Build: GMPC Gaslands

From Matchbox toy to Display Miniature 

This project was definitely a turning point in my painting life. Why? 

• It was my first ever non miniature dedicated model
• It was my first heavily converted / built model
• It made me join the GMPC where I got known my best paint buddies till today

Community Building

Where does a beginner painter hang around that has not a local paint group? I browsed some blogs- Brückenkopf, Faeit 212, and some facebook groups like Tabletop minions, Trapped under plastic, Paint all the minis …

There I could post my mini pics, or check what others do. But Facebook is not a good medium for building a community with groups of multiple thousand members.

And then I stumbled over the German Miniature Painting Community (GMPC) discord - I think via Brückenkpopf.

Discord was new to me but easy to grasp - and the community was friendly and welcoming, active and a joy to join. 

And they also run regular painting competitions. ( Other competition projects will be posted in the near future. But let’s start with the first ) 

The competition was to build and paint a gaslands car within one month.

Enter the Gaslands

Gaslands is a tabletop game which feels a bit like Mad Max. In a dystopian future heavily modified cars battle against each other. And the best thing - The minis to use are converted  matchbox cars. So as simple as that: Grab a matchbox car from the child’s room, grab your bitz box and glue whatever you feel is matching.

And that’s exactly what the competition was about, within a 4 weeks timeframe.

Fortunately I had a huge pool of cars to chose from. My youngest son was 8 years old and willing to give me a free choice.

I had an old 80s or 90s car in mind - nothing fancy more kinda suburban family car.

This car was a good match.

Modifications - first round

The next steps were all but planned. It was more kinda intensive Google sessions for Gasland / Mad Max / sci-fi cars, and checking my bitz boxes for something that could mimic those references. While building, new ideas came to mind and were added, until time was running out and paint had to start. I’ll try to be as chronological as possible to understate that it's really a back and forth process.

Cleanup and dirty down

From the outside, first there had to be some cleaning. The chassy had mold lines that were quite hard to get rid of cause it was indeed some hard to file metal.

And even harder to handle for my drill - the one or other broke while drilling bullet wholes.

The wheels

I didn’t like the wheel of this one at all. Looked too much like a toy. So I took a second car from the kids ( of course with permission ) where I liked the wheels and swapped it.

For that I had to completely remove the underside and interior. Not easy as the toy cars have hidden screws like a laptop.

With the interior removed for the wheels swap, that was a chance to build up some crash car feeling. I added a cage made from metal rods and fly screen to replace the cheap looking plastic glass parts on the side - that shifted the whole cars appearance into the disposal dirty direction I wanted to have. Of course Supported by two massive pipes of plastic profiles as exhaust pipe.

The Bolter

The bitz box revealed a huge bolter from a Warhammer container set with some fixtures that are perfectly matching the cars shape. It looked perfect but since it was my first conversion, I was very uncertain and on every step the question raised “Is this Ok so? What is missing?

And I think these thoughts are the essence of creating something that convinces.

It means: slow down after a few steps, search further references on the internet or just by mind juggling and think about “what is happening there, what if I had to build that car in real?

This slow down and thinking is still part of my process today and always leads to the best ideas for dioramas.

And what was the point with the gun? 

The ammo!

Sure it needs some. Not some … the damn thing will fire the hell out of …

So where can all the ammo go? In the trunk! But then it needs to properly look like that, and with a few pieces of plastic card the ammo trunk was done.

A bit more Madmax

That was a good start but lacked a lot of the craftsman feeling the cars in mad Max have.

By thinking about what to do with the windshield I came up with the idea to split it. To be honest, I don't know why. Definitely the driver should be protected by a metal shield and maybe I just wanted to have some broken glass. Since the transition must be covered, the plastic card stripe was added. It looked quite cool and gives a racecar feeling. The metal protection for the driver is pure milliput while the Co driver windshield was scratched with a knife and got a milliput leftover glued into it. An indicator of some action going on.

And fof course I had to add some skulls! Initially In tried to glue a skeleton on the hood, but all my bitz were way out of scale and looked meh… so I went for the bull skull

The “Speed”

The whole Mad Max, Destruction derby, Death race movies live from the highspeed car action. Without showing speed, the whole idea wouldn't sell. 

But how to trick the viewer to recognize speed show on a static miniature? 

The key are moving parts that flow with the wind. It doesn’t need much, little details can be sufficient.

The final piece has some indications of speed but all started with the skull on the chain. That's also the strongest indication cause the item is very visible and with a strong direction against gravity which creates an intense feeling of speed.

Secondly the Vehicle was set onto a barrel, in a way that at least one wheel in the air - That definitely doesn’t indicate a parking position.

Second round - everything, just a bit more

Basically the car had everything, but it needed a bit more of everything.

More weapons:

a Melter was added to the front. 

In my youth I had a game called “interstate 76” and that was a kind of car fight in the 70s with amazing weapons on the car. One of which was a flamethrower front mount. Impossible to aim, but damn cool.

Also here - something has to fuel the thing. So a hose has been added pumping gasoline from the passenger seat.

More power

The exhaust pipes from plastic profiles didn’t really suite the scene. They had more of a pimp car look - so something new was needed. I found an rocket launcher in a space marine sprue and thought of a turbine. And that was looking really bad ass. And that beast has to be fueled, so I put the other half of the rocket launcher as gasoline tank on the trunk - with a broken hose for some drama.

More resilience 

A car made from fighting must be able to push others from the road, but so far there was nothing to support that. Some arbitrary plastic bits were used for steel frames to ram and even a hidden rocket launcher in the radiator grille.

More speed

Speed was introduced with 2 more details:

Antenna bend by the driving speed

Little drop of gasoline on the broken rear pipe ( only visible on painted piece). Tiny detail, but supports the recognized speed

The whole build was done in 7 days - that left 23 for painting. 

When it comes to building a project, my mind is deeply  into it in every free second. Counting the days, the process is more or less fast, but if I’d count the hours thinking about the project, it's always more than the paint job.