Gaslands objective markers

 While out shopping for some specific cars for Gaslands sponsors I came across some Hot Wheels monster truck combo packages at a local Dollar General. They were from 2019 and being a few years old they were tucked away in the back on the discount shelf. Each package came with two monster trucks, a regular car and a smashed car. You can never have too many monster trucks but it was the crushed cars that really peaked my interest. These weren’t just some cheap molded plastic shells but legit hot wheels smashed at the factory and supplied in four bright colors.

Definitely way too bright and shiny for post apocalyptic vehicle mayhem. So out came the washes.

The washes are ones that I made for terrain and are based on the famous Les’ recipe.

I started with black on the bottom chassis and the inside back of the wheels. For the bodies I started out with sepia, then went to burnt umber. I finished off by applying brown and burnt sienna to select areas. I didn’t go too heavy with the weathering as I wanted them to retain some of their brightness and stand out from regular smashed cars.

More Gaslands stuff to come soon!

More Gaslands cars

 I've been getting into Gaslands again. Even squeezing in a few games. My homie and I did a drag race style game to try to get the basics of the roolz down. He wound up finding the most efficient route through the obstacles and beat me across the finish line. Then my GF graciously humored me and was my opponent for a couple of games of Death Race. The first game she crashed one of her cars into a fuel refinery right out off the starting line then continued to have the most amazing dice rolls for the rest of the game! Me, damn the luck I couldn't role to safe my life. My first car slide off the table and my second car wound up exploding. She whipped me in that one. The second game was a hard fought battle. We crashed, bashed, wiped out, and exchanged much gun fire but still managed to survive (through pure skill!) somehow. Passing the last gate and heading for the finish line I had two Shift Phases of spectacular rolling and blasted across the line for the win. So far me and the GF are 1 and 1.

Ok, enough of all that.

On to some newly painted cars now:

                                                     Here's a car: Bulldog's 05

                                                  

Armed with twin machine guns from North Star Military Figures Implements of Carnage One sprue.

https://www.northstarfigures.com/prod.php?prod=14058

The wheels I got off an Etsy vendor. I can't remember who, but I bought a bunch of different sizes and use them on almost all of my builds. The armor on the front and back windows is plastic mesh canvas meant for some sort of needle point crafting. The side windows are cheap wire mesh.

Here's another car: The Shaggin' Wagon

Once again, used the after market wheels from Etsy and cheap wire mesh in most of the windows. I re-enforced the front and rear bumpers with some plastic rod. Armor plates made of thin plastic sheet were added to the sides, hood and front window. Plasticard was glued to the roof, then topped with a twin rocket launcher from Ramshackle Games 20mm Conversion Set.

 https://shop.ramshacklegames.co.uk/toy-car-scale-range/10-20mm-Conversion-Set.html

How's about a buggy: Flippy

Not really a whole lot to this buggy. I did cover the windows with thin plastic card for an Extra Armor upgrade.

And a third car (?): Bullet Tooth Farm Boy

I had a lot of fun with this one. The original Hot Wheels car was so hideously ugly, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. I did like the twin engines sticking out of the hood so it did have some potential. I cut the wheels off and stuck some tank tracks form a dollar store anti aircraft tank in their place. It was so ridiculous that I thought, "Huh, I might have something here". The round, bulbus driver's cockpit was not going to work so I glued some plastic bits to it to angle it up. I fabbed some exhaust pipes from copper rod and plastic tubing. The front and rear re-enforcement plates and turret mounted mini gun are from Ramshackle Games. I did add a muzzle to the mini gun to give it a little pizazz. This car is so over the top goofy that it's cool!

