Tutorial: Wasteland vehicles

I've made a few ruined cars before, but these ones came out much better. This is a super duper quick way to add lots of terrain to a wasteland board. I've almost made a lot of vehicles - non wasted - for modern games.

It's a good amount of cover in any game as well, whipped up 10 vehicles in no time. For This Is Not A Test I would love a pure 50's style car park of ruined vehicles. But those toys are rarer to come by.

All these cars have been picked up a flea markets and the like, they'll cost you nothing. I'll put some words on what I did to them after the photos off the finished result.

You can check out my other Wasteland terrain here.

A cool tow truck I found, this is exactly the style I want for all vehicles. Posing with a few slavers.

This truck actually already means a lot to me. For some reason my father is a Gulf fan, he loves signs and such from Gulf. So it's pretty neat to have a Gulf truck on the wasteland board. There's a Peacekeeper sneaking around it.

A couple of heavy work vehicles. Perfect when combined with my junk piles, for a real junk yard feel.

These are some lighter plastic vehicles. Super easy to mess up with a saw and knife.

Step-by-step
Right! Always keep your eyes out for good used toys. There's some easy terrain out there.

Step 1
Take some masking tape and cover up all the windows. We don't want the glass messed up. Also cover up the lights and partly any logos or color you want shining through. Like the Gulf truck above.

Take off all the wheels where possible (cover other wheels with tape). Rubber don't rust, no need to prime those. Also we don't all cars to have intact wheels. Those wheels can be stuck on some other terrain instead - like junk piles.

Step 2
Base coat the vehicles. I've used a few different browns on each (hard to see on the photos). 50 shades of brown is the name of the game when doing rusted stuff. Remember to paint the underside of the car, if it's to be used flipped over.

Here's a better shot of the car with a few different browns showing up.

Step 3
Take a hammer, saw and drill to your vehicles. Drill bullet holes in windshields. Hammer dents in those metal toy cars (will also chip the paint nicely). Take a saw to the plastic cars, make some nice deep scratches in them.

Some glass might break a lot, so super glue those shards back on the car. It'll look cool with some broken glass.

Step 4
The ever trusted and lovely quick shade varnish. Just go ahead and drown those vehicles in it. They'll look even more messed up. It'll also make the details on the bottom stand out nicely.

The quick shade will also blend in any masked tape areas nicely - so logos don't look too shiny.

Step 5
Right after applying varnish sprinkle some garden debris onto the vehicles. I'm currently out of my trusty birch tree seeds. But I found some dry stuff in the garden and crushed it up good.

It'll soak into the varnish and stick in place.

Make sure to drop it from above, make it settle into natural places.

Step 6
Hit the vehicles with a coat of mat varnish. I use the cheapest one I can find.