The year is 2018. Earth has been under Martian occupation for 19 years. The war left much of Earth destroyed and its population enslaved by the corporations of Mars and their relentless efficiency. However, the wealthy on Mars still crave entertainment and Earth provides that in the form of Gaslands: a broadcast of amateur and professional death races across the world. Fire up your engines and load that mini gun, for we’ve got some cash to win.
Gaslands: Refuelled is a game of vehicular mayhem that will have you racing around the wasteland, trying to be the first to the finish line… whether that involves some bullets flying at your opponent or not.
Gameplay Overview:
To play Gaslands, you’ll need to get the rulebook and provide all the rest of the components yourself. In its basic form, you’ll need some six-sided dice, Hot Wheels/Matchbox Cars, and a few movement templates you can create yourself. For fans of the game, you might want to bring things out a whole lot more (more on that later).
Each round in Gaslands is split into six gear phases, each corresponding to a gear your car is in. Each round, you count up from Gear 1 to Gear 6, and in each Gear Phase, you activate every vehicle currently in that Gear or higher.
This means that cars in higher gears get to activate more than cars in lower Gears, so driving fast is good. However, the faster you go, the fewer movement templates you can select from. In particular, making sharper turns difficult or impossible to pull off. So you have to balance driving fast with staying maneuverable.
On a player’s turn, they choose one of their vehicles to activate. They pick up a movement template (no takebacks), and put it in front of their vehicle. They can then optionally roll skid dice up to their car’s handling value. These let them shift up gears, remove hazard tokens, or spin/slide their card, depending on the results.
After moving their car to the end of the template, they can then shoot at any opponent in range (roll a d6 per weapon, 4-5 is a hit, 6 is a critical hit). Any hits can be evaded by rolling dice equal to your car’s gear, with a 6 letting you dodge out of the way.
Then the next player gets a turn. Things can become a little messy when you collide with terrain or other cards, which will require a series of checks to resolve. If a vehicle ever has 6 hazard tokens, it wipes out and is dropped to 1st gear.
First across the finish line (in a standard death race), wins.
Game Experience:
Gaslands is an interesting product. Osprey Game will sell you the rules (either PDF or Hardback) and the rest is up to you. Unlike most skirmish games, they aren’t looking to sell you tons of plastic or other bits. For the cars, the game is scaled around Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars that you probably have lying around your basement or kid’s bedroom. For terrain, you can either use things lying around the house (boxes, tubes, cups, whatever) or use some miniature terrain you might already have on hand (I used some from Battletech).
All of that is really just gravy (other than the cars). For the movement templates, you can print them out and glue them to cardboard. And for the skid dice you can just use standard D6s and consult a chart. That’s all fine for a sample game, but if you really get into it, you’ll want to get some nicer templates and dice. I 3D printed my own and grabbed some dice off Etsy for $10. I’d highly recommend both of those upgrades as they made the game flow much better.
But once you have all your bits and bobs ready, the game runs as smoothly as a well-tuned engine. Choose a car to activate (ala X-Wing Miniatures Game), move it down the template, check for collisions, and shoot stuff. It’s all really straightforward… for the most part. The only real trouble we had with the rules was when it came to collisions. That can grind the game down to a crawl for new players as you need to know how fast cars are going, what kind of collision (T-Bone, Head On, Tailgate), and who is evading versus trying to smash. I ended up downloading a flowchart online that helped a LOT. I do wish the collision rules were as streamlined as the rest of the game, but it does get better with practice.
And once you get past the learning game, there is a lot of customization you can do. Every car can be equipped with a variety of weapons—Flamethrowers, Mini-Gun, Oil Slick—there are tons of options out there. And as you dive further down the rabbit hole you can get sponsors to give you special abilities, and different types of cards. (Want to drive an Ice Cream truck or a drag racer?) I just loved all the options.
For those coming from lifestyle skirmish games (40k, Age of Sigmar, War Machine), this will feel almost simple in comparison to those games’ complexity. But I think the rules overhead is just right. It’s a game of high-speed driving and collisions and Gaslands: Refuelled is at its best when it’s flowing quickly. That’s one of the reasons I love the movement template selection rule. Once you pick up a template, you have to use it. That stops people from hemming and hawing as they try different templates to get the perfect outcome. You’ll squint at the pile of them, eyeball that large rock ahead of your truck, and try to make the best decision you can. Sometimes that’s a cool spin as you dodge out of the way, other times it’s you slamming at high speed into a brick wall. Both create stories that will be told during future games.
After playing a few games, I’m all in on Gaslands: Refuelled. I’ve got custom templates and dice. I’m already looking at kitting out my cards with guns, paints, and other Mad Max-style looks. But the nice thing is that you can dive down the rabbit hole as deep as you want or just play with some cars and solo cups. It’s all flexible to what you enjoy.
Final Thoughts:
I’ve had friends tell me about Gaslands: Refuelled before, but never tried it. However, I’ve been enjoying Thunder Road: Vendetta and was curious to see how Gaslands compares. It’s definitely different enough to own both, and Gaslands ended up being my favorite “New to Me” board game from 2024. We’ve played a ton of sessions and love the customization, is speedy vehicular mayhem, and just the flexibility the system offers.
It’s very welcoming to new players and offers a ton of upside for those who want to get deeply into it. But for the price of a single book or PDF, it’s a great system to just even check out if you are interested in the theme.
Final Score: 5 Stars – Witness Me!
Hits:
• Flexible system that accessible to new players
• Bling it out as much or as little as you want
• Lots of options for customizing your cars
• Vehicular carnage… and lots of it.
Misses:
• Collion rules not as streamlined as the rest of the game
