My hobby life remains a bit slow thanks to a weekend of cancellations. I should have had some gladiators and Quar to fill my personal content quota, but instead here we are having to talk about a demo I have vaguely planned for work. I am blessed to work as a wargame analyst (and assistant program manager, I guess) and as a result I work with a wonderful batch of nerds who are so accomplished in so many ways it makes my head explode.

The other benefit is: they like games. We do a monthly game day where we demo games for the team. It’s a volunteer thing focused on fun. Last time I had the helm, I ran Chain of Command and regretted it. They could see the value of the system but ultimately it was too much to chew in a 4-6 PM we-just-finished-a-whole-day time block. This time, I decided to go light with Gaslands because… uh… it gained traction in our Teams chat, no pun intended.

Of course, this is terrible news. I didn’t realize it at the time but after playing another game with my son a few months back, I realize Gaslands has a surprising amount going on and I need to be careful what I throw down. First, the pros: Gaslands is fun and clever, with mechanics that are unique in a way that should tickle any wargamer’s “Neat game design” bone. It is appealing in theme: cool cars racing around and shooting each other. Rad. It is simple to fundamentally understand if you play games otherwise, after a small trick in learning the turn order–higher gears let you activate more. Finally, the game is fun at its core–which is always a plus.

The cons, though, worry me. The core of movement is simple but you have to remember what to do if anything goes wrong–that’s a burden for me as a game facilitator since I’m dealing with people that aren’t very experienced with this style of game. Hit something head on and we have to stop and recall the procedure. It’s not hard but sometimes it’s not 100% intuitive. This is, admittedly, small potatoes compared to the next one.

The game is slow. Gaslands, while light and breezy on the surface, is a game I’d contend should never be played with more than 4-6 cars on the board. It takes a surprising amount of time to select a maneuver and execute it. The turns are very procedural, with a lot of small technical decisions that aren’t very clear to a new player. Should you roll the skid dice every time? When is it wise to do so? How do I take advantage of sliding? Wait–if I shift up I go again?! Should I ever not shift up?

It’s not a lot to an experienced player, but to a novice? It’s a ton.

Okay, fixing this. Well, I need to be super well versed with the rules. I plan to play a game with my son this weekend, ahead of the work game next week. I will write down my own personal FAQ of questions I expect. Next, I plan to layout simple cards. No one is getting the fancy stuff. It’s tempting to throw a bunch of harpoons into our match but that probably ends in confusion and bad feelings. I will be making set of Gaslands cards that cleanly and plainly lay out what each car has and explains all relevant rules for them in one place.

To keep things moving quickly, everyone will have a single vehicle to play with. This limits how many decisions they have to make. Layer on this that the race will be intentionally short and we should actually be able to finish a game for once. Our main foible with these after work game days is we rarely ever actually finish the games. I’m hoping to fix that here.

My remaining dilemmas are twofold: If I have more than four players, should I run two games simultaneously? How should I handle player elimination/death?

The game is functionally very simple once you get underway–with experienced miniatures wargamers I think I could readily run two boards. Unfortunately, I don’t have those. I have people who have played a ton of hex and counter or board games, but not a ton of miniatures wargames, let alone vehicular ones. I can never be sure where they’ll get hung up, so running two boards is inherently quite risky. My thought is to setup two and if I have a player overflow, let them watch a round on the first board and then get the second board underway. Once you’ve seen it executed, the game is quite simple.

The second one, I have two options. I could make player elimination permanent. This could be a feels-bad, but will get the games done faster for sure. Last man standing wins. Alternatively, I could go with the rules-as-written for death races, where you spawn at the start of the next round. This still keeps things moving but prevents a player from being fully out. At the moment, I think I’ll go with the latter with a small modification: if you’re ever the last car on the board between respawns, you win by default.

This is me overthinking something pretty simple, I guess. I only get the chance to make a miniatures wargame impression maybe once a year, as there are many people showing off games. I have this inherent desire to show cool terrain and cool mechanics. Let people see some of the magic that makes me love miniatures on tabletop. It’s genuinely cool stuff and I really think Gaslands is a fun place to start. It’s a fun set of rules and few hobby projects are more enjoyable than kitbashing and painting Hot Wheels cars.

Plus, you get to quote Mad Max constantly. What more do you need?