Machinas: Brother Pilot's Buick

I figured I wrap up the Machinas range for the time being with this post. I'm sure there may be more, but it's time to move on to other things. This is sort of an AAR, though more of a final highlight to an AAR. Happy reading!

Brother Pilot swung the wheeled infernal around the near turn. The front wheels gripped and the back end swung through the dirt, dusting competitors and spectators alike with gravel, rock, and ripping thunder. The momentum shifted Brother Gunner’s slumped body against the receiver of the heavy slugger gun swinging the large barrel around, partially blocking Brother Pilot’s view of the track and opponents. With one hand, Pilot pulled the dead man off the gun and grabbed the trigger grips.

The Icon of Saint Mercury rammed the back bumper of Brother Pilot’s vehicle, trying to spin him off the track and out of the race, but he held tight to both the steering wheel and the gun. The jolt of the strike threw Pilot against his door, but he was also able to yank the gun out of his view.
The Icon of Saint Mercury ground its fenders into Brother Pilot’s vehicle then let off, sliding to the high side to set up its pass.

 The Conception of Saint Buick was Brother Pilot’s vehicle. It brought glory to him and Brother Gunner the instant Pilot started the engine for the first heat of the Machinas Festival races. It had brought glory to 30 years of Brother Pilots and Brother Gunners and would bring glory for 30 years more; the Familia Mechanicus, under the direction of the Artifex Rex, devoted their entire lives to the upkeep of the wheeled infernals.

It took questers, adventurers and other chartered trackers 25 years to find parts enough to bring The Conception of Saint Buick to life. Many of them had lost their lives in pursuit of such things as the Distributor Hat, the Glass Sparkers, Belts of Timing and hundreds of other needed parts. 25 years just find the parts, and another 10 to understand how it all worked and to get the vehicle running. A hundred others have been rebuilt since, but The Conception of Saint Buick was the first of the great wheeled infernals, and on this day, all its 35 years of parts and labor orchestrated a glorious show for the citizens of Septimontium.

 Brother Pilot had a hand on the steering wheel, a hand on the slugger and his foot on the accelerator. He caught in the corner of his eye the bright yellow fender of the Icon of Saint Mercury coming into view as the heavy vehicle began a confident pass. Mercury’s driver knew that Conception’s gunner was down, so thought nothing of the routine pass. He quickly scanned Conception as he passed but Brother Pilot didn’t take notice. Brother Pilot was busy gauging the distance between the two vehicles; he wanted to make sure there was enough of a buffer zone in case he lost control of The Conception for what he was about to try.

 Brother Pilot waited until the Icon entered The Conception’s high front quarter. Keeping his right foot on the accelerator, he lifted his left leg and rested it against the steering wheel to hold the vehicle steady. His hands free, Brother Pilot leaned over, grabbed the grips of the heavy slugger, swung the barrel at The Icon of Saint Mercury and opened fire. What a surprise Icon’s driver received! 


Round after round of heavy iron slugs ripped through the Icon. Metal flew and tires shredded, and the Icon started to dig into the dirt track as heavy strips of jagged metal were ripped from the vehicle’s body by Brother Pilot’s gunnery. The Icon of Saint Mercury slowed to a stop, out of the race, smoking and on fire. Its driver climbed from his ventilated vehicle and stood in the gas-soaked track, quickly taking in the metal carnage he had just survived.  He looked down the track, smiled and saluted Brother Pilot as the Conception of Saint Buick rolled across the finish line -- steered by his leg, his gunner dead, baptized in shrapnel – gloriously into last place.

Machinas: Wreck of the Fleetline

The Fleetline car just wasn't doing it for me, so I sacrificed it as a wreck (don't worry; it cost me all of a dollar.) I don't think Brother Pilot survived this time.

I started with a hammer, but nothing gave - those Hot Wheels are built damn tough. Even under the hammer, barely any of my original paint was chipping ( a good sign; I can save on varnish.) I switched to a pair of pliers which I had better success with.

