Carmageddon!

Well,

Back to Gaslands cars tonight, here are a few cars that will be going under the knife for some modifications.

The luck chosen!

 First up is drilling out the rivets in the cars, I do this using my drill press and a new 7/16th drill bit. Makes very fast work to taking out the rivet heads. Now I see Hot Wheels restorers online that tap out the post to use self tapping screws, I just use super glue to reassemble them, I also glue the wheels in place as I don't want the cars rolling around the board while using them.

Clean removal of the rivets!

Two cars are actually from my grown sons car collection, the Green Super Bird and the White Chevy 4x4. I noticed on the 4x4 a date of 1983 on the car, so I did some searching and come to find out that this car is rather rare. I guess the cars after this had the Hot Wheels logo in the rear side window, well this car doesn't have this. So searching Ebay, this car goes anywhere from $10.00 to $35.00, wow, I bet some collector is going to have a heart attack when they see what I am going to do with this car!

First rare car I guess.

 Interesting when I took it apart, I did not know the doors opened, it has a spring inside to allow this to happen. Not I am not sure if i will keep the doors on or off for my build.

Spring for doors that open!

The second car is this Plymouth Super Bird, I really like the paint on this one and will keep that as is except for some light weathering. I did add guns to the roof which I then carefully masked off the paint to prime the plastic guns.  I also did not like the wheels on the car and swapped them for the wheels off the El Camino with Jet engine. I had to cut down the axle to get them to fit, but I like the rims on it better then the plain old looking Hot Wheels stock wheel.

Super Cool now!

Since I robbed the wheels off the El Camino, I needed to add wheels back to this car. So I used the wheels off the Implements of Carnage set and added guns and the Rue bar ram to the front. As my buddy Mike loves dual wheels on his build, I decided to do a duel set of rear wheels. it does make it look meaner from back with those jet engines back there.

Dual wheels for you my friend.

Looks tough and strong with dual wheels.

 Okay, off to the paint shop, will post more once completed, stay tuned Gaslands Fans!

TK

Battle for the Western Woods

So,

Robert and I got in a game of Flames of War on Sunday. We play Mid War and did a Eastern front game with me taking 100 points of Germans vs his 100 Points of Russians.

The Battlefield

 I had choose to be the Defender in Counter Attack and per the scenario I had Ambush and immediate reserves. First off the Reserve rules are funky, I could only take up to 60% of my force or 60 points. problem was it meant that I would have six tanks on the board to face off against Roberts force. I deployed to the left protecting a objective in the woods. The company commander and 2IC took up in the woods with two Panzer IV's while the 4 Panzer III were deployed in the wheat field.

Panzer III's hiding in the Fields of gold.

 Robert tried a different tactic, he rushed across the open ground to get right up in my face! 10 T-34's tried crossing the river and all but four made it across.

Crazy Russians crossing the river!

 If I remember five tanks fell victim to the German guns and the Russians were only able to knock out on German tank.

First Blood Germans.

 The remainder of the Russian tanks swarmed the company commander and he was killed in the volley leaving the objective open woods.

German commander falls

I shifted the panzer III's to counter, meanwhile the Russians sent two KV-1s toward the center objective. But the following turn my reserves showed up in the form of a lone 88 gun. It took a turn to get it in place and when it fired it killed on of the KV's

Germans barely holding on!

next few turns were close shooting in the woods and the Germans knocked out the remainder tanks there, the 88 opened up on the KV killing it outright.

Was a very close game this time and if the KVs had not went for the center objective and pushed towards the objective in the wood, the Germans would have lost the battle as the two Panzer III's could not hurt them and their high armor. Was a great game and was very interesting to see it play out.

TK

Whats up with all this Gaslands???

I have been thinking a lot about Gaslands Refueled of late and it has captured most of my hobby time and imagination. I keep purchasing more Hot Wheels, thinking about different tracks I can build and what new cars I can come up with. I am even dreaming of it, which is strange. And it seems I am not alone in this as most people that come to the game have the same thing happen to them. So, what is it that causes this? Drunken Samurai and I were talking about it last night before we played Kill Team. Here is what I am thinking the reason for it is.