Painting:

The Shaggin' Wagon was the only one of this group to have it's OG paint stripped. The other three I just painted over the factory paint job. Bulldog's 05 had a cool 1970's redneck stockcar theme going and I wanted remnants to remain. Bullet Tooth Farm Boy and Bulldog's 05 got a good scuffing from an emery stick. Shaggin' Wagon and Flippy were painted with Vallejo blues in a fast, rough style. All the plastic and resin bits got a coat of Vallejo White Primer 72002. Reaper Pure Black 09037 was then put over the primer. This is a very flat black and works great for this application. For all Reaper paints remember to add a few drops of special sauce and a shaker ball to the bottle before using. (Special sauce is 1 part Flow Improver, 1 part retarder (Slo-Dri) and 8 parts water.) All metal parts were painted Reaper Honed Steel 09053 then highlighted with Reaper True Silver 09207. I dry brushed the Pure Black anywhere I wanted bare metal or weathering to be. Then I sponged Apple Barrel 20432E Nutmeg, concentrating on the lower part of the car, behind the wheels and sometimes the front, for the road grime. Then applied a Sepia wash to the whole car. After that dried, I came back in with another sponging of Nutmeg. To finish them off I came in with a selective placement Burnt Umber wash to brown out certain areas and add some depth. All washes were mixed with some glazing medium on my wet pallet before being applied. 

One final note:

Boogie on over and visit

 Curtis Fell over at 

https://ramshacklegames.co.uk/

And

 Nick Eyre over at

https://www.northstarfigures.com/

Throw some money at them, they have cool stuff. (I am in no way sponsored, paid or otherwise compensated for these endorsements. They just good peeps and I'm sure they would like your business)

Wights

 Greetings and welcome to my contribution to Deadcember! Me friend left his game board at my house so I thought I would utilize his graveyard for the group shot of my freshly painted Wights.

Now on to the individual shots. I have to state that these guys where extremely hard to get decent pictures of. I’m blaming: 1) I’m not great at taking pictures to begin with. 2) the natural sunlight combined with the Nihilakh Oxide Citadel paint and pure white highlights. The camera had a hard time focusing on especially the faces. I may try taking pics again with artificial light to see if that is better. 

Ok, enough excuses, on to the miniatures themselves.

First up I've got a Citadel Lord of the Rings Barrow Wight B from ME-73.

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Next up is a Marauder Wight B from the MM51 Undead Characters.

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Last up is another Wight from the MM-51 series this time Wight A

                                                   

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The Marauder Wights actually have Marauder shields thanks to a generous friend who gave me a sprue of old Marauder shields a while back. 

On to the painting. The ghostly parts were primed white then painted with GW Nihilakh Oxide and edge highlighted with Vallejo Pure White. This was the first time I used the Nihilakh Oxide and it turned out pretty descent in real life, the pictures just don't do it justice. It has a real nice glow effect. These miniatures represent a transitional period were I started getting into using glazes. The armor was base coated with black then painted with Army Painter Plate Mail Metal and highlighted with Army Painter Shining Silver (I know a lot of people poopoo on Army Painter paints but their metallic paints have the best viscosity for my style, and you gots to roll with what works for you). When the metal was dry I glazed it with brown and black inks to try and give it a rusty look. The purple spot color was Vallejo Model Color Blue Violet glazed with Vallejo Game Color Hexed Lichen for the medium shades, then some violet ink glazed into the deep shadows. The gloves on A and B were painted with P3 Boot Strap Leather glazed with GW Agrax Earth Sade. The pouch on B and the shaft on A's polearm shaft were base coated in P3 'Jack Bone and then glazed with P3 Boot Strap Leather. 

I plan on trying to keep up with this "how I painted this miniature" thing for as long as I can. I like it when I've seen it in other blogs, at least for me it is inspirational. But sometimes in the heat of wet pallet painting it may be hard to recall what colors did what. 

Thanks again for stopping by. Be strange but don't be a stranger!

Tutorial: 28mm doors

 I figured I’d show y’all how I make doors:

I use card stock that comes from cereal or beer boxes.

  

 First I like to cut a strip that’s 1” wide. Then I chop into a rectangle, I believe this is 1” by 1 3/4”. Then I cut up some 1/8” ish strips:

You want to make a ton of these because they’ll be the vertical planking for the doors.

I chop the 1/8ish strips to where they are about the same height as the door.