I drilled out some bullet holes, painted the vehicle and finished by actually burning/melting the front wheel and bumper, allowing the soot to help blacken the body where it was hit with large caliber "thunder" weapons. I'll probably have to hit the coot with a little varnish; it will wipe off if not otherwise protected/fixed. I used a brush and black paint to fan out some blast marks (you can see then on the driver-side door and roof.)

Red Sand Brown Sky

Two Hour Wargames just released Red Sand Brown Sky, post apocalyptic gladiatorial fighting (or small skirmishing). You'll need Red Sand Black Moon to use this FREE supplement, but I think it's worth it. Red Sand Black Moon (and it's forefather Red Sand Blue Sky) are the best gladiator games I've ever played ... well, at least they're my favorite; they're gritty and brutal, and sometimes can end quickly if a fighter can slip in a good strike.

Why am I pushing this? 'Cause them's my peeps on the cover :) Honestly, though, I think this is a fun set of rules; how can you not enjoy bringing a chainsaw or flamethrower into the arena?
There's not too much bookkeeping (you just keep track of your own wounds and stats), and after a couple turns of going through the easy-to-use tables, everything just starts flowing and someone is dead before you know it.

If you already own Red Sand Black Moon, have a quick free go at Red Sand Brown Sky.

Note: I'm not getting paid or otherwise compensated for this post supporting these fine rules - except for the free copy of RSBrS - I just like what I like.

Machinas: Gallery

Rear view nightmare

Seer Class vehicles

Getting ready for the Thunder Race

Little and Big guns

Last race of the day

Machinas: The last two cars (Caddys)

These are the last of the cars I will make for the Machinas; there's no more room in the carrying case. Well, there's a little bit of room, but if I use that space, it'll be for a based wreck or to hold my proper Chariots for Charioteer.

The first vehicle (Seer Class) is a '53 Cadillac (I'm not sure what the exact model is- I'm going off the Hot Wheels wiki page which says what most of these cars are based off of.) You might recognize the armament it's sporting; that's my scratch built .50 Cal. I made originally for my Studebaker pickup. I think  my .50 fits this Cadillac just fine.
And yes, that's the top half of an office chair in the back; my gunner needs to be comfortable. The seet and back are made with green stuff, and connected with a small piece of brass rod.

The second vehicle is another new favorite. Hot Wheels wiki calls it the Evil Twin and says it's based on a "Custom 50s Cadillac." Since it's a "twin," I named mine Gemini. I saw this model on Amazon and knew I would be adding it to my collection; it's got Machinas written all over it.
In between the two large engines is my large scratch built vulcan cannon; oh yeah, it fits. The vulcan makes this car a Heavy Ahead class in the Machinas races.

I have just a few other things to do to complete my Machinas range. I need to make stat cards for the rest of the cars; I want to spruce up the track just a touch (add a little more color and maybe some static grass here and there); and I want to get a few random pics to post a small gallery so you all can see multiple views of all the cars. All in good time.

Machinas: Chevys and a Divco

Here are three more vehicles. The first is an Ahead class Saint Chevy's Fleetline (based on a '47 Chevy Fleetline.) I didn't do anything special with this one. Honestly, I rushed these three so I could get to my new favorite, which is still on the painting table. I gave this Fleetline some simple brass rod, low-calibre guns - I'm not particualr to this car, in fact, I almost decided to turn it into a wreck. But it survived and will see a few races, I'm sure.

The next vehicle is another pickup truck, a 1952 Chevy (Thunder class). Those rocket pods may look familiar; with the addition of this truck and my 53 Cadillac (on the painting table), both of which have cargo beds, I have space enough to permanently place all the extra bits I made. This truck got the rocket pods. The 53 Caddy got the .50 Cal., and the original truck got my tow rig.
I like the lines on this truck. If I could own a restored classic car, it would probably be one of these old pickups. Pretty lines, room for me and a friend, no computer chips, and space in the back for whatever your imagination can think of ... in this case, a pair of rocket pods.