First off, it’s a fun simple game, I mean the rules are complex once you start digging in, but overall, they are very simple set of rules. Movement is dictated by templates (very much like X-Wing), it does use specialty dice ( once again like X-Wing and other games now a days) and the templates are in the back of the book to photo copy and there is a dice chart for using regular 6 sided dice. Everything is in the book.

Secondly, no one is telling you what you must have in your list! Most big game companies will be more then happy to sell you unit X or Z for your game that you must have. Gaslands allows you freedom to build or use whatever you want and since Osprey only makes rules, you can choose any models to play with. There is freedom in that aspect as you can and are encouraged to do your own thing. That right there is huge as I think that is partly why games like Gaslands resonate with older gamer's.

Thirdly, it’s got to be the cost. Heck right now you can get the main rulebook for less than $20.00 on Amazon and as stated above, you can photocopy the templates from the book (or download them from Osprey) and use regular dice with the chart in the book. That leaves a few cars that you can either purchase or raid your kids toy box, and that it! How many other miniature games can you purchase that can have you playing for less then $20.00???

Now most folks will buy cars and much like myself, they start with Hot Wheels. Most Hot Wheels you can get for a $1.00 or less, which leads to you purchasing 5-10 cars at a time. I will admit, I now have more cars then I really need for the game. It seems that buying Hot wheels triggers collecting Hot Wheels! I now have a few “cool” cars that I will not use for the game, why you ask? Well I do not know! All I can say is that there are many cool cars out there and I seem to find new cars each day! Its funny, when I see a car that is more than $1.00, I ask myself if I really need it. I have no problem spending $30.00 on a single model but spend $3.97 for a car is crazy! It makes no sense but that is what goes through my head looking at cars.

Fourth, customization and conversions, Gaslands allows you to do some cool conversions on cars. I have been playing GW games for years and I have always loved converting my models, but as of the last few years, GW has moved to models that go together only one way. There is less and less options to convert models or it takes way too much time or money. (Who wants to chop up a $30.00 model?) But with Gaslands and Hot wheels, I can afford to convert to my hearts content. And there are companies out there that are offering parts for conversions like Northstar Miniatures cool Implements of Carnage sprues. You also have access to 3D printed parts as well, the sky is the limit to what gamer's have access to for the game.

So, with those four things, I have a better understanding of why Gaslands is so popular and why it has taken hold of me the way it has. The last time I felt like this was with Lord of the Rings years ago and all I really want to play or work on is Gaslands. It doesn’t mean I will not play other games (playing Bolt Action this weekend) but I keep thinking about Gaslands and what I can do with it.

TK

Rough week

Ms. Sidney

Well,

No new hobby related work was completed this previous week, seems that real life thought I needed some stress in my life. Its funny how we take things for granted sometimes. I am glad that my hobby usually allows me some escape from the day to day rat race called life, but this past week I lost my hobby mojo.

So where to start, well as some know I am slowly taking commissions again for Saguaro Painting Service and recently I took on a commission for a decent sized Team Yankee commission of about 30 vehicles. For this commission I had to do assembly and it seemed that I was never going to get anything completed because the stack of plastic was not going down. Now this is usually not an issue for me, but this one just seemed to be taking a long time. To make matters worse, I am trying to get this commission completed by the end of the month, oh and one more thing the wife and I were supposed to go out of town for the weekend for Valentines, which would cut down on painting time.

So, I pushed forward, but then on Wednesday, our 16-year-old Black cat Sidney started acting very strange. She had recently lost some weight, but we thought that was normal for an older cat. But then she stopped using her litter box, which was a clear sign something was wrong. So, a trip to the vet was in order on Wednesday night and the vet told us that it would be $500.00 in tests, now the vet was very compassionate and told us we needed to go home and think about two things, one if we do the tests, it could be nothing or it could be something major. In his opinion it looked to be something major due to her symptoms she was having. So, the wife and I had to talk about the other option of having her put down. Well we decided with the vet that the quality of life for treatment, her age and the cost, the best thing was to let her go and make the tough call. She was scheduled for her last visit Thursday night.

