Racecar is a Palindrome

In keeping with my usual bullshit, I recently had some clever thoughts about Mario Kart, Wacky Racers, and of course Wasteman. As Ken and I have been organizing Waste-Fan Challenges, I started brainstorming ways for it all to come together: what would I need? Rules? Cars? Excuses to be a butt? Yes actually, to all of the above.

First thing first, I decided I'd need to do some designing in order to make these concepts all mesh together. I spent a few days playtesting and writing up tables, and came up with the following. Players each have a vehicle that they race/demolition derby around the board, ramming eachother and blowing stuff up. Unlike the usual Wasteman scenarios, this one has a built in suggested points, so that there's a ceiling for how outrageous the karts can be. Also, if they're "modest" karts, you can have a few goons waiting around the track, ready to butt in and cause some mischief.

To simulate question boxes, I decided to just have a table that you roll on to simulate shells and the like, and I threw in a few of my own ideas for good measure. I'm not sure if I succeeded in recognizing my roots (some combination of Twisted Metal Black and Diddy Kong Racing,) but I definitely had fun opening a few Youtube windows and mixing ambient gun noises with bad country music.

Then I needed the actual racers. For this, I ordered some of these old McDonalds toys and got to chopping. Fun Fact: you can use a triangular Nintendo screwdriver for most of them, to get the pencil topper characters out of the driver's seat. However, the screws are pretty soft, and some of the cars have multiple screw head types, so this Fun Fact is of questionable helpfulness.

In the end, I got these two buggies together

The one with the big laser cannon found itself rooted in my pug army. I had some leftover casts from my collaboration with Ramshackle Games, and so I chopped the captain in half, added a new head, and glued it in place. This car had the option to be a very long hot-rod-esque buddy, but for stability purposes, and because pug aesthetic (I've decided) is compact and stubby, I decided to glue it in its retracted form. Adding a laser cannon and a spare fuel tank from Ramshackle, I started splashing it with my favorite mud mix from Vallejo heavy mud to give it some worn texture.

The enemy racer is a Harambo the valiant from Thunderchild, with half its head knocked off and a robot interface in it's place. I was really jiving with the jungle theme and so I rummaged through my bits for as many old GW leafy bits as I could. I also embellished Poison Ivy's go-kart with liquid greenstuff, because I'd finally gotten a bottle and then realized I had no idea of what to do with it. For sanity sake, I glued the trap mouth shut, but just so you know, it was totally awesome watching it go paku-paku with a cyber gorilla in the cockpit.

Also, I made some start and finish lines out of old sprues and yogurt lids.

Then I painted them up! Because that's what you do with your toys, right? Right??

vroom

vroom vroom

Also, I made this as a joke for the Wasteman Fan Page. That said, I really ought to put something out, so maybe I'll make this. Or maybe I wont. Either way, I liked it and figured I'd share it here.