Car Racing in the Wasteland

“More speed, more speed, faster…”

Two Hour Wargames (THW) has a game set known as Machinas™ for racing in the post-apocalyptic Wasteland (apologies to T.S. Eliot). Using the game components, players move vehicle cards for white-knuckle renditions of battle-racers expelled from the scrap yards of survivor settlements and the detritus of the previous latest-and-greatest civilization’s boneyards. A player may use cards, card-stock cut-outs, or as I intend, model vehicles.

I’m looking forward to turning the colorful cards and tossing dice around the table creating dust and fumes with my friends. Confession: my copy of Machinas™ hasn’t been ordered yet, taking care of that today. Note to self, go see Tim.

What I have seen on the THW site, Youtube, and various blogs THW has a beautifully designed and visually detailed game, yet true to Ed Teixeira’s genius, very easy to learn and to play; compelling, just so cool.

Here’s a Youtube vid of Ed’s demo here, straight from the Man:

In my situation I am fortunate to have a local game store owner who’ll help me order Machinas™ which makes me happy to fuel up my (Hotchkiss) Hot-Kiss Chevy and squeeze into my driving gloves. The Chevy is in the shop being mauled and overhauled.

THW site here:

http://www.twohourwargames.com/postapocalypse.html

I will design my own Machinas race game board for grins and rumbles. Probably 90cm x 90cm (sorta 3′ x 3′) I just gotta do it, it’s for the Wasted Lands. Now I have my visual theme.

The before the remake pic. The Chevy is in the middle of the pack. It was red:

Now the Hot-Kiss Chevy beginning conversion:

The old thing will have twin Hotchkiss machineguns, a ram, and all the needful things for survival on the hot treacherous race course as drivers swap paint and a few rounds of high explosive armor piercing.

So my pals and I can have the full juice extreme death race fun I have designed (used loosely) six vehicles because, hey, a game like this has got to be visual and tactile.

So there’s more to come, like the Hot-Kiss Chevy Dust Devil and Keggers latest damp nightmare from Evil Labs™.

The Lovely Lady Torch Belvedere with Mopar™ attitude courtesy of Torque Girls.

Somkin’ FireLane St. Ford Acolytes be praised!

The nimble Zippo Rat Rod from the fevered minds of Primitive Vermin.

Risin’ to the occasion Tora-Tora Hud-San built and christened in sake by Kamikaze Dukes.

Flamin’ Fatality “to turbo or not turbo that is the question.” This car is the latest design that survived testing from Street Cretins.

I have designs for other cars, for example, one sponsored by Gobbos of Hate, a second, buffed by Dust Bunnies, and number 665 1/2 exorcised by the standup comic Alive 2 Drive. Nine cars, yeah, nine is a good number; that’ll be enough.

Who am I kidding? Gimme ten!

Funny how a game turbo-boosts the imagination. Right now I want to write the back-stories of everyone.

Slow down Gumby…..

Thanks Ed. I mean, Thank You Ed!!!

A VIDEO PLEASE……

A little Post-Script flavor enhancement. Get you in the groove. Dust in your face. High RPM engines roaring in your skull; nerves wired and ready for action, don’t wait for it, oh now, don’t wait or you’ll come in dead last.

PG audiences, NSFW, maybe the boss wouldn’t understand.

Stay Frosty.

In this heat?

Terrain for Campaign

Terrain for Campaign

Tau Expeditions™

In October 2012 Devereux’s Volunteers will host a resumption of Warhammer 40K gaming.  My army of choice is Tau, for the greater fun. Seven armies have selected assignments for the mini campaign we have dubbed Expeditions™ for our autumn ‘diversion’.

A bit of Tau terrain and buildings seemed a good idea. Most of our games are held at the game shops in our area. These locations offer an abundance of terrain goodness, mass quantities actually.  Expeditions™ will be held at Devereux manor, which offers a nice games room, however, not much 40K ‘space opera’ terrain.

 1. Stage One Tau Pylon

I was advised to make plenty of Tau ruins. Well, to begin Expeditions™ on a grand positive footing I have made several drawings for structures for bombardment. In this way I am a civil engineer playing host to mechanical engineers, you know, the ones who devise a method of job security for civil engineers—destruction!

2. Primed Tau Pylon

The remarque of a Tau Keep floats in the background. I sometimes work in the studio without an outline or drawing. Making the drawings is so much fun. The next Tau structure is a larger ‘strong point’ . The drawing can be seen in the background.  I try to see how close to plan I can create. The assemblage method is just as much fun, just a bit different approach, just as energizing for me.

3. Tai Pylon Base Coat

The shapes are evocative of commonly known Tau ones. One Tau shape is the saucer.  As the maker I want to infuse the motif of sails and masts in order to infuse some visual interest in the Tau structures, reminiscent of primitive ships and ancestral voyagers on expeditions of discovery or even conquest.

This pylon was completed as an assemblage or a group of shapes brought together and all the unnecessary bits removed so only the essential remains.

Extra bits include communication assets, weapons pods. The finishing touches with decals, markings and a finished paint / seal job.

I like a bunch of terrain. We will use a 122cm x 244cm (4’x8’) table so off to the toy shop to produce more terrain.

Basic Bill of Materials Used

• Sugar Pine
• Western Red Cedar
• Styrene plastic bits
• Tau Decals
• Glues–wood, CA, hot

If you have suggestions for the terrain build send them along in the comments section.