So, my wife leaves for work around 6:00 am on Thursday morning, as she was getting of the freeway, I very large section of rolled up carpet padding came off a truck in front of her blocking her whole lane which hit her car. She knew right away that damage was done as she heard something crack and her something dragging. Luckily, she was able to keep control of the vehicle and was just around the corner from her work. The hit caused major damage to the driver side front bumper and front fascia of her car. Her work employees were able to “fix” the car to make it drivable for her trip home and she quickly made a call to our insurance and started a claim, I am thankful that I have a low deductible to pay.

Then as I am driving in to work, my brother text me to let me know that his wife’s father was just diagnosed with stage four terminal lung cancer and they were trying to process that! It seemed that we were being tested and I did not know how much I could handle for one day! All this bad news coming all at once was a lot to take in. I was pretty much numb at work with all the info I had received and was glad to be off on Friday.

My wife made it home and thankfully my son, daughter in law and grand baby came over that night, my son wanting to go with my wife to the vet to say goodbye to Sidney.  It was tough but was the right choice, it was made somewhat easier by the fact that our grand daughter was over and was a happy baby that night. We still have three cats and they of course spent that night looking for Sidney, which hurt us as they did not know what was going on. So, we showered them with lots of cat treats and played with them more than usual.

We decided that we would not go out of town and decided that we would just have a quiet weekend at home, we needed the time to adjust and comprehend everything going on around us. Sunday, I went to my local shop and many folks knew of my rough day and had very kind words. But one friend in particular was very sympathetic, and we had an awesome chat, shed some tears and made each other feel better.

And that’s what is important in this hobby of toy soldiers, the human contact we have with each other. Even though I did not play any games, my friends were there for me on a tough day, they listened and comforted me. To me, gaming is very special, out of all things I can buy, build, earn, time is the one most precious commodity that I can not get back and for my friends to take time out of their games to talk to me to make me feel better is an awesome gift! I am thankful for all my gaming buddies (you know who you are) that helped me this past weekend.

Sorry for the ramble, just had to get this off my chest.

TK

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines...

Well,

This past Saturday my buddy Mike from Da Greenskins Blog ran a few demo games of Gaslands for our local shop, Imperial Outpost Games here in Phoenix.

First of many Demos

I think we ran about 6 games all together, 4 Demos and two regular games. The shop sold out of books and the 10 packages of the Implements of Carnage that they brought in. So all in all was a great day.

Cars on the track

We had lots of folks watching the game and the shop was running an X wing tournament and lots of X Wing players were taking notice of the game as well. Mike and I also gave out free cars to folks that played in the demo as well as if they purchased products for the game from the shop.

Hmm I was the first to blow up!

Followed by one of Mikes cars!

We also answered lots of questions on how to build and modify cars as Mike and I had most of our cars on display and to let folks use in the demo. And since we were giving out cars, people could see just how much we converted some cars.

Crowd favorite for converting!

Figure 8 death track with six players!

The great take away from this weekend was we had lots of folks play and are pretty excited about the game. The store owner, Darren was also excited about the game and actually pitched an idea of doing a 16'+ long track, something like the canyon scene from Fury Road. Well Mike and I are thinking about doing something like that for the next demo day.

A fun track that only two survived!

Now my mind is thinking how to build a 16'+ canyon for the next time we play, Mike and I started calling it the Devils Canyon Run or El Diablo run. Can you survive to the finish line? Time to get started on building some terrain now!

TK

GSC Reinforcements

So,

Saturday, I decided to put some time in at the paint bench and get some models finished up. I had the idea of working on terrain for Gaslands, but the best made plans!

So here are the newest additions to my GSC kill team:

New Cult leader with bodyguard!

Someone call for the Jaws of life??

Starting to see more Genestealer mutations!

We are the GSC!

So a quick update for this Monday morning, now back to the paint bench I go!

TK