Fenris Gas Bottle

My Fenris Games gas bottles turned up today and I am very pleased with them.

 I painted one up in next to no time to see what it would look like:

The bottles are very easy to paint, and I will paint them in a few different colours, based on images I find on the net, although blue and yellow seem to be the most popular. White is too, but I don't want white ones.

Thanks to Fenris Games I have 18 gas bottles to use in my games.

Gas bottles

I was watching "Day of the Dead" last night and they used natural gas bottles to cause explosions to clear their buses of zombies.

As mentioned in an earlier post you can buy model gas bottles from Black Cat Bases and Fenris Games.

This started me thinking... can you actually shoot them to make an explosion?

I did a search on youtube to see if any idiots have tried it... I should never have doubted the posters on youtube:

All of those shows a fire around the bottles before the shot is made.

Mythbusters did it with a mini gun and incendiary rounds:

as did this guy with a 50 cal rifle and incendiary rounds:

Handguns against a big tank:

So - from what I have learnt is that small calibre weapons wont penetrate a gas bottle... but 5.56 rifle can, so I am guessing 5.56, .45, .50 and 10mm rounds will do so against a small or medium bottle, but only the 50 cal will work on the big ones.

Also, you need a fire or a flare going when you shoot the bottle, or use incendiary rounds, and the more gas in the tank, and thus the higher the pressure, the bigger the explosion.

What does this mean for our zombie games?

If survivors had gas bottle with road flares taped to them, and they set the flare off then bolted, that it could be used as a anti zombie device.

According to what I found on the internet (and it must be true, as it was on the net! :-P  ) says: "Another type of flare is the fusee, which burns for 10–60 minutes with a bright red light. Fusees are commonly used to indicate obstacles or advise caution on roadways at night; in this usage they are also called highway flares, road flares, or ground flares. They are commonly found in roadside emergency kits."

This would give plenty of time for setting the gas bottle up and waiting for the right time to shoot it to make it go boom.

Game terms (for "No More Room In Hell"):

Gas Bottles are Blast Weapons and follow the rules for such weapons as listed on p.25 of the rule book.

 When it explodes, a gas bottle has:  AP 6 and AZ 3, GM -2, Special: Blast, Zombie Torches.
 Range is equal to the weapon being fired to hit the bottle.

 Points: rather than give points, I would consider allowing surivors to find gas bottles by including them on the "Survive! Locations Generator" tables or even letting them be part of the 'Let's go shopping: the trading phase" and treating "fuel" as "full gas bottle".  Flares would be needed too, so maybe a first aid kit could be swapped for a road flare in this case.

To hit mods:
                Small bottle -2 to GUNS
                Medium bottle -1 to Guns
                Large bottle no mod

Wounding - as per the Blast weapons rule (as mentioned above), but add 1d10 for a medium bottle and 2 d10 for a large bottle.

New rule: knock down.  when things explode usually other things fall over.  I propose any figure in a group affected by a blast weapon that isn't killed is knocked down and must spend half of it's next movement standing up. I will need to play test this and modify it as needed though.

I hope someone finds this post useful and even give it a try. Comments and suggestions to make this idea even better are most welcome.