Toot-toot-rum-rum

Being a responsible gamer, I actually own both versions of Gaslands even though I haven’t ever played it. Stepping into the project in a responsible way, I am determined to not just rush into modding cars. I need to read the rulebook at least once.

I know that the Osprey games aren’t for everyone but I do find them wonderfully easy to read. I find a lot of rule books so dense that I doze off before I can get very far in. I don’t have any such problems with these.

The initial suggestion is for each player to have two vehicles – one buggy and one car – armed with the same front facing machine gun. Given the gaming history in our group, I feel comfortable going for something a little more in depth for our early games.

You buy a vehicle, then its weapons, then get a sponsor who gives you access to certain perk categories and provides a handful of extra rules/powers to make the teams feel different. A couple of the sponsors definitely feel like they are for further down the line once you have some experience with the rules. As I read though, I found myself making mental lists. I couldn’t help it, I’d been good for at least an hour!

Grabbing the bag of cars that I dug out of the stash, I organised them into groups. One pile are cool but I don’t feel ready to tackle them yet; they got bagged back up.

Here we’ve got three groups. Bottom left are my sleek performance cars. They’ll be my Miyazaki team – all daring, skill and precision. Top are going to be speedy lads, probably Idris, maybe Order of the Inferno. The bottom right are two cars put aside for test models; the 911 is a duplicate and the yellow one is just the least interesting in the collection.

Gathering some tools, my bits box and my terrain greeble box, I spent a wonderful hour or so playing. I forgot to sand the paint down but luckily didn’t have any problems getting things to stick. As a test model I’m not too bothered but I definitely need to keep it in mind for the future.

• The gun is from a necron,
• the metal patches are thin plastic packaging with a pin pushed into the back to make the rivets.
• Rather than using granny grating for the windows, I wanted to go something a little lighter so used some netting from a cheap table tennis set I found years ago in a tat shop.

Quick coat of black primer and a nice easy paint job. This was the most fun I’ve had making and painting a test model, possibly ever. It wasn’t so much to test paint schemes but rather to get a bit of confidence before moving onto the cars I’m really excited for.

As I was working on this I was chatting to a friend (and member of the site) in our gaming group over Discord. He was working with his kid on their first models for the year. I sent through the first and second photos from above and got this message back…

So my “don’t spend any money” project has cost someone else ? On the plus side, it looks like I won’t have to put much effort into getting opponents!

With Business Daddy still not being able to deliver Legions Imperialis, I was looking for a new project to start 2024 with. I have a Kings of War army to work on for a slow grow but I wanted something to break up the mon-orc-ony. Something that could be finished in a month or so, and would be good for getting games in with people I don’t normally game with. Being January, trying to do it without spending any more money meant going for something that I already owned minis for. I have a bunch of the Osprey Blue Books but haven’t actually played any of them so they were top of the list. The game that meets all these needs was Gaslands!

The scope of the project then looks a little something like this:

• Read the rules
• Watch great movies for inspiration
• Mod car models for a few players to start out with
• Make templates and dice out of things I have
• A 4ftx4ft table’s worth of suitable terrain again from things I have around the house already

The last one is the most intimidating but I’m sure I have stuff that I can re-purpose or scratch build from junk. First though, to the rulebook!