 

Then I take a shitty dollar store brush and smear glue on the strip.

 

Then I glue them down in vertical fashion, leaving enough room between strips for paint/washes to go.

 

When I wind up with a few, I put them in a press I came up with to keep them flat while they’re drying. The press is two pieces of laminated MDF and two dollar store clamps (clothes pins would work too).

After they’ve dried for a couple of days, I chop the vertical parts off to be even with the rectangle door and make some cross braces.

Glue the braces on horizontal and embellish them with some rivets and a handle. Rivets are tiny beads from Dollar Tree and the handle is from a cheap jewelry making kit from Hobby Lobby.

Attach it to a building.

Frame it in.

Then you’re done!

 

Gladius

A lone surviving member of a small group of soldiers that out maneuvered and held off an invading army 3000 times their size?

Child of the Norsca, sold into slavery then trained to be a successful pit fighter, destined to wear a jeweled crown upon his troubled brow? 

A disgraced Legionary General from Estalia destine to change Tilea from inside the Arena?

Who knows. Who cares. He’s a bad ass with rippling muscles, a sharp sword and a giant mowhawk.

 

The miniature itself is Gladius from Citadel’s 1986 box set BC7 Heroic Fighters of the Known World, sculpted Jes Goodwin.

I went with a classic red for his color. It looks orange in these pictures but mellowed out significantly after a couple of coats of clear. This sculpt really shows off my love for inks. I added a couple of mushrooms to the base for some real old school flavor. They are painted with Vallejo fluorescents so they glow nicely under a black light!

One of the neat little details on this guy is that Jes sculpted a big comb, obviously for his big mowhawk, on his right hip. I painted it brass and it can be seen in the second picture here.

I have a couple other figures from this box set and plan on collecting them all. Ain’t this hobby great?

Tutorial: 28mm shingles

If you are getting to be my age you might have to worry about Shingles if you had chickenpox as a kid…wait let me start over. If you’re not a Millennial then you’re probably a home owner and have to deal with a contractor to reroof your house. Na, this ain’t about any of that. This is about fake roofs and shingles. Mostly  shingles. I like to go with individual shingles as opposed the strip method. I feel like I get a more dynamic model from individual shingles.

I make them 1cm by 1.5 cm. Yes, it’s metric and it’s “too big” for 25mm, 28mm and even 32mm (scale creep!) scale, but it’s a good working size and looks good on my buildings. And that’s the most important thing. How it looks to me! 

I start out by making a sub-roof.

Made of the same card stock (cereal or beer boxes) as the shingles themselves. Add some triangle supports made of foamcore and as the Brits say, Bob’s your uncle.  

I have found that it’s beneficial if I prep the shingles before I start the row. From left to right: one that has the left hand corner chopped, shingles that are cut in half, unmodified shingles and ones that have the right hand corner chopped.

You’ll need some of the half shingles to stagger the rows like this: 

I like to glue them on in a horizontal fashion. Putting the glue a little bit higher than it needs to be and dragging it down with each individual shingle. That way I can position each one as I like leaving 1mm to 1.5mm between each shingle but I have to work fast as I like Gorilla Wood Glue, and it sets up quick.

When it’s all glued together it looks like this:

Then after it’s painted:

There you go. Fantasy roofing 101. Now why don’t you go for it! Build something and show me what you got!

Townsfolk

These are the first eight townsfolk.

 

Jerauld Jonesy, barkeep and owner of The Quiet Woman.

Bethany Jonesy, serves lager and staff manager at The Quiet Woman.

Bridgett, serving girl at The Quiet Woman.

Porthos Broulet, Bretonnian and chef at The Quiet Woman.

Farmer Ted, one of the locals. He’s a farmer that works on a farm.

And lastly, a couple of local ne’er do wells.

Lawrence the footpad.

Carson the cutthroat.

Theodore, scroll caddy and one of the wizard Azogorim’s minions.

I didn’t get into their backgrounds and motivations in detail here. That will be left for the scenarios and for the player characters to find out!