Gaslands Subaru Impreza 22B and Ford GT40

Picking up the brushes for the first time in awhile with a couple of cars acquired for use in the excellent "Gaslands" vehicle combat game. As I am a motor racing enthusiast, most of the cars I paint have their basis in current or historical motorsport competition, and these are no exception.

Enthusiasts of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) will recognize this car as one driven by one of rallying's GOATs... the late Colin McRae.

While this WRC Impreza is resplendent in the Subaru team's iconic "555" cigarette livery, Colin and his co-driver Nicky Grist never had twin machine guns to assist them.

The model is from Hot Wheels and is really quite good. I repainted it in Kantor Blue (analog to Subaru's "World Rally Blue") with 555 livery freehanded. I just got some new Kolinsky Sable brushes from Rosemary & Co and they seem to be working pretty well.

The other car to be painted is supposed to be a Ford GT40, also from Hot Wheels. While the body shape is "GT40-like" for sure, it's not quite right for the GT40 I remember best. In any case, it could only be painted in Gulf Oil livery, of course.

This GT40 is also equipped with twin MGs but also carries a mine/oil dropper out back. I thought it made sense to have a rear-facing weapon since this car will probably be out front anyway. All of the weapons added to these cars are from the superlative "Implements of Carnage" sprues from North Star.

Again, detail work is freehanded.

A good view here of the weapons.

One more pic of the Impreza. I didn't do much (any) weathering on these cars as I wanted to focus on the livery, but it's not out of the question that I may go back and do some.

Anyway there's two more cars painted for what that's worth... hopefully we can get together to play later this year but the numbers here in Manitoba are dire, so that ain't happening anytime soon.

Stay safe everyone...

From the Challenge: "Who's the U-boat commander?" Porsche 928 for Gaslands

 

<<FROM THE ANALOGUE HOBBIES PAINTING CHALLENGE BLOG>>

A bit of a backtrack here... back to the Aquifer on the first level of the Dungeon. However, I hate painting boats... so I had to be a bit more creative in fulfilling the theme.

Everyone remembers the classic 1983 film "Risky Business", in which suburban straight-arrow high-schooler Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise) cuts loose to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" and things go downhill from there... culminating in the classic scene of Joel's dad's Porsche 928 plunging into Lake Michigan. Watch the clip to the end... "who's the U-Boat commander?" indeed.

So there's the theme - aquatic Porsche 928. One of our group's favourite games pre-pandemic was Gaslands, and everybody has great fun converting Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars for combat. Should be easy to find a Hot Wheels or Matchbox 928, right? Wrong... although I had one as a kid, it's long gone, stores here can't sell toys in person, and I shudder to pay $20+ for one on eBay, not to mention the wait for it to arrive in the mail...

Enter "Mr. 3D Printer" Byron M to save the day! I found a 3D file online for free and sent it along to Byron, who shared it with his friend and fellow 3D printmaster Scott to tune up. And it did need a great deal of tuning up... in fact after Byron printed it up, he emailed me to say "you're going to have to buy a Hot Wheels car" as he didn't think it was salvageable. 

 

But as you can see, where there's a cheap financially responsible Scotsman, there's a way... it did take quite a bit of cleaning up, greenstuff wing mirrors, and some clever painting, but I think it's quite presentable.

The machineguns are from the excellent "Implements of Carnage" sprue from North Star.

I quite like how it turned out, especially as it completes a room that I struggled to find a project to suit. I'll take 30 points for this one - 10 for the car and 20 for the room bonus. It's a small car but did require quite a bit of work!

Big props and thanks to Byron and Scott for their work on the file, and to Byron for printing it for me. Cheers lads!

Cars - Gaslands and Formula De

A couple weeks back, I ran a Gaslands game at Game-itoba, a local convention (our game is 27 seconds into the video). Of course I already have loads of cars painted, but I'd just bought a couple more and was wanting to try out a "fast-painting" technique I'd seen on the excellent Sho3box blog.

Basically you take your Hot Wheels cars, glue the wheels in place, add and basecoat paint the conversion parts. You can pick out a random panel or two and paint it black, then stipple your colour of choice over that, to represent a replaced panel. I did that on the driver's side fender and passenger quarter panel on the Camaro, above. Then give the car an allover wash of Nuln Oil.

After that's dry, go over it again with a wash of Agrax Earthshade.

Next you sponge a dark brown over the lower part of the car, followed with some drybrushed silver over the replaced panels and guns, and some regular sponge chipping. Final step is to paint in the lights, matt varnish the model, then go back over the lights with gloss. Done!

Here are the two rally cars I did - VW Scirocco and Ford Sierra. As with the Camaro and Beetle seen above, the weapons I used were from the excellent "Implements of Carnage" sprue produced by North Star.

The "wings" were black plastic, repainted with Mechanicus Standard Grey.

MSG was also used on the windows to represent armour plate, with black slits for vision.

And now for something completely different...

I'm a big Formula 1 enthusiast and from time to time in the past I've been able to convince the lads to play a game of "Formula De'. Of course, we can't use the lame plastic cars included with the game - I bought and painted pretty much a whole grid of cars for us to use.

