GASLANDS

So I have spent a lot of money on Fantasy Flight's Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game.
I collected all the little, beautifully detailed starfighters... and collected them frequently in triplicate.
I bought all the medium size ships flown by all kinds of scum & villainy pulled from the now defunct Expanded Universe books of Star Wars.
I even bought the Huge ships, only playable in special Epic & Cinematic play scenarios, and I never played those damn things.

In fact, I didn't play X-Wing Miniatures much at all. I had a lot of X-Wing stuff and I didn't like transporting all the cards & dice & templates & tokens & minis around. I'm not really into the competitive scene at the Friendly Local Game Stores anyway. Occasionally I'd play with my brother-in-law or get a group together for a free-for-all using my extensive collection. And we'd have fun and everyone would agree that the game was really cool, but I mostly just collected the game. For all my love of those tiny ships, I wasn't really getting much bang for my buck. My many bucks. So many bucks. 

Then I heard about Gaslands . If you're looking for more bang for your buck, Gaslands is a 99 cent thermonuclear blast.

It exists as a very thin paperback book from Osprey Publishing, purchasable online or in any well equipped FLGS for between $13-20. From there, you can cobble together some D6 dice, pencil & paper, some movement templates out of the book, and the final ingredient... some tiny cars you got from somewhere. Like old Hot Wheels from your childhood sandbox, or stolen from your 5 year old son, or purchased for $1 from any department store.

With these items you are ready to enter the Thunderdome of Post-Apocalyptic Vehicular Combat on any flat surface in your household.

In a recent game we gleefully rammed and machine gunned each other as we raced through gates (paper cut-outs) towards the finish line, taking damage and eventually falling in quick succession. At the climax, I set the only other surviving opponent's car on fire with a Molotov cocktail and accelerated away, thinking I was now cruising to an easy victory. Except the flaming hulk of his Hot Wheels car careened ahead and exploded, killing me too. No one won the game, and everyone had an amazing time.

A big part of this comes from the round structure and activation system, where you commit to a certain movement based on what gear you are in, then may roll Skid Dice based on your car's handling value to Shift up & down, gain or cancel Hazard Tokens accruing to your vehicle, and Spin and/or Slide. Next step, complete your movement and attack if you can with whatever weaponry you have crew aboard able to fire, rolling hits & evades. Finally if you've accrued too many Hazard tokens then you start rolling to see if you wipeout. The wipeout step can be fun for everyone to watch unfold too!
You keep going around activating for each gear you are in, 1-6, so if you're going fast you'll get to do more than players in a lower gear than you but you're also in danger of losing control and have less maneuver options available to you.

All this is a tremendous amount of fun, and you will feel fast.

The skinny rulebook is comprehensive in explaining gameplay, stats, teams, scenarios. The mechanics are tight and wonderfully thematic. The pace is relentless and engaging, even cinematic in places. It has amazing community support across the Internet and at Gaslands.com. You can engage with the game at your preferred level, whether firing up some old Hot Wheels across paper gates with D6s, or driving custom painted Murder Machines with mounted weaponry and blood splatter through 3D printed gates using laser cut acrylic movement templates and custom Skid Dice (all available in various Etsy stores).
You will spend more money if you start investing in custom dice, templates, terrain, & painting minis. But you absolutely don't have to.

If you want to get into miniature wargaming this is a great gateway. If you want to avoid a more hardcore wargaming scene but still want to get a bit of that thrill, this is a great game on the periphery of that scene with an incredibly low barrier to entry. If you're a regular tabletop gamer looking for something a little different and a bit wacky to try out with friends, this game is a bit of novelty that you can really get some mileage out of.

Theme:  Post-Apocalyptic Vehicular Combat
Gameplay: various racing scenarios maneuvering Hot Wheels with custom stats using movement templates.
Components: It's just a rulebook, man. Everything else is on you.
Replayability: Soooo much of this.
Rulebook: Outstanding, comprehensive.