I got the opportunity to head along to Main Force Patrol, the first organised play event for Gaslands in Melbourne (and possibly Australia) which was run at Good Games in the CBD (which, as I’ve discussed before, is a great gaming venue). Our TO was Drew, a passionate Gaslands fan who has been actively building and supporting the community here. There were eight players at the event, many of us still fairly new to the game, but an incredible level of hobby across all the teams.
The format for the day was three rounds, with the games escalating: 50 cans round one, 75 cans round two and 100 cans round three. No perks were allowed for round one, and your list had to carry through round to round with only additions. All the rules from the three issues of Time Extended were allowed as well.
My Teams
I decided to run a Slime sponsored team, and took the following (italics are what was added to the previous list):
50 Cans
Car – Rockets (“Red Rocket”)
Car – Machine Gun (“Battlehammer”)
Performance Car – Oil Slick Dropper (“Green Machine”)
75 Cans
Car – Rockets
Car – Machine Gun, Battlehammer
Performance Car – Oil Slick Dropper, Hot Start
Pick-up Truck – Flamethrower (“Flame”)
100 Cans
Car – Rockets
Car – Machine Gun, Battlehammer
Performance Car – Oil Slick Dropper, Hot Start
Pick-up Truck – Flamethrower
Performance Car – Nitro, Armour Plating, Overload (“Grilled”)
Game One
I was paired with Luke game one, who had a Warden team comprising a Buggy with rockets, and three cars with various mixes of grenades and/or Molotov cocktails (they were very explodey!), with one having a front mounted ram.
The first game was Zombie Bash, where there were 21 zombies scattered around the table, which you had to run over to collect. If a car was wrecked it would drop five collected zombies back on to the table.
The highlights from the game were:
- The Red Rocket driving up to a car and unloading a rocket point blank into it, causing more than enough damage to wreck it. The car then promptly exploded, causing enough hits to see Red Rocket wipe out from hazards, which saw it flip into a tree and explode itself.
- Battlehammer driving head-on into the ram equipped car, wrecking itself, but causing the prison car to wipe out (with one hull point left!), careening into a wall and exploding itself
Luke won with only two zombies collected, as we’d coughed most of them up from the spectacular ends our vehicles met.
Game Two
Game two I met John, who was also running a Warden team. The highlight of the team was his prison bus which had a ram, nitro, 2 grenades, and molotov cocktails, as well as three prison cars with Powder Keg and grenades (again, explodey).
This round we played Arena of Death, although with a ridiculously low roll we ended up with only three turrets, so it was more like Arena of Light Bullet Spray.
Highlights for the game were:
- Battlehammer racks up seven hazards as it ploughs head-on into the prison bus, doing enough damage to wreck it. Between the smash back and ensuing explosion it wrecks Battlehammer who also explodes.
- With one car each left on opposite sides of the table, John gears up from two to five, racing across the table to head on Red Rocket (sitting there stuck in first gear!). His dice fail him, and Red Rocket survives the ram, smashing back and wrecking John’s car, which promptly explodes and wrecks the Red Rocket.
With us both being tabled in the same activation, the game ends in a wreckage strewn draw.
Game Three
Game three was against Tim, who was running a Rutherford tank, which featured a turret mounted 125mm cannon and machine gun, plus grenades and a series of perks which allowed better to hit rolls and hazard management (sorry I lost track, there was a lot of them!).
For the last game we were playing the Death Race scenario, which the tank turned out to be unsuited to. Tim rightly tried to block me in and kill any cars that got out in front, but without weapons he had to use rams and ended up getting unlucky and wiping out gear phase one, although did disable Grilled in the process. The Green Machine was able to pull out ahead on the inside, while everyone else rammed or otherwise tried to stop the tank. The tank wiped out again in round two, leaving the Green Machine clear to cross the line and win the race.
Results
Drew had created some cool trophies, as well as having some new Hot Wheels for everyone to choose from, whilst Tim kindly donated his tank as an additional vehicle for the pool. The trophies were:
Most Audience Votes – Leigh
Most Wins – Jomane (also Leigh but counted back)
Best Car – John with his prison bus
The final standings sorted by audience votes were:
| Player | Audience Votes | Scenario Points | Wipeouts |
| Leigh | 27 | 9 | 2 |
| John | 25 | 4 | 10 |
| Luke | 23 | 4 | 6 |
| Rob (Me!) | 15 | 4 | 9 |
| Garry | 14 | 3 | 0 |
| Tom | 13 | 4 | 4 |
| Jomane | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| Tim | 3 | 0 | 2 |
Conclusion
I was very happy with my performance over the day, it highlighted that I need a lot more practice with the movement templates and need to rely less on ramming to take down other cars (especially when they’re Warden!). It also reconfirms that this game is an absolute blast as even when you’re losing you can cause something very cool to happen like a chain of crashes and explosions. There was an excellent level of hobby on display as you’ll have seen in the photos, and I picked up a few ideas to take away and start on (not least of which is to do a bus!). I didn’t get to snap as many photos of other teams and games as I would’ve liked, but I’ll keep it in mind for next time.
Thanks again to Drew for running the event it was a great day out throwing dice and pushing cars around the table, I look forward to another one in future.
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