Gaslands

Gaslands

One of the things I saw recently published was Gaslands.

Gaslands RulesFor Christmas I received a copy of Gaslands, the post-apocalyptic vehicle combat game from Osprey.

Gaslands is a tabletop game of post-apocalyptic vehicular mayhem. With fast and cinematic rules, it is designed to be played with toy cars, allowing players to ram, skid and race their way through the wreckage of a burnt-out Earth.

Back in the day I was introduced to vehicular combat playing Games Workshop’s Battlecars and very quickly moved onto Car Wars.
I really liked Battlecars, the combination of templates, tokens and a game board. The game mechanics were simple, but it was a fun game and really created the right experience of car combat.

Though we continued to play Battlecars, we moved to Car Wars mainly as the lack of vehicle design rules was frustrating and Car Wars had them in abundance. As well as the core design rules I really liked The Uncle Albert’s™ Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop catalogues, which were always fun to read.

The Uncle Albert's™ Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop catalogues

Car Wars though more complex than Battlecars was still able to create fun and exciting games of vehicular mayhem.

I had many games of Car Wars and Battlecars. I even had articles published in Autoduel Quartely. These were great games and a lot of fun.

Interestingly I never played Games Workshop’s Dark Future vehicle combat game.

So as you cam imagine I approached Gaslands with a combination of expectation, anticipation and a little hesitancy. So far I have only read the background and the rules.

First impressions of the rules was positive and I liked the use of templates, which did remind me slightly of Dark Future. I liked the relatively simplicity of the rules which for means they will be easy to pick up and result in fast fun games.

For me the biggest shock was the background. I knew that the game was set in a post apocalyptic future, the surprise was that the apocalypse was caused by an alien invasion!

I do need to make some models, and now I wished I had played Dark Future as I would then have models I could use.

Time to find some toy cars…

Death Rally

In the dark and distant past I use to play Car Wars and also enjoyed the odd game of GW’s Battlecars. I even flirted with Dark Future for a while. I keep meaning to revist this genre, probably Car Wars which was a fun game.

However in the meantime I have been playing the odd game of Death Rally on my iPad.

It’s a great little racing game, but with guns and missiles, very much the flavour of Car Wars.

Download Dark Future

It was only a couple of weeks back when I mentioned Dark Future, in the main as I posted a photograph I had taken of a couple of the vehicles at Warhammer World.

Dark Future Cars

Well bless my cotton socks, you can now download from Games Workshop, the complete Dark Future game including all the supplements and White Dwarf articles. Warning – this is a very large file, 26.7MB.

Dark Future

Excellent, no excuse for a game now, though as I said before I liked the background and the models, but I much prefer the Car Wars mechanics.

Update 1 – fixed link to Specialist Games download page.

Update 2 – removed link as no longer working

Dark Future Cars

Those with long memories may remember that at one time Games Workshop produced a 20mm near future Car Wars style game called Dark Future. In which armed and armoured cars fought each other over the open road.

The game came with a selection of plastic vehicles and some were on display at Warhammer World.

Dark Future Cars

When the game was been promoted in White Dwarf there were lots of articles on how to convert Matchbox cars for use with Dark Future.

I really did like the concept and the metal miniatures which were also produced for the game, but though I admit I preferred the Car Wars rules.