A Steampunk Armatage™

Something New Everyday

Here is a gander at a last-minute commission for an upcoming regional Steampunk Fair over the Labor Day Weekend.

Scrabbage

The idea of scrabbage is making a construction that I call a workment or Armatage™ in this case.  As the maker I am the Armaturge©.

Scrabbage is insightful scrounging, purposeful rummaging, and artful collecting, with a somewhat organized storing of parts for later use. It has to be organized and useful or else it is merely junk. My way makes all the clutter and mayhem into Junque and I do intend the capitalization.

“This is a bits and parts construction after all. Just slap something together. It will be fine.” Sorry lass, that is not the way I scrabbage something.

Armatage

Armatage, n. a construction or a fanciful but non-functioning weapon. The process and construction is Armaturgy.

Armaturge

Armaturge is a portmanteau of “arms” as in weapons and the noun thaumaturge from Greek wonder thaumato-  plus,  -ourgos working, from ergon work. One who makes miracle weapons from junk. How pretentious!

 

Raygun Build—Mock-Up

A good soak in SuperClean™ degreaser and general great cleanser insures the inner Raygun chassis will be ready for the inner works installation.

                                     Clean and ready for components

I do not know what is moving me forward on the Raygun build. I really want to see what the bits n’ bobs will look like when they all come together. The deadline is six weeks out. Plenty of lead time– I just step over to Raygun Central and poke and prod for a few minutes whilst the paint dried on a paint challenge.

I have employed a little Blue Tack and some Painters’ Tape to try out ad hoc design in real time, no drawing this time, which is my usual tack when I build a project.  I have not used the Dremel ™ yet because I intend to work with what material as is.

                                                      A Tape n’ Tack Mock-Up

I have thought a little about a name for the Raygun. It is not part of the challenge but every project has a name or a title. Same should hold true for this build, besides, I am getting tired of just calling this build a Raygun.

What is a good name for the Raygun?  Suggestions welcome!

Raygun Build Part II

To begin a project requires planning, imagination, and time. Often I do a trial fit and if I like the outcome then the project is finished in short order. What I make depends on what I have on hand. I usually just scrounge the parts.

Here is what I found when I opened my find. Yay!

All of these build activities are in the toy shop where I can find anything I want or have not finished; it just takes a little time.

During summer my projects come in order of emphasis:   a little behind work (Ech!), just after sports (Score!), and a long way behind relationships (Cheers!). I shall endeavor to move this Raygun build along in a timely fashion. The deadline is for late October.

For this build picking the parts takes the place of an initial drawing. I use what I have on hand. This is the sculptural aspect. It is great that the parts have threaded ends or existing holes for easy assembly. The divine is in the details to wit, the parts.

The box of bits includes a flashlight (torch) lens, several couplers, a cut crystal jewel, a pump bulb, two shell casings; a battery powered light, a small key, tape roll thingy, etc. Remember the inner parts of my Raygun may also yield some interesting tidbits once they are thoroughly cleaned. The housing has a lot of space to accommodate some LED’s or other secret gizmos.

How I understand the term ‘Steampunk’

In regards to a personal definition of Steampunk I get the reference of ‘power’ as steam. Then add ‘punk’ to a noun as descriptor, (I thought adjectives did that job) and lo, a new genre is formed. Crimeny-Ned!

I interpret ‘punk’ as ‘imaginative trend-bending’ of historical artifacts as ‘powerfully projected alternative renditions of everyday items with a patina of the Victorian ethos’. One of the shared interests is making that stuff consistent in the world of imagination with a 19^th century swagger.  I enjoy the idea that the limits of historical influence are undone or at least mixed with the present.

Can you tell what I might combine on this build?

Raygun Build

Part I

Scrap Punk: I make personal disasters.

The Ridiculous Diversion part of Wargaming involves the influence of other people on me. Victorian Sci-Fi and Steampunk are both truly outside my orbit. That is until something comes along that piques my interest. I have a certain magnetic attraction and wonder at the reuse of parts from one thing to make another thing, a transformation of sorts, as in reuse from refuse.

      “What can it become?” is my favorite question.

Moding or modifying is another term that I use interchangeably with scratch building or kit bashing both older phrases.  The fourth term in constant use with DiY’ers is altered as in ‘altered books’, ‘altered boxes’, and ‘altered toys’. Altering, bashing, scratch building, homebrew, moding and punking (even pimping) convey the idea of making something from various left-over bits and parts. It is not called kit-bashing for nothing, hence, the need to keep a lot of parts on hand.

There is a sculptural aspect to making decisive additions to the template material (as in the picture above) and putting the pieces together in 3-D. It is a collage of bits in the round.

A few of my associates needed a new term for making things from scrap and so I invented Spiking. Graphic artists to artful MiG and TiG welders took the term and ran with it. My phrase for this upcoming challenge shall be:  Scrap Punk.

All the world’s a dust bin,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their bits and their parts,
And one man in his time plays with many toys. . .

My next in-between projects diversion will be a Victorian Sci-Fi / Steampunk Raygun Construction Challenge. I have just the place to begin, in my toy shop where I deconstruct to re-construct, all very post-modernist (Po-Mo). I began bashing kits before Po-Mo was cult.

I say, the games afoot…

I make custom disasters.

Scrap Punk is my own term, and a Steampunk Raygun is closer to reality. Please accept the oxymoron.