying to collect as many Zombies as he could with his first move, but to me it looked like he was lining up for a shot at the meat wagon.

And so it proved. The gatling gun on the Roo Bug opened up with a typical result -

Ouch 4 damage points! Still I would get to shoot him back in my turn with my fearsome rocket launcher -

Hmm - that will be one possible hit then (The "4" - the Eye of Sauron count as "1"'s).

Then as I tried to get away from the Roo Bug, the Sharkmobile hove into view. 

C'mon guys - you are supposed to be collecting Zombies! Leave the meat wagon alone!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the track, the Stevomobile was driving sedately up the road and adhering to the Highway Code.

The Rammin' Time weaving it's way between the Zombies. You are supposed to collect them Neil!!

Mind you I was being equally unsuccessful at managing to collect any Zombies but at least I had the Roo Bug, in the arc of my rear machine gun.

The Stevomobile slams on the brakes to avoid hitting the poor, defenseless Zombie. 

Stevo - the scenario is called Zombie Bash for a reason!!

In the meantime the Sharkmobile lines up a tasty shot on the Stevomobile.

In this game "6's" count as criticals and cause 2 points of damage. 

Stevo didn't save any of the hits and with his accumulated hazard tokens now totaling 6, he needed some "shifts" on his next roll of the skid dice to try and get rid of them before the "wipeout" stage of his turn.

So no hazard token being removed with that roll.

So Stevo had to make the first wipeout roll of the game. He had two hull points left and if he failed his flip roll he would take 2 points of damage. Stevo failed the roll and so, as is customary on these occasions -

And with the amount of ammo that Stevo still had in his car, instead of just becoming a wreck, he became a puff of smoke

The Zombies spill out away from the remains of the Stevomobile.

Neil, seeing this as an easy opportunity to scoop up 5 Zombies, picked up the template that he thought would put him on top of the Zombies

Eh not quite!

So despite taking a lot of punishment in the first few turns the meat wagon was not the first one to crash out. However, it was only a matter of time -

Oh bother!

The Roo Bug cruises past the remains of the meat wagon looking for Zombies

Having hitting the crash barrier it was only a matter of time before Neil's Rammin' Time ending up looking like this -

Next up it was the Roo Bug -

By this time myself, Stevo and Neil had brought on our new vehicles. Gary was scooping up the Zombies but inevitably he too ended up as a crash test dummy -

There were still loads of Zombies left on the track when time ran out on us and we called it a night. Neil and Gary were tied on 9 Zombies each, with rest of us someway behind (there were 50 Zombies in total on the track to begin with!) so perhaps next time we maybe need to focus more on the win condition than trying to blow each other up - nah! Where's the fun in that!

But let's not leave it another 14 months before we play again lads, okay????