|
Gaslands Refuelled |
| 2026-03-04 |
Gaslands Refuelled
Imagine a big six-sided dice on the table. A game turn starts on 1, then 2, until 6. When on 1, the cars in gear 1 to 6 activate, when on 2, the cars in gear 2 to 6 activate, and so on. Thus, a car in gear 6 will have activated six times.
An activation brings in three decisions: a choice of move pattern (straight on, swerve, veer, turn), a choice of "handling" dice count, and weapon usage.
As seen in the image, the choice of a move pattern is intuitive, as long as the pattern "gear range" encomprises the car's current gear. The intersection, selected pattern vs gear, yields "shifts" or "hazards". A shift lets you shift one gear up or down, while hazard tokens accumulate. At six hazard token, your car might topple.
In a turn, it's entirely ok to start in gear 1, shift up, move again in the gear 2 phase, gear up, move again in the gear 3 phase. Except that you accumulate hazard each time you gear up (can't remember if you accumulate a hazard for gearing down).
Hence the second decision. How many "handling" dice will you roll. My main car yesterday evening had a handling of 4. It meant that I could roll up to four dice. Those handling dice are faced shift, shift, slide, slide, spin, hazard. A shift result can be used to gear up (and incur one hazard) or to negate a non-shift result. It reads difficult but after two instances it comes naturally.
The shooting is reminiscent of other miniature (war)games, you check the range and fire a handful of six-sided dice hoping for 4 to 6, and then the target car has 1 save dice (six to save) per gear it is currently in.
That is all there is to it for the core rules. Pardon the dryness of my exposé, I felt it necessary to thus frame the game.
Mutazoid just had a Zona Alfa phase, he played it solo a couple of times and suddenly he jumped on kitbashing cars for Gaslands Refuelled.
I had the book on my shelf for the last two years. It had piqued my interest, but I had failed so far to set a game up (heeding the call of so many other games). I was surprised to see the bug reach Mutazoid and take hold of him. He sent me a few set of STL files, asking me to print them and also if I would be interested in playing a game. I immediately said yes to the two questions and here we were.
The printing had gone well on my side. I tried to use complementary colours to get fancy patterns and templates that would look good on the track.
Kudos to my friend for kitbashing twice three cars, black and yellow cars vs punks with pink hair in green rusted sport utility vehicle adjacent mounts. We did two games, using the core of the game (no audience votes, no sponsors). After two gear phases I had the move/handling/shoot decision mechanisms locked in.
Our first game was a one vs one, and in our second game we aligned two cars each. I lost the two games, but much fun was had. I am looking forward to the next session. I am tempted to kitbash something on my side. I have a Hilux from Tomica, what will it become? I should rather focus on my trench warfare terrain.
- The pleasure of playing with small cars, like you did in the corner of the dining room;
- Making the cars your own by customizing them;
- Intuitive patterns that you lay in front of the car to guide it yo its next position (or its next collision);
- A system of "handling" dice (and hazard tokens) take allow shifts, slides, spins, and overheats in toppling;
- Rear facing mortars, missiles, oil kegs, caltrops, lasers, machine guns, ...
