Saturday Game Day

A group of us met at a friend's house on Saturday afternoon and evening for a bit of group gaming fun. Wayne our host, and Mike set up the tabletop for Gaslands for game one. Mike was the only person in attendance with Gaslands experience and I've been interested to see how it works after putting together Rubber and Lead a year before Gaslands came out. The games are nearly identical in presentation and concept. Let's see how the fellows at Osprey did with their execution.

Our drivers and the table layout. Turns out I got no pictures with Wayne in them. The course was a figure-8, sort of. Cars were chosen from Wayne's large collection - he's set up a bunch of 25-point cars and we were told to use two each. I grabbed two without looking figuring that for a n00b game, what did it matter, really. The other guys put considerably more thought into their choices.

My two cars are circled. I got the pole position and the Red Devil pushed to the front of the pack early. Brinks was squarely middle-of-the-pack.

Alan's red car managed to spin out before it got to gate 2, which meant the Red Devil got there first. I ended up with a Slide on my way through the gate which was ridiculously fortunate - I was pointing right where I need to be!

Until this crapwagon decides to stop in front of me! Wayne is a bad person.

Gate 2 gets jammed up. My armored car gets hemmed in by Brad's 6-by Hearse.

A couple of cars dawdled in the back of the pack. Alan's blue car whips right in front of Mike's Bronco. I just really appreciated the offensive driving - it was truly inspired.

I managed to thread the needle of gate 5. Unfortunately, I was at gear 5, rocking five hazards and couldn't roll enough shifts to correct the situation!

No pics of my subsequent spin-out which gave Patrick's Blue Beetle an opportunity.

There's the Beetle almost to gate 3.

And there's the Beetle winning with me right behind him. He was at gear 5 for the entire home stretch and I had to speed up from 1 which is all he needed to get past me.What a bummer. Great job Patrick! Brad's hearse was in third, about 24 inches behind.

So, my thoughts? Without going out of my way to speak ill of a competitor's game, it's miserable. 😀Granted, it's got somewhat different goals and tries to be a lot more open and customizable. The result is entirely too many rules, counters, special dice, etc.

Of note are the impulse movement, which I considered early on in the development of Rubber and Lead. I pitched it directly in the bin the moment it became clear that it would slow the game down dramatically. I also struggled with the handling of collisions. It appears that Gaslands' creators did as well. The crash damage mechanic is remarkably similar but the handling of car positions is wildly different.

At the end of the game, we had spent three and a half hours driving two car each and didn't fire any weapons! Granted, the tabletop was probably way too big for the race, and two cars per player was twice as many as we should have had for an intro game, and having to hold fire until all cars were past gate 2 didn't help. The only significant tactical decisions to be made were the positioning of opponents' cars after they'd spun out / flipped. I'd give it another try, but it'd have to be a much smaller affair that better represents the typical game of Gaslands.

A bit later, the table was reset to Railgun 2100 - a sci-fi derivative of Fist Full of TOWs. Wayne and Mike supplied the armies.

Wayne, Patrick, Mark and I were on one side, while Mike, Brad and Alan formed the opposition.

My Flacon grav tanks get aggressive on the left flank.

It was very much a high-tech (us) vs. low-tech (them) affair. I left at 10:00pm after turn 4. We were solidly thrashing our opponents when I left, with perhaps a 12-0 kill/loss ratio. I don't know how the game ended but I liked the system. I think it may have been the wrong choice for a group of seven who had never played it at all though. I'd play it again in a much more tightly controlled situation.