Gaslands – Building a car

The car growled along hard. A quick look in the rear-view mirror confirmed Dino's worst fears - he wouldn't be able to shake off the scavengers in this terrain. A strange feeling of calmness overcame him. With routine he checked the armament of the car and put his semi-automatic within reach.

   Suddenly the car slowed down and with the handbrake pulled, it turned on the spot, but was carried onward by the centrifugal forces and for a few more meters, until it came to a full stop. The scavengers, visibly irritated by this manoeuvre, had in turn halted and lined up opposite to the freelancer.

   "Nobody has to get killed, man! Just give us what you got and we'll drop you off at Rutherford's nearest garage." their leader shouted.

   Three vehicles, Dino thought. A cross-bike, a buggy and the leader's car. That wasn't fair.

   "Give up freelancer," the leader repeated his warning, "you can see there's three of us."

   Three against one. That really wasn't fair. They should have brought reinforcements, he thought, stepped on the gas and raced towards them.

And with that, a warm welcome to Gaslands! Most of you have heard of this small but fine set of rules from Osprey Games, which is played without miniatures, but with toy cars instead. Well, I'm not a car fanatic, but I like good stories, I like to be creative and I have a passion for fast, dynamic games. So this is just what I get with Gaslands.

In the rulebook, I noticed especially the campaign section in the back. You start with 30 cans and continue to upgrade your car or team during the course of the campaign. But before it can start, it needs a car first. In my supermarket there's a small area with Hotwheels at the checkout and I grabbed one. This Copo Camarro was the basis for freelancer Dino's car.

Right at the beginning there are a few decisions to be made. Do you paint the car completely new or do you just "pimp" it. I decided to do the former and considered the whole thing a small project for in between. To be able to paint something that doesn't have to be necessarily good is very relaxing and usually becomes good automatically for exactly this reason.

So I drilled out the car and took it apart into its individual parts. This was quite important for me, because I wanted to make sure that all parts were primed and this was the only way I could reach every spot. I also worked on the chassis with the metal brush head of a Dremel until no paint was left. Afterwards I rummaged a little bit in my bit-box and found remaining weapons from my Konflikt 47 Coyote. I cut them a little bit down and got a roof-mounted machine gun, a cannon sticking out the side and a fuel tank out of it.

The hose into the interior of the car I represented with a bent piece of paper clip. Afterwards I had to glue on additional armour and fixed the wheels with glue.

The car was now ready for its paintjob. Next week I will show you how I painted the car and what has to be considered during the painting.

Be my witness!

Dino