Saturday Night Live For Two

Last night was Gaslands week at the Gong Garage Gamers, but with one person crying off sick and others involved testing a game for a forthcoming show we ended up with just two players. 

We rolled a scenario and got Saturday Night Live which, with hindsight, is probably not the best scenario for two people as it involves some quite complex interactions to get the Audience Votes flowing for points. 

Caesar brought two Rutherford performance cars armed with mini-guns. 

I wanted to try out a team for The Order Of The Inferno, to see how it worked. It involves trying to set things on fire, including your own vehicles. I ran:

Jockey Full Of Bourbon - A truck with a flamethrower and napalm dropper
Stay On These Roads - A buggy with a napalm dropper
Picture To Burn - A bike with, you've guessed it, a napalm dropper

They were loaded with perks to repair hits and hazards on each other but to also ignite themselves when it became important to score votes. 

I set up a fairly open arena, and we started on opposite sides of it. 

Here's Jockey Full Of Bourbon (foreground) and Stay On These Roads. The bike had gone off elsewhere. 

One of Caesar's cars came straight at my vehicles, guns blazing but inflicting little damage. However with a spot-prize for initiating a ram, Caesar went for it, turning sharply back  and hitting my buggy. 

It was enough to wipe out his car. My truck shaved very close to it, unleashing flaming death from its side-mounted flamethrower as it did so, and destroying the vehicle. 

Caesar's other car was after my bike but I managed to zip past him before he could shoot at me and dropped some napalm just to be extra mean. Unfortunately Caesar managed to avoid the flames. 

Mind you, in avoiding the flames he nearly came a cropper, narrowly avoiding a collision with a shipping container.

Anyway, after a bit more driving around I got a chance to plonk some more napalm in front of Caesar's surviving vehicle. And I'd set my truck on fire so I could earn Audience Votes once Caesar burst into flames.

He drove through the napalm without taking a hit.

Unfortunately in setting up the napalm my buggy wiped out, crashed into a wall and was destroyed. 

Keen to pick up some sponsor-orientated Audience Votes by setting something on fire I went for another option. I set my bike on fire and then deliberately crashed it into Caesar's car. A collision with something in fire sets you on fire. 

Caesar tried to evade the damage from the bike, so amazingly I survived the crash and actually dealt a decent amount of damage. But I'd misjudged how many hazards Caesar's car had. The crash caused it to wipe out. Wiping out dumps all hazards. And if a vehicle has no hazards any fire it has goes out. 

So once again I'd failed to set something on fire, and now my truck was burning and I had nothing to show for it but damage. Still, the truck soon wiped out and wasn't on fire any more.

The current spot-prize involved ramming an enemy vehicle. Caesar went for it. 

My truck was wrecked. Caesar now had the only vehicle in play until I respawned.

At that point we called the game. We both had 7 or 8 victory points but needed 7 or 8 more to finish the scenario. Neither of us were in much of a position to collect them through sponsor abilities, so it would now be a long slog via spot-prizes. We decided to end the game and call it a draw.

Really we needed at least one more player. But for all that it was a fun game and I found it a useful exercise in trying to understand how best to use a sponsor I'd not tried before. 

Gaslands - Capture The Flag

We had four players for Gaslands last night. This meant that we were happy to go with a 50 can game. And three of us brough single 50 can vehicles.

We rolled Capture The Flag, which is an interesting scenario with just one vehicle. You have to have a flag on one of your vehicles (obvious choice if you have just one) but it's deposited in the arena if you wrecked. It can then be picked up. You win if you have two flags on one of your vehicles. Obviously harder to do if you have multiple vehicles, but fun with one vehicle.

Anyway, Daniel has a single flamethrower-armed truck from the Order Of The Inferno. Craig had a Scarlett truck, but hadn't really read through how Scarlett works, so had a less than optimal design. Caesar had two trucks, sponsored by Rutherford and both equipped with front-mounted tank guns. And I bucked the trend with my James Bond Aston Martin DB5 - a Verney sponsored performance car. 

After some early moves there'd been a bit of shooting. Biond had inflicted a hit with his machine-guns, whilst one of the tank-guns had failed to make an impression on the DB5 (it's tough).