The last vehicle for today is based on a Divco delivery truck (Seer class). I was actually surprised with this vehicle; it's Hot Wheels just like all the others, but it's a slightly larger scale (on par with Jadas). So I painted it brown-ish to make it reminiscent of UPS delivery trucks (as seen in the U.S.)
The conversion includes a turret with base on the front (made with greenstuff and brass rod) as well as a ball-mount tail gun (I'll have to do some multi-view photos of these, so you can see), also made with green stuff and brass rod gun barrels. This is the largest vehicle of my collection.

Septimontium: Machinas vehicle classes

Each wheeled infernal was treated as a religious relic, a gift from the Oppenheimer's saintly Friends. The priests knew these were gifts because most of the vehicles were embossed with the name of its giver. And many givers went further by giving a name to their gift. So all vehicles are named by the inscriptions fixed to them, such as Saint Plymouth's Fury, (or with variants of the names, such as The Sting of Saint Hudson.

When the infernals started rolling into Oak Street Church's storage, the diverse nature of the models of vehicles amazed the priests, and having a culture that mixes religious with empirical thinking, they wished to further classify the vehicles. But  they weren't quite sure how to the taxonomy. The vehicles all had four wheels; they were all made of mostly metal; they all had the infernal engine. But every vehicle in the church had different lines, contours and dimensions, with only one or two being at least noticeably similar (usually those of the same saint).

The break for church came with the advent of the Machinas races. Instead of classifying the vehicles based on shape or size, the High Priest Brother Eon (who was also the founder of the Oak Street Church Garage) proposed classifying the vehicles based on armament. The Council of Brothers approved, and the system has been used ever since. Here are a few of the main classes of vehicles used in the Machinas:

Ahead Class

The Aheads are so named because all of their weaponry are focused ahead. Some of the weapons might have some rotational ability, but they are limited to no more than 30 degree from the centerline of the vehicle. The Aheads are the most common class seen in the Machinas. There are also a few subclasses of the Ahead, the most common being the Heavy Ahead.

Heavy Ahead Class

The Heavy Aheads are the same as the main Ahead class except that the weapons are either of a very large caliber or are able to deliver a blistering rate of firepower. The forward weapons are usually a Heavy Ahead's only weaponry, since the vehicle is otherwise trying to save weight  to make space for the weapons or the huge amount of ammunition.

Seer Class

The Seers are those vehicles whose main weapon is turret-mounted, or otherwise able to rotate to cover at least 3/4 of the area around the vehicle. They are called Seers because the weapon is able to "see" all around. The weapon can either be a gun, cannon or missile. So long as the weapon is able to rotate more than 270 degrees, the class of vehicle is Seer. A few rare vehicles are turret-mounted with a heavy cannon or missile salvo; these vehicles for the small subclass called the Thunder Seers.

Thunder Class

These are among the crowd favorites, vehicle mounted with weaponry that is slow to load and rarely strikes its mark, but that fills the air with the sound of thunder (The sound of thunder is a blessing among the Septimontiums; they say thunder is the echo of when the Oppenheimer brought light to the world.)
The vehicles include those armed mostly with missiles, rockets, sometimes large mortars, cannon.

Variabilis Class

These are the multirole vehicles. They have a mix of weaponry that always include one or two guns (either forward-firing or turreted) and either a small cannon or a pair of missiles or rockets.

Not mine, but take a look!

I don't normally link to other people's posts, but this project was just too fun to not share with others who might miss it otherwise. Laughing Ferret has done a great job converting an orc Blood Bowl team into a team of orcish sailors. Just click on the link: "What do you do with an Orcan sailor?"

Machinas note: 5 more cars are now sitting on the table having arrived in the mail. These will be the last. I will post them soon.

Storing the Apocalypse

One of the more difficult parts of this hobby is finding some decent storage options without spending too much money, without resorting to shoe boxes. I'm still looking for options to store my 54mm apocalators (they get the display shelf for the time being until I find something that'll store them.)

For my Charioteer/Death Race components, I went ahead and spent the extra few dollars because this KR Multicase actually fit everything I need to play the game.

