Gaslands babayyyy & car conversion the first!

This game is a near mandatory pit stop as far as I can tell for any connoisseur of one of the best tropes in all media… The death race. And seeing what people put out online and how they convert diecast cars into beautiful beasts of gasoline and death is something any mini enthusiast can appreciate.

And thus… The bug bit me too. I had had my eye on the game for some time, but for some reason it got to me recently. Maybe it was realizing all my munda terrain would be perfect for it and vice versa, my future gaslands cars would make excellent scatter terrain for munda as well. Maybe it was me being a little tired of translating blood bowl into Japanese (Which I need to get back on! I am making goo progress!)… Perhaps it was excitement in the upcoming munda campaign I am joining in!

I can say for sure that all those things were a factor and in general I just had a long overdo desire to make and convert up a gaslands car. I wanted to learn another rule set and break it down since my preparation for the new blood bowl season and necromunda campaign had been all but completed. I was walking through the dollar store and saw a few cars that caught my eye and made me awaken a new set of set of lenses for the preying eyes of the junk-loving hobbyist within. Now having read the rules my next trip to the dollar store will not see me leaving empty handed that is for sure.

I am a very cheap person. It’s worse than ‘thrifty’, I’m a cheapskate of the highest caliber and will suffer great pains to save negligible amounts of money. Blessing and a curse I suppose depending on who you ask.

So I checked wish and aliexpress and was actually fairly disappointed in the selection on hand there. Best they had was like 5 or 6 cars for around 5 or 6 bucks of what I was interested in and felt annoyed at that. I had figured cars would be cheap manufacturing bread and butter and it turns out there was more butter than I had bargained for. I ended up finding some nice sneaky batch lots on a flea market app I sell Warhammer stuff and other junk on and scored the cars above for about ten bucks. 50 cents a car is about where I am at until I build a desire to get single specific cars in which case I’d gladly pay one or two dollars per car but that is far down the line and only after my conversion monster within gets a free romp around the wastelands.

After reading the rules I learned that I need a couple buggies and have none, but have already begun thinking how I could convert one up nice and easy. The beast shall romp and romp readily.

First victim.

This is the BB. No literally it is a van like hatchback model by Toyota. And no longer will it be ferrying friendly Japanese to and from the malls on weekends. Soon it will be a vehicle bathed in blood and bearing witness.

Built in movable hatch… How to capitalize?

New acidic territory – stripping diecast.

I suppose it isn’t too far from stripping pewter, but all the youtube and Google seems to indicate the glossy paint used on die cast cars is made of tougher stuff and needs tougher chemicals for a proper strip. I wouldn’t have even bothered to consider stripping if it weren’t for the craffsmans video showing me how shittily acrylic paint went on over the die cast paints. I could just rough it up with steel wool and sand paper? But so just said whatever and decided to attempt to strip it.

I learned a lot from this video and also encountered the crafsman for the first time. What a legend. Giving me major Bob Ross vibes which fill me with joy. Check them out.

Drill and break

I learned a lot about toy cars doing this.

I learned that cars could be broken open easily enough with a drill bit and dremel. Sadly it was bedtime for the baby magicianess and dremel wasn’t on the menu. But I have an old busted drill bit (Visible above) which after a reasonable effort gave me access to the prizes within.

It’s almost like getting 4 cars for the price of one!

In the bottle: Regular cheap paint thinner I use to clean my brushes.

Cheap paint thinner didn’t work.

I gave it the old college try to see if my regular paint thinner would work and put it on with a paper towel and left it for a while and ultimately it didn’t really get the job done. I was filled with the fires and excitement of building and painting a new car and pressed on anyway. I scraped some of the paint off which was flaking anyway and decided it would all work out.

I went simple and strapped on a boltgun, got some crosshatch sandpaper which is perfect for metal mesh, and some softer metal (Harvested from the metal strip that surrounds bundles of aquarium plants I get for my turtle tank time to time.) and glued it on using some multipurpose super glue/cement that I use for resin models. (Note to self, get better, stronger glue when dealing with diecast and plastic.) This is what I came up with.

Build before and after shot. (Not sure if it works in the image but I will work on taking better photos for before and after since they are the best.)

Rusty times ahead.

I was excited to paint my first car and just got on with it. Figuring that I will need to master my rust painting techniques in this new branch of my hobby, I endeavored to paint a rusty car. I don’t have pictures of the whole process, but I sprayed the whole thing with cheap dollar store brown paint which went on… adequately. I painted another layer or two of darker brown acrylic paint and the coverage improved quite a bit. Did some silver on metal bits, and painted the car a reddish pink color doing some spotty lighter highlights that gave it a sunbeaten look. Then did some rust along the vehicle in a bunch of spots. My rust technique is a red, then reddish orange, orange, and then finally a lighter orange.

This is what I ended up with.

Thing ended up looking like a whole rusty mess. I liked it quite a bit for a first effort.

The windows were done in black and a light wash of blue. The blue didn’t show through very well and I would do well to highlight the ‘broken’ spots with greys and white in the future.

Cracking open the car and putting the mesh on the inside windows looks super good and is a technique I will be replicating a LOT more going forward.

The blue in the windows comes through a bit better here.

I liked the rust on the ‘bolted on’ metal bits a lot more than the stuff on the vehicle proper. For reference after carrying the vehicle in a box once and playing a single game, ALL of the wheel spikes fell off. I need better glue. (Glue in question sitting right there behind the vehicle.) I did the graffiti ‘SKIDZ’ in red in honor of the dice that are rolled when playing gaslands-skid dice.

You can see one of the wheel spikes already fell off just sitting on the table as I manipulated it while painting. I didn’t do anything with the lights, or the bumper which was a missed opportunity, but a learning experience. I will need to work on ‘added doors’ and other stuff going forward.

A little paint before and after shot. How fancy.

What did I learn/accomplish?

Well, I managed to disassemble, decorate, and paint up a gaslands car which is adequate for my first attempt. Looks MUCH better than straight hot wheels on the table, and brings a lot more flavor.

I needed to strip the paint more effectively, but then again the paint went on well enough so it all worked out.

The glue I used was adequate, but not really good enough in the long run since these cars are going to be pushed around and smashed into each other and I need them to be tougher, like where the wheel spikes fell off.

Also, places where the diecast paint remained were almost impossible to glue anything to reliably which is another reason to strip cars with more care.

I like the rust techniques and paint job in general, but will study more going forward. Seeing what people do online is amazing and I will build my skills up slowly. Also the decorations are pretty sparse in general and skidz doesn’t have a ton in the way of personality.

Overall I am excited to keep going on this journey and will be writing another article on gaslands shortly.

tRM