Gaslands: Promise and Community
What good is a game you never get to play? Well… Enter Gaslands
Gaslands has an excellent pitch, the pitch is pretty simple: The world is trashed, ruined MadMax style however, it’s not the end of everything because there are people on Mars who are living lives of luxury. If you win the show ‘Gaslands’ you get a golden ticket to Mars.
However, this isn’t the real draw of Gaslands. Gaslands real draw is simple. It’s played with Matchbox cars. They can be Hotwheels or any other brand but you get the picture. The idea is simple, get some sort of toy car and then add some junk to it and some guns and go for it.
Like many boys I got Matchbox toys as a child and there was a certain nostalgic feel to playing with these again. Because that’s what I am doing even if it is painting them. Painting them is what I liked the most. Painting up these was quite the pleasure because of one thing above all others. It was easy and freeing.
One of the things I enjoyed the most was ignoring what other people said and not stripping these in acetone but instead starting with the base paint job they come with. By just sponging on some varieties of steel metallic. Then using crushed pure pigments mixed together as the rust and simply gluing on the guns or weird creations from other kits and you're done. This is why it was so freeing because after doing a lot of character work it was getting back to painting something simple, that I could enjoy.
I made up some teams as you can see in fact I made the greater majority of these teams in less than a week. I really, really enjoyed it. My brother got in two games and really enjoyed it but I was in the shop for some other reason as far as I can remember but…
People stopped playing the game, and it was really disappointing because I had finally gotten my team together. There is a team in the game that basically equates to the ‘legally distinct from’ ‘Christine’ the Stephen King book or movie depending on your flavour. I really love the idea of it because you have one real car and a series of ghost cars…
This was the promise: Gaslands a game where I could make fun models for a fun game.
The thing is…
I didn’t reach out enough, I didn’t ask enough people, and the community dried up surprisingly quickly, but if you want to build community… Sometimes you face uphill battles. Sometimes you have to put work into actually building community. To getting to know the people and to getting the games in. Nothing is given, even if you put in the effort.
All Gaslands really promised was a ruleset and the idea of play. To make a game, you must first make a community. That is what I intend to do…
So…
Hey… wanna play some Gaslands?
Until next time friends…
Keep those brushes wet