Its extremely tempting to label Gaslands as a Mad Max inspired game. I mean, what other massively popular, car-based media would you use as a point of reference? There is even a prolonged tribute to Fury Road, with the War Rig being its own thing, with a narrative campaign. Gaslands does however draw from various source such the Carmageddon games, Deathrace 2000, any number of racing movies where they are fast and/or furious, The Simpsons, and the conceptually similar Dark Future by Games Workshop circa 1988. So, with my bits still on order, and a few days off, I decided to mix things up a bit, and make a team for The Warden sponsorship.
So what are sponsorships? Well, these are commonly used, but not actually mandatory, set of rules to apply factional differences and flavour to a team, tying into the Audience Vote system which us roughly comparable to Command Points in WH40k. This takes the form of unique mechanics designed to encourage a particular play style, Idris for example getting access to cheap nitrous, rewards going flat out,, and perks along those lines. The Warden is less about racing so much as doing the Suicide Squad but with carbombs. It doesn't matter if they die, provided they take out another car in the process, and it's suitably explosive. A detailed explanation can be found here, which was a direct influence on this project. Creatively, I was mixing things up a little by using mesh from a sieve for the windows. It's OK, not as good as Halfords mesh, but it's good for visual variety. For painting I also tried something new, with an initial, and sadly failed attempt, to paint these in high-vis yellow. This didn't really work with heavy metal drybrushing, so for this team I researched prison uniforms, and decided that orange was the new blue. This came out a little reddish, which I tried to balance with excessive weathering. My attempts at free-handing some racing numbers weren’t brilliant either.
The first, Car 13- Dangerous Driving is a dedicated battering ram, with a few bits to help things detonate. Mechanically, this car is a demonstration on how the Perk system can present new tactical options, feeding on the normally unwelcome Hazard Tokens to make better rams. Cover Me allows those tokens to be moved about, Battlehammer converting them into more ram dice, and Crowdpleaser presenting a free Audience Vote if things get out of hand. I ended up leaving it at that however, as I wanted to spread my costs a little. The base toy is an Audi TT which to my limited understanding is a bit of a lads car. This example is also a roughed-up charity shop find by "Realtoy", something true for the entire team, which was a bit of an odd coincidence now I think of it. I didn’t find these in a single shop...
Car 69- Causing an Affray was conceived as a bloody nuisance. While still there to explode and assist the above, this carries gas grenades and caltrops for mischief-making. The caltrop dropper was the most challenging piece to scratchbuild, and I admit its got more of an oil slick look to it. The base car is a Porsche Carrera, part of the 911 family as it turns out, so possibly the exposed engine gubbins shouldn't be there? Whoops. Anyway, ruleswise, I think I'll treat it as a regular car, not a performance one.
Car 42- Arson was my biggest deviation from the guide mentioned above, mounting a flamethrower. Because if you had a bunch of condemned prisoners, why wouldn't there be an arsonist in the mix? Even David Ayer knew to do that. The flamethrower was made from a bit of a pen, wire and scrap plastic, in what I realised later was an orky style. The base car is the modern BMW Mini Cooper... So, Italian Job anyone?
Overall, as a holiday project, these came out OK. I’m not a huge fan of the colours, and there’s probably too much weathering, but I think “abused rustbucket” is a valid choice for a Warden team.
Up next: where are those bits?
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