Life’s a Gaslands

An excuse to own toy cars and the ability to customise things….without having to worry about being good at painting miniatures. Around 2018 I had a crack at painting some game pieces and convinced myself I was not meant to be a miniature painter.

**LEARNING POINT** If you are new to painting avoid crap quality miniatures while you are learning. Avoid game pieces (Zombicide style plastics), Wizkids small miniatures or Reaper plastics. Get a few decent plastics (Wargames Atlantic/GW sprue from ebay maybe). Remember if you are on a budget you can paint miniatures more than once, but take a photo if you are doing that. To document your journey.

**LESSON ENDETH**

I was excited for Gaslands, I had been looking curiously at those blue Osprey Books for years. I really wanted to get involved and so I blew my bonus that year on getting 2000 skid dice printed up by a factory in China, this more than covered my expenses in terms of cars ,mats and add ons. Here are some early pictures from my Gaslands journey

This is actually the start of my second wave of builds, before I had purchased the book and discovered the factions (sponsors), the one thing that I didn’t really take to , I had envisioned teams running several vehicles and being able to acquire equipment from any manufacturer, rather than a team being tied to one sponsor. But hey ho, probably would have created imbalances.

The first bunch of cars I painted I actually used craft paints and nail decals. Here’s a gallery of some of the bits and bobs I started out making.

The billboards were magnetised so I could swap them out, I used mod podge to decoupage the vintage adverts. The car reference sheets were just business cards I got printed up.

In addition to having a go at a bit of scenery I was intrigued by the cottage industry that sprang up around the game . I wanted to be involved, more about contributing to the community than the $$s.As I mentioned before  I took a highly uncharacteristic gamble. I spent £800 of my bonus (i.e most of it) on getting a factory in China to rattle off 2000 skid dice. I was questioning my sanity the whole time.

Sorry if you get a crick in your neck looking at that. I remember now, I made canvas road sections, four of them, canvas board with wall paper as the road, the idea being you could keep adding them to the front for a long running road battle, I should maybe have read the rules by now….or I could build a lorry!!

Here’s a few of the original cars, I like them, but the second wave was a vast improvement.

With these the first thing I did was strip the original paint off of the shells. This particular set of cars was 14.99 for 50 vehicles, all held together by teeny tiny screws. I wasn’t confident enough at this point to be drilling out rivets on hot wheels. I then sprayed them with Hycote gray primer, once completed I used some vintage style craft paints for the base coat. Then I reassembled all the vehicles and added some greebles and what weapons I had sourced, this was the early days of Gaslands and resources were scarce. More things came from my arts and crafts box than my rather meagre bits box. Finally I grunged them up using a set of Vallejo pigment powders, possibly my second only purchase of hobby supplies.

Having learned a lot building 50 cars or so, I figured it was time to make some more. The range of options to customize and accessorize cars had grown immeasurably, sales from my dice were steady, broke even in about six months. I treated myself to some 3D printed bits and bobs.

I have uploaded the rules, just in case any Gaslands players are curious.

Welcome to Wreck-It League- a game mode for Gaslands loosely inspired by Rocket League the PC/Console game. It’s football with cars basically.

These are not hard and fast rules more like a base to build from. I’m not a game designer just a fan of two games and wanting to bring them together. My background is more board-game than wargame.

Set up: Start teams a minimum of 2 long (and if it fits 1 medium) away from the ball, 4’ x 4’ permitting. Two teams is recommended but no reason you couldn’t go for more if you scale down the size of teams.

Use what scenery you have available to create the shape or arena you want, avoid too much clutter in the middle, it’s going to be crowded enough. Highly recommend the Thunderwood Cars 3 playset for scenery

Goals around 6-8” wide, use gates if you have them! Teams start behind goal line. Objective is to score the most before all but one of the teams is eliminated or one team scores enough.

Scoring, it took 30-40 minutes for a goal, so I’d recommend sudden death or best of three maximum; or you’re going to be a while.

Teams 60 to 80 cans for basic match, teams should be equal in first game.