The DB5 in action. 

Daniel chased down Bond and set the DB5 on fire. 

It took some speedy driving to get to a unfrequented part of the arena and put out the fire. You stay on fire so long as you have hazards, so I had to dump them fast. Best way to do that is to wipe out, which I did in such a way as to stay in the game for that gear phase.

Daniel did a slick turn around an obstacle with his truck. 

Caesar shot him, and his vehicle wrecked. This dropped the flag.

You can just see the purple flag tucked in behind the obstacle. And Bond had a plan. Of course. 

Meanwhile Craig's mini-gun armed truck was hunting Caesar's other truck. I think Caesar was taking a bit of damage. 

Back to Bond's plan. Caesar was lining up for a run on the flag (out of shot). So I had to be faster. Being in a perfoamnce car, that was easy. The rest was pure Gaslands. Step One: Ram the obstacle. 

 

Step Two: On the next gear phase, ignore the obstacle, drive through it and pick up the flag. A win!

Also drive through oil and loose gravel. The hazards were stacking up. 

We finished the activation phase. The DB5 was wildly out of control, but Bond had already won. However his move finished next to Caesar's truck, so it would have been rude not to use the Eureka! perk to magic up a one-shot tank-gun, and blow his truck to smithereens. 

Bond then wiped out. And flipped ...

...  over the arena wall. 

Technically that disqualifies a vehicle, but the game was won once the flag was picked up, so the later bits were just extra chrome. Bond grabbed the flag, took out an enemy in passing with a gadget and then escaped into the night. 

What a hero!

Saturday Night Live

Thursday saw me playing Gaslands for the first time in nearly six months. The past couple of times it had come up as a game at the club I had been otherwise engaged, so missed it.

We were supposed to have five players, but two couldn't make it at the last minute so ended up playing with three, 50 Cans each. And two of us had gone for 50 Can single vehicles. So this was a small game by Gaslands standards.

We rolled up Saturday Night Live as the scenario, which basically involves grabbing Audience Votes by any means possible, including via a number of scenario-specific spot prizes. The teams were:

Caesar, running two Mishkin buggies
Other Daniel, running a single truck sponsored by the fire-themed Order Of The Inferno
Me, running a single Rutherford heavy truck with a turreted tank-gun (Siberian Khatru)

Here's Casar's opening move, as his best buggy zipped forward.

Siberian Khatru lumbered into life and blew the buggy away with a single shot. This scored Audience Votes for me (lots of damage) and for Caesar (having a vehicle wrecked).

Caesar's other buggy lasted one gear phase longer before being flamed by Other Daniel's vehicle. Don't worry; this scenario has respawn rules, so one of Caesar's vehicles could come back.

I plodded around firing my big gun, and picking up votes for damage. However I was running out of ammunition.

At this moment the ever-changing spot prize was for performing a t-bone ram on another vehicle. Ramming a heavy truck is never sensible, but points are points. Even if  Other Daniel scored them accidentally.

Look, I don't pretend that these photos tell much of a narrative. We had three vehicles in play and it didn't take long before we'd all been destroyed and had to respawn. Essentially we chased around the arena trying to pick up spot prizes (Lose all hazards? Done. Perform a hazardous manoeuvre? Easy). It was great fun, but hard to keep track of.

Here's a nice head-on collision that was no fun for either vehicle.

A lull in the hostilities when, for a phase or two, none of us had an active vehicle in play.

My big gun had limited ammo (although I could use Audience Votes to buy more, and did), but with a crew of four and some hull-mounted machine-guns I could still dish out damage without the main armament.

Into the closing stages of the game and I was doing well on points. A few good damaging shots would see me pick up the win. At that point I then failed to reach the point-score damage threshold with any shot; my gunner just couldn't do it. 

We chased around an obstacle for a bit.

Siberian Khatru was briefly inconvenienced by being destroyed. Again.

But it was soon back in action and failing to score damaging hits.

