A wreck!

More Gaslands terrain! My last posts have been consumed by Gaslands, and this one is no different. The simple fact is that the terrain and cars I been putting together and painting, are just fun to do.

This time, with the explosive gas tank and concrete piles behind me, I decided to make one more piece of terrain: a pile of wrecked cars. The materials required: a MDF coaster, cheap cars, a hammer, hot glue, and paint.

So, taking the cheapest toy cars I could find outside, I found a suitable hard surface to sit them on, and then belted them with a hammer several times. Given the intended outcome, it ended up being visually appealing and quite cathartic at the same time. Next I hot glued the cars together and onto an MDF coaster I had laying around. Be aware: cars hit with a hammer have holes through which hot glue can travel, I noticed this as I also managed to hot glue my fingers. It turns out hot glue is not 'marketing speak', trying to make warm glue seem edgy, it really is hot.

After this I painted the base with PVA and sprinkled sand all over it. An undercoat of Indian Red was next.

The car on the right of frame was a rubber one that came with a monster truck, the paint never fully dried on it (damn chemical reactions), so I pulled it off and replaced it with another cheap car mauled beneath a hammer. Next the base coat - some metal dry brushing, the few windows in blue, the tires in black (and hubs in metal), and ground in brown.

I washed it heavily with an Army Painted Strong Tone, and not happy with the result, again with a Dark Tone, allowing it to pool in spots on the base to look like spilled oil etc. Lastly, I broke out my Tamiya weathering kit and dusted the whole thing down heavily with rust. Lastly I sprayed the entirety with the last drops of a flat varnish spray - which came out patchy, and caused a wrinkled effect I would have been furious about if it had not been a car wreck.

The wrinkling in the paint is due to the flat varnish coming out of the can poorly, and the pock marks in the surface from bubbles in the wash (which I would normally remove). Overall, the effect is solid I think. A car wreck, for other nearly wrecked cars to get wrecked on.

The next items on the docket are two more cars for the teams, a set of gates from Module-R terrain, and some bikes that just arrived from Ramshackle.

Module-R Terrain gates

Ramshackle bikes

Edited in response to Wouter's question below, about how the bikes scale with the HotWheels:

I think the scale fairly well, it should be noted of course, that some of the HotWheels cars are chunky and exaggerated, but on the whole they sit nicely alongside them and will work a treat once based and painted. I did notice the resin is a little brittle, so take care when trimming them. But the detail is solid. I'm very happy with them so far!

Obstacle Course!

In between getting the various teams ready for Gaslands, I have also been working on a few pieces of terrain to liven up the board. Last post I wrote about the board I made, and a few piles of concrete to provide things to drive or slide into.  This time I took a few of the cheap plastic city pieces that came with one of the car kits I bought and made them more post-apocalyptic-y (it's an adjective right?).

First were some witches hats, because in the smoke, gas, and blood fueled ultra-violence of this post-apocalyptic roller derby, someone spent time before the starting horn to set out traffic hazard cones. Getting ripped apart by .50 cal shells or having a 2.75" rocket detonate your fuel tank is one thing, losing traction on a slippery part of the course though? Not on!

Garish plastic cones, stripped of the sticker, stuck them to a washer and added some sand, and finally masked with some thin tape.

A spray of black undercoat, in retrospect I should have bent a few of these up.

Peel the tape off, and now we have added safety!

Next up I took a plastic gas tank, glued it to a MDF coaster, added a plastic street sign (which I bent up with a pair of pliers), and some left over pieces of MDF railing from my Spartan Terrain sets.

Stupidly I undercoated the whole thing red. Realising shortly afterwards this wasn't what I was after I resprayed in black.

I

That's better...

Brown and drybrush with a lighter brown on the base. The tank, fences and sign were heavily dry-brushed in metal. The fence and sign were dry-brushed again in a lighter metal. Following that I applied white to the tank using heavy to light stippling with a torn piece of foam.

The rust was a light brown wash dribbled over the top and around all the edges and valves. With a final coat of Tamiya rust weathering powder in patches all over.

Originally I did a cross on the sign, but wasn't thrilled with it. I decided to paint over it...

That seems more appropriate.

A Post Apocalyptic View

My last few posts have been all about Gaslands, the post-apocalyptic demolition derby where roll cages and machine guns are minimum requirements for entry. It's a fun game, and I've thoroughly enjoyed messing around with some Hot Wheels cars making them look the part (you can see more here and here). Well the nest two cars are done, I have two more to do next, and then I'll be waiting on some bikes from Ramshackle, after which I'll be done (yeah, that's what I tell myself).

Next is a monster truck and a buggy, after that the bikes, and then... well... I need a war-rig right?

As well as getting the cars done I remembered I had some 4x4 boards sitting in my shed for use with Infinity, and after some careful deliberation (it may have been pure impulse), I decided to paint one up all post-apocalyptic. It was pretty straight forward stuff - a large quantity of cheap brown paint and three quarters of a plastic cup of sand mixed together and then rolled onto a 4x4 board of 3mm MDF (yes, I did mix my Imperials and Metrics in the same sentence...).

Ok, so doubtless a big open space is fun if no-one is about and you can let the car go a bit, but this is Gaslands! I need some things for cars to crash into!

From previous terrain building I had some left over pieces of cork-board floor tiles. I broke them up with the idea of making them into heaps of concrete walls etc - nice and tough objects for the cars to bounce off.

Ripped up bits of cork floor tile, glued together using PVA or white glue...

A black spray undercoat...

We don't need no Jersey Barriers in the POST-Future! No! We smash up Jersey Barriers and pile them up to make POST-Jersey Barriers!

After undercoating, I dry-brushed thickly with a blue-gray craft paint, followed by a light gray, and finally a very light dry-brush with white. They're not the best, I should have gone easier on the light gray step to let the darker tone beneath come through a bit more. But they look reasonable, and were quick to do.

The new cars with the new POST-Jersey barriers...

The board, as well as the various vehicles I have finished so far... I think I need some gates...

By the by, the latest episode of my podcast, On Minis Games is up, and in it we review Gaslands! Oh! If you're interested you can find it here, the link to subscribe can be found on the same page, or you can find us in iTunes...