Wreck it League Perks these influence how you can interact with the ball (more on how the ball interacts with the game world and the templates below), opponents and the environment:

Bend it like Becks: Use turn, gentle turn, or hard turn instead of the medium template +1 Hazard (3 cans)

Nutmeg: Gear 1-2 only use hairpin template instead of short +1 Hazard (2 cans)

Killer thru-ball:  Gear 3-4 – use Veer or Hard Turn or Long template (in gear 4+)  template to move ball +1 hazard (4 cans)

Precision:  use small template, roll shift dice, a shift roll allows -/+1 on your die roll (2d6) +1 Hazard (1 can)

Excellent Tekkers:  Add slide template to the end of your move template (regardless of normal slide interface point)…must contact the ball or roll for wipe-out, +2 Hazards- you’re basically doing a spin and a slide. (4 cans)

Mans’ Game: Force a vehicle you collide with that ends the phase with 4 or more hazards to roll for wipe-out (4 cans)

The Frank Sinclair Special: Use the collision template instead when contacting the ball +1 hazard (2 cans)

Mazey Run: +2 evade dice once per turn, +1 hazard (3 cans)

Back heel: Use precision template from the back of the car (2 cans)

Side foot: Use the precision template from the side of the car (2 cans)

Vinnie: once per turn distract an opposition vehicle crew for one gear phase, must be in medium range (3 cans)

Half time Oranges: once per turn roll 1d6 and remove that many hazard tokens from your team , max 2 per vehicle) (2 cans)

Bouncebackability: Half damage from wipe-outs (3 cans)

Game modes:

Sunday League: Machine guns and rams only, no perks

Mourinho mode – all weapons allowed, each team has a bus to park across the goal

Dads vs Kids mode: 100 cans of pickups against 100 cans of buggys

Optional:

Sponsor perks- may lead to imbalances but add whatever you feel is fun

The templates:

Precision Template hitting the ball from the front of your car

Half template: this is used for side hits, wall rebounds and uncontrolled frontal/rear hits.

Circular Template: Used in collisions and the Frank Sinclair ‘perk’.

Contact with the ball:

To determine striking the ball:

1. Declare any applicable Wreck-it League perks being used;

1. Roll skid dice resolve any unavoidable slides and spins to make sure you actually hit the ball (!) N.B. You may want to save some shift results for interaction with the ball.

3. If successful contact is made align the appropriate directional template with the vehicle and resolve:

Precision Template:  of the vehicle and roll 1D6 and however many skid dice you are using to resolve your manoeuvre.

Half Template: You may use shift results to add a modifier to the die roll, you cannot go below 1 or exceed 6.

Circular/full Template

Once you have determined the direction use the appropriate template (see Table). Resolve the rest of your vehicle move and any remaining skid dice.

These are probably my earliest attempts to kitbash anything, they look a lot better primed! Unfortunately primed is as far I got with these. Maybe one day…

While digging out my war rigs for the 2024 Spring Clean Challenge I found a few cars in the box, so I thought why not give them a little airing too

I finished my trucks for spring cleaning, here are some pics. I tried to loosely align each colour scheme to one of the factions in Gaslands. I may go back and apply  a bit of dirty down rust, but they are all pretty grungy already.

Taking myself out of my comfort zone (under a rock with a paintbrush in my hand) I volunteered to run a game of Gaslands at at PeachCon.

I set up a little demo game, I figured a simple death race would do the trick. So I cleared the hobby table and set up a track.

I used a simple car set up with machine guns and a ram and a passenger with a handgun. I think next time I will create some cars that give more of a feel for the individual sponsors in the game (think faction when I say sponsor).

I hadn’t played Gaslands since before COVID, I had forgotten how stupidly fun and funny it could. However, it appeared the dice had not forgotten me…

With a test game under my belt I was ready for Peachcon, I made a small contribution to the refreshments too, Peach tea seemed apt.

The day arrived, my lift had fallen through, no biggie, the con is an Uber away.

However the community stepped in and I managed to get a lift. Everyone at the con was really friendly and I know at least two copies of Gaslands were purchased by people on the day.

All in all a great,fun event, some cracking tables too. Shame I left my battlemat at home.