We've been planning
to try out Osprey's Gaslands for some time, so a few of us combined our imaginations, scoured our bit boxes, and found a handful of old hot wheels cars and made some vehicles. With a
week to go after Colours before we were due to play we realised we were going to
need some terrain - so here's what I put together in seven days, along with a
few pictures of the game we played at the end.
I bought a 4 x 4 wasteland mat from Deep Cut Studios at Colours. To be honest it wasn't the mat I
was originally looking for but they didn't have that one in the right size so I
settled on this. In the end I have no regrets as this was definitely the better choice - the base
cloth looks fantastic with the terrain on it. The only issue for me was to
colour match the terrain pieces. As you will see I didn't get it perfectly
right, but the end result I think looks OK.
The scenario we
planned was Death Race. That meant all we really needed was a few race gates
and some obstacles of various types. I added some sections of road, some concrete barriers and a couple
of areas of hazardous terrain into the mix as well.
Race Gates
I ended up building
six gates, though we're probably only going to ever need four. Each was a strip
of 3mm MDF with two cylinders made from rolled corrugated card on each side.
The start and finish gates had poles (cut from a set of black and white striped
pencils bought from Poundland) and the other gates flags made from kebab sticks
and masking tape. The card rolls in which these were set were filled with
Milliput for strength and topped with sand. The base was textured around the
cylinders with filler and sand mix, with the central section just textured with
Chinchilla dust.
The general colour
for the terrain was a bespoke mix of chocolate brown and a little dark red cheap emulsion paint (tester pots), dry brushed first with a light sand colour and then with a
lighter cream colour (again, cheap emulsion testers). The cylinders were
painted black and dry-brushed with gunmetal to give the effect of
concrete-filled bollards made from corrugated metal. Flags were painted in bright
colours with numbers.
I tried various
approaches to make the start and finish banners with numerous failures because
of the lack of strength of materials or the inability of the glue to stick to
them. Finally, I settled on the simpler but less effective solution of printed
paper banners with string glued to the top and bottom edges, connected and held
firmly between the (pencil) poles by glue and a few blobs of green stuff. They're very
solid, and they look OK from a distance. If I get the time I might replace them
with something better, but they will do for the moment.
I realised (as some
of you will have already, probably) that my design wasn't directional, so I
needed some way of indicating the way to enter each gate. The easy solution was
to add some signs so I printed out some yellow and black chevrons of the type used
to indicate sharp corners an stuck these to sections of wide lolly stick
(readily available at very low cost in The Works and other such shops) and
glued them to the sides of the gates.
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| Start and finish gates |
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| Gates #1 - #4 |
Basically, these are
piles of rocks. I cut bases from 3mm MDF, put some PVA-soaked newspaper on top
and pushed some stones into it. This sets extremely solidly. When dry these were
textured with the base mix and finally painted in the general terrain colours
above. Very simple.
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| Rock piles |
These are road signs
and billboards. 3mm MDF bases with signs and boards made from lolly sticks,
coffee stirrers and kebab sticks, with some spare tyres added at the edges of
some of the bases for effect. Bases painted as above, wood given a thin coat of
the sand colour used as the first highlight.
I appreciate that
there are signs and billboard posters that are available from the Gaslands web
site or Facebook group but I wanted something different so the signs and
posters I used were either taken and modified from images available on the
Internet or made up by myself. The exception is the advert for the forthcoming
7TV2 Post-Apocalypse Kickstarter from Crooked Dice, which is a reduced sized copy of
their flyer. Next month, chaps. I am not the only one to be very excited about
this.
If you want to make
your own billboards using these designs, they are available to download as a jpg file here.
Volatile Obstacles
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| Various signs and billboards |
Two of the signs
indicate flammable and explosive items, so I made a couple of small bases with
20mm oil drums (from Debris of War) as well.
Roads
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| Danger - explosives |
The roads are two
straight sections of 3mm MDF, each 24" long so that they will fit
perfectly across the base cloth. I made a couple of smaller sections with
angled edges so that the road could also run diagonally across the board as
well.
I glued a narrower
strip of roofing felt to these to be the road surface. This works very well but
needs to be weighted down while it dries so that the edges don't curl up. I
used a normal household glue to stick this. I made the mistake a year ago of trying
to stick roofing felt to MDF using epoxy glue. Do not try this - it melts the
felt and makes a horrible mess.
When dry, I
carefully added base texture to the edges of the road. These edges were
carefully painted so as not to paint the road surface. I was a little less
careful with the dry brushing as a little of this on the road surface is fine
and just gives the impression of a dusty landscape.
Concrete Barriers
I'm not quite sure about these, to be honest. I think they would be improved by some graffiti, posters or signs so will probably add to them in due course. However, here they are for the time being. Based as usual on 3mm MDF, these are made from cardboard coated with paper mache and textured. I was going for a sort of concrete wall look and I think they work fine. They could be used as solid obstacles as well as the rock piles, though in the event we didn't use these in our first game.
Hazardous Terrain
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| Highway across the wasteland |
I'm not quite sure about these, to be honest. I think they would be improved by some graffiti, posters or signs so will probably add to them in due course. However, here they are for the time being. Based as usual on 3mm MDF, these are made from cardboard coated with paper mache and textured. I was going for a sort of concrete wall look and I think they work fine. They could be used as solid obstacles as well as the rock piles, though in the event we didn't use these in our first game.
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| Concrete barriers |
The easiest of the
lot. This is just made from 3mm MFD textured (with an extra sprinkle of small
stones) and painted.
More Signs
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| Areas of hazardous terrain |
I made a lot more of the directional indicators than I needed for the gates, so I kept these to use as items of scatter terrain around the circuit. They don't necessarily mean drivers have to follow those directions, of course, but are just there for effect.
And now that I have all the
basic terrain I will add to this slowly as I am inspired!
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| Yet more signs |
Our First Game of
Gaslands
This was a lot of
fun and I was very pleased that my effort in putting the terrain together was
not wasted. We were slow, true, and the game was not finished, but that's
because there were five of us with two cars each and we were all unfamiliar
with the rules. We also probably put the gates too far apart. But we got faster
as we played and will doubtlessly continue to do so as we play more.
Some images of our
game follow for your entertainment!
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