This bunch is based (mostly) on the 2005 Formula 1 world championship season. The first pic above shows Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro (M. Schumacher and Barrichello) and BMW Williams (Webber and Heidfeld). Immediately above (left to right): West McLaren Mercedes (Raikkonen and Montoya), Mild Seven Renault F1 (Alonso and Fisichella), Panasonic Toyota (Trulli and R. Schumacher)...

...Lucky Strike BAR Honda (Button and Sato), Sauber Petronas (J. Villeneuve and Massa), Red Bull Racing (Coulthard and Klien), Jaguar (Webber - 2004 season).

Here's Michael Schumacher's Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro car.

And Mark Webber's BMW Williams.

These cars are tiny. As they say, small but perfectly formed. I'm thinking of getting some more to paint up in some historical liveries. The mid-1970s and early '80s were great times for F1, not to mention the early '90s with Senna and Prost at the wheel. Fun!

Gaslands at Prairiecon XL, Plus More Gaslands Terrain!

Well, last weekend was the epic gaming event known as Prairiecon XL - yes, the fortieth (!) running of western Manitoba's oldest (and greatest) gaming convention. The Conscripts were well-represented there too, with Conscript Greg staging an amazing-looking Adeptus Titanicus game with an assist from founding Conscript Curt, Conscript Mike wheeling out his incredible "Walls of Terra" for a Horus Heresy 30K game, and yours truly debuting my Gaslands game, times two.
 

I have to say that my Saturday was not the best planned, as it comprised running a Gaslands game (9am-1pm), a stint on the registration desk (2-4pm), auctioneering in the famous Prairiecon game auction (7-9pm), and ANOTHER Gaslands game (9pm-12:30am). Wow! Although 15-year-old me would've licked Saturday and likely gone to a party afterwards, 40-something-year-old me was thoroughly beat after running 7 1/2 hours of games and volunteering for four more hours.

Murdercycle at top lines up another two-wheeler...

...and wipes him out with his Gatling MG. Good times!

Anyway, the first running of Gaslands at Prairiecon had seven players brand-new to the game, and I think they all had fun. The last man standing was Dan from Niagara Falls, Ontario (!), who took home a copy of the game, three Hot Wheels cars, and some guns and other bits courtesy of Winnipeg FLGS Maxx Collectibles. Thanks Garth!

Our 9pm session had another seven players, including Conscripts Mike and Greg. Again, all except the two Conscripts were new to the game but everyone picked it up quickly.

Eventual game-winner Kevan confabs with Prairiecon luminary Craig D.

Carnage was the name of this game in both the 9am and 9pm sessions.

Good sport Murray (for I think it was he) nabbed the booby prize (some Pixar "Cars" toys) for first player to have both cars eliminated from play. Attaboy!

Did I mention there was carnage? This is the aftermath of an out-of-control car careering into (and destroying) a pickup truck. Fun! 

 

You can see in the pics that I've added some new terrain - these are 3mm MDF Shipping Containers from Lasercraft Workshop.

They were a snap to assemble, and although they're designed to have opening doors, I ended up gluing them shut. They were designed without a "detente" to keep the doors from swinging backwards and it was just too much of a pain to fix that.
 

After assembly, I painted the containers in block colours, washed them with Nuln Oil, and did some sponge-chip weathering.

The branding was printed off from the Internet, cut out and applied with white glue. I lightly traced the "character lines" from the container onto the paper with Nuln Oil, just to give the impression that the logos were painted on. I think it worked OK.

Here's a pic with a typical Hot Wheels car, for scale.

The containers come eight to a pack, four large and four smaller ones.

In a pinch they might even do for 15mm games - here's a pic with Battlefront West Germans and a PSC Leopard 1.

The containers were a great hit, but Gaslands went over even better. It's the perfect convention game - visually impressive, easy to pick up, and fast playing. I'll definitely be adding it to the regular Prairiecon rotation!

GASLANDS at Legions Maxximus!

One of our usual Conscript activities is running games at local tabletop wargaming conventions (or "shows" for our UK readers). This year is no exception as Conscripts Greg, Dave and I ran games at the recent "Legions Maxximus" show.

This time out I ran a game of one of our new favourites, GASLANDS. I've blogged about the game before, but suffice to say that this game of vehicular combat and mayhem is some of the most fun we've had in awhile. It's super-easy to design your cars, the rules are fast-paced and straightforward without being simplistic, and best of all, the barrier to entry on the model side is very low - the game is designed for regular Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars, albeit converted with armor and GUNZ!!!

I set up a standard arena battle using my Disney Pixar "Cars" fence sets and billboards from TTCombat. Six players joined the game (including a charming father-son duo) and we were off!

As the Duke of Wellington famously quipped, "The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance." So it goes with a game of Gaslands. I won't even try to describe it!

I think everyone had a good time (they said they did anyway) and the game provided me (the GM) some good learnings for next time I run it at a convention - that will be at Prairiecon in June. Looking forward to it!