Gaslands

A Matchbox sized VW Bus crashing into another armored car
The ‘Boom Bus’ crashing through a rival!

Gaslands is a tabletop game of post-apocalyptic vehicular mayhem. We started playing in public in St. Lawrence county, New York in an effort to build a community of players. This page is a resource for those folks interested getting more into the spirit of the game. The best part about this game is it’s easy and inexpensive to get started. Grab the rules for $15 and a few Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars and you’re ready for mayhem! Or come play with us! If you have questions please contact me at chuck@mauvelincoln.org. Check out our photos of us playing! (We’re not too weird!)

We have a regular set of dates now! Wheee! We’re now meeting on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at the Canton Free Library at 5pm!
Next plays:

  • All local plays cancelled due to the pandemic! We’ll ride again someday!

About the Game

  • Gaslands – This is the game’s home on the web. You can purchase the rules in PDF or paperback from here. There’s also lots of downloads and a discussion forum available.
  • Board Game Geek: Gaslands – Board Game Geek is the center of the universe for the tabletop gaming hobby. This link goes to the BGG’s Gaslands landing page. From here you can see how-to play videos, reviews, fan made accessories, discussion forums, free downloads and tons of photos of cars made by fans around the world.
  • YouTube: Gaslands – This link provides a canned search of YouTube for Gaslands. There’s so much here! How-to play videos, car-modding instructional videos, map scenery instructional videos, commentary, strategy, session reports! Huge “rabbit hole” warning!
  • Etsy: Gaslands – This link goes to Etsy’s canned search of Gaslands related products. Here you can buy custom dice, templates, 3D printed weapons, tokens and lots more.
  • Reddit: Gaslands Subreddit – This is the place to post your models, terrain, teams, scenarios, battle reports and ask questions.
  • Thingiverse: Gaslands – This link provides a canned search of Thingiverse for items tagged or described as Gaslands. This a great place to get the design files for weapons and scenery pieces. NOTE: this is the design files only! If you can’t 3D print, then you should check out the Etsy link above instead.

Movies to See

These are recommended viewings to get in the spirit! These links go to the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com). From there you should be able to find where you can stream them! I’m watching these all again soon and I’ll post my thoughts about each here afterwards. If you run across another great source material movie please let me know and I’ll add it to the list!

  • Death Race 2000 (1975 R) [I own a DVD copy of this] Clearly the grand-daddy of all the Death Race movies. Cheesy as hell but a spectacle not to be missed. It’s interesting to see what aspects of this movie translated into Death Race versus the later Death Race 2050.
  • Mad Max (1979 R) [I own a DVD copy of this] While this is the first of the iconic series it’s the one with the least amount of vehicle on vehicle violence. It’s basically a revenge story on wheels. It is the origin of the iconic black interceptor Max drives in the rest of the movies.
  • Mad Max: The Road Warrior (1981 R) [I own a DVD copy of this] This movie is really the origins of the desert road warrior look that’s so indicative of what folks think of when they think Mad Max. Lots of great of chases and car based weapons! If you’re going to dive into Mad Max movies this one is a solid place to start as it covers the events of the first movie in an intro segment.
  • Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome (1985 PG-13) [I own a DVD copy of this] This contains all of the great costumes and sets but really none of the vehicle combat.
  • Wheels of Fire (1985 R) [On Amazon Prime as of October 2019] This low budget film has some great scenes of road combat punctuated by pointless post-crash explosions. I’m not what the “Sand Men” section added to the story but it adds underground savages to the genre I guess?
  • Steel Frontier (1995 R) [On Amazon Prime as of October 2019] This combines Mad Max style post apocalyptic with western cowboy style. “Death Riders. Never liked that name. We ride in numbers. Death rides alone.
  • Death Race (2008 R) [I own a DVD copy of this] This is an action packed vehicle-on-vehicle violence fest! This is obviously where Gaslands gets its “Death Race” scenario from. Interesting game scenario ideas: disabled weapons initially. Players would have to run over special buttons on the board to activate the weapons on a car. The buttons then would become active and inactive at random intervals. The true race is to get to the weapons active first and get the drop on vehicles without weapons active!
  • Speed Racer (2008 PG) [I own a DVD copy of this] This movie is very faithful to the cartoon! While not technically car combat, the racing is exciting and there’s a limited form of “aggressive driving” involved. I like the concept of “jump jacks” that allow a car to vault out of collisions and over other obstacles. Might be an interesting piece of technology in Gaslands!
  • Death Race 2 (2010 R) [I own a DVD copy of this] This is basically a prequel for the 2008 movie. It spends about half the movie showing the “Death Match” material which was the early form of Death Race. It really doesn’t cover any new ground. The car fighting scenes are decent. I didn’t get any ideas from this for Gaslands though.
  • Death Race: Inferno (2013 R) [I own a DVD copy of this] This sequel for the first movie sees the Death Race franchise spun out into a global race and a new Frankenstein created. The weapons hot-zones are limited meaning that a vehicle might not always have live weapons. This creates and interesting idea: weapon go hot after a gate but deactivate when crossing certain areas on the map.
  • Road Wars (2015 Not Rated) [On Amazon Prime as of October 2019] This is a lowish budget film combining post-apocalyptic vehicle combat with zombies. Interesting and worth a watch!
  • Mad Max: Fury Road (2015 R) [I own a DVD copy of this] I can see why this movie is so popular among the Gaslands fans. It combines the vehicle violence of The Road Warrior and the great costuming and sets of Beyond the Thunderdome with a decent plot and script. A lot of the content of this movie found it’s way into Gaslands via the TX1: Savage Highways expansion.
  • Road to Wasteland (2017 TV-14) [On Amazon Prime as of August 2019] This is a documentary about a real-life event where fans of the Mad Max films modify real cars and get together for a weekend in the desert. While I’m proud of my cars it’s nothing in comparison to these folks! These guys are kindred spirits!
  • Death Race 2050 (2017 R) [On Netflix as of July 2019] Cheesy as hell. Still worth it! My favorite lines: “Welcome to the Red Zone. It smells of barbecue and bedsores.” And “I don’t want to die sober!” This movie gives me the idea of a point based scenario where passing gates gives the players points based on placing. Then pedestrians could then be additional points. Also pedestrians, that potentially, shoot back!
  • Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy (2018 R) [On Netflix as August 2019] It’s a fine movie highlighting a fair amount of vehicle on vehicle violence. Each car has a “tombstone” which appears to be a rear facing set of armor. Gaslands doesn’t really have a concept of damage facing, or armor for that matter, so I’m not sure it could be implemented directly. Maybe as a rear facing ram?