Actually I was still picking up plenty of votes thanks to my vehicle being a crowd-pleaser. This meant that I got an Audience Vote every time I wiped out from getting too many hazards. And having a low handling heavy truck with a big gun meant that I was wiping out a lot. Sure I sometimes flipped and took damage, and often ended up facing in odd directions, but when your gun is in a turret direction is often meaningless. 

Anyway, there was drama towards the end. Caesar had a good run of spot-prizes and reached a score on a par with mine (you need 15 victory points to win, with each Audience Vote you earn being worth one - so long as it's earned close to an opposing vehicle. There's no hiding in the corner and doing fancy shit in this scenario). He then collided with the central pillar, and was wrecked. 

I failed to wipe out or score any major damage in the interim, so couldn't pick up the ONE VOTE I needed to win. However on my next activation I would.

And then Caesar respawned. The spot prize was to be at maximum gear. So he used all of his spare votes to ramp up to full speed from the off. That left him with one Audience Vote required to win.

You get an Audience Vote if a vehicle is wrecked. So he drove at full speed into an obstacle, the subsequent twisted metal of his vehicle winning the event for his team.

Sneaky. And pure Gaslands.

Final scores were:

Caesar - 15 points
Me - 14 points
Other Daniel - 5 points

Other Daniel had problems with his team abilities in that he scored Audience Votes for setting other vehicles on fire, but none of the vehicles he did it to lasted long enough aflame to actually score he points. 

Anyway, for a small game with (mostly) three vehicles it was a lot of fun, with all of us finding creative ways to pick up points and lots of cat and mouse manoeuvre. Siberian Khatru proved to be a useful vehicle in this scenario, with it's many limitations kind of working to its advantage.

Siberian Khatru

Rutherford - Heavy Truck - 50 Cans
Max Gear - 3
Handling -2
Crew - 4

125 mm Tank Gun (Turret) - 4 Ammo
Machine Gun (Sides)

Perks: Headshot, Crowd Pleaser

War Rig!

We've been playing Gaslands for a few years now, but we'd never done a game featuring a war rig before. Caesar thought that it might be fun to try the mini-campaign in the rules though, and that features the adventures of a war rig in the wastelands.

To that end he built a lovely war rig.

The first scenario simply involves driving the rig from one side of the table to the other. The Rigger team gets enough points to buy a rig and a couple of support vehicles. That was me. It was also supposed to be Daniel as well, but his bathroom ceiling had an rain-induced apocalypse of its own (we've had a lot of rain) and he had to leave before we'd even rolled any dice.

The other four players are the Gangers. They have the same number of points as the Riggers, start on the opposite edge and simply have to stop the rig from crossing the table. They get to place two barricades anywhere on the table; you can see them positioned sensibly in the rig's path.

The campaign has a list of special perks the rig can have; it selects one. In this case I went for one that allows me to destroy obstacles I collide with once per turn. So that dealt with the barricade that was in my way.

A quick jink to the right and a run through that patch of vegetation and I would be home! But the Gangers were closing in.

My second support vehicle was off to the left, where it could zip in on the flank of the attackers.

The Gangers attack and the rig starts to take damage.

Two more Gangers close in top right.

The van had a tank gun, which made it unstable but also meant that I started to take some serious damage.

Meanwhile my second support car was shooting up the flanking Gangers.

The yellow mini was equipped with an Electric Arc Projector. This bounces its attack from one vehicle to another. It hit the rig, and the attack then bounced to my support car and then to the Ganger's tank-gun armed van. It took off the rig's last hull hits but almost destroyed the van as well!

Declan wanted to be part of things and revved up a car ...

... to ram the rig! Given I had no hit points left, this was fairly pointless, but it was fun.

So in the scenario the rig isn't wrecked when it loses its last hull points; you have to remove any special perks it has as well. Each perk has a condition which causes it to be lost. In the case of my special terrain-destroying ram it was being involved in a head-on collision with an enemy vehicle. So the Gangers lined up such a collision ...

And that was the end of the rig!

The Gangers had won this round of the campaign.

This was fun to play; the rig is an interesting and tough opponent, and the scenario made a change from our regular Gaslands games. Many thanks to Caesar for putting everything together, especially the lovely war rig.