Looking at the case, you can see, from left to right, the rolled up track (a large strip of VFF suede,) foam enough for 16 cars (though, I may use some of the extra foam compartments to store either my Roman chariots or accessories such as the pick-up truck loads or a couple wrecked cars. There was actually foam enough to fill the whole case ((two layers deep)), but I cut it down to what I needed).

Then there are my dice, dry erase pens and stat cards inside protective sleeves for keeping track of everything during a game. I used Ultra Pro Super thick, top loaders, but any old card sleeve would work.

Finally, there is space between the lid and foam to put my Racing Tables for playing the game.

Below, you can see everything that was in the case laid out to play. A quick note on those stat cards; they're great not only for keeping track of bonus dice and things such as loss of speed, but I can also rearrange them to reflect track positions (and so that I don't have to search up and down the row for a vehicle's stats; the stats are right near the vehicle.)

Machinas: The Sting of Saint Hudson, and truck update

Here's the latest in my Machinas collection. I liked the arrangement on my "Tormenta," ('62 Chevy), but since I'm selling that car, I wanted to repeat the arrangement.

On top of that, I made the lucky find of a pair of Maxim machine guns in my bits boxes. I love the Maxims on this car; I think they help emphasize the retro look.
A pair of spikes (not enough of my cars are spiked) and a hatch complete this car's look.

(I call it The Sting of Saint Hudson because this car is a Hudson Hornet.)

I also finished painting the loads for my pick-up truck (as well as adding another load- my scratch-built pair of rocket pods.)

Among the options I'm thinking about for this truck are a catapult (for that OLD-school feel) and a camper shell. Or, instead of the camper shell, I could do an armored car box, bristling with gun ports and machine guns. But all these ideas can wait; there's no rush.

Machinas: Tow truck and weapons WIP

This evening, I made a couple drop-in options for my pick-up truck (with the towing rig shown as it would be set up.)

These came out better than I thought. I started the towing rig by first adding the front wall/supports, followed with the tow beam (a bipod for something long forgotten, plus a piece of brass rod.) The rubber sling at the end of the cable was made by cutting out the shape from plasticard, then using a lighter to heat the plastic up just enough so that it would sag into a natural slack position. Then I added a few bits and bobs and called it done (except for painting.)

The mounted machine gun took just as long even though it had fewer parts. The gun shield was easy enough; I just cut out the shape, scored a couple shallow lines with an Exacto knife, and carefully bent the shield into the shape I needed.

The difficult part was trying to drill out the barrel support and flash suppressor straight enough to look right without tearing the walls of the green stuff. It took me a couple tries with each part. Even with this barrel support, I tore a part of the green stuff, but I've hidden it at the bottom of the barrel. The receiver is just a piece of bass wood with a couple short pieces of brass rod for the grips. I still need to add an ammo box.

The vulcan/gatling gun isn't a load for this pick-up. It's actually meant to be a center-mounted main weapon for my Evil Twin machine which is on its way. The weapon is a little large, so I'm hoping it works. Though, I've had some practice making a gatling gun in the past, this one was much more difficult being 4 or 5 times as small. If it turns out being too large for any of my new cars, then I have a bad-ass weapon sitting in my bits box.

Maybe I could give a new post-apoc gladiator a gatling-gun arm.

Machinas: First Heat (AAR)

“Brother Pilots, raise your high hand to Oppenheimer.”

The drivers stood on their hoods, next to open doors, or sat on hatch rims of their machines. All raised their right hand, called the “high hand” since it is on the high side of the track at the Circus Acceleratus. They recited the oath in unison.

“I will endure to be hurled, to be rolled and to be flipped by wheeled metal. And to be shot, and to be burned and to be exploded by missile. Blessed is Saint Machinas.”

This was the only ceremony that would precede the race; the significance of the race was a ceremony by itself.

The Festival of Saint Machinas would see two weeks of racing, beginning with this race, the first in a score of 1- and 3-lap heats to determine the lineup of the (7-lap) Machinas Major, the final race to determine this festival’s champion. 100,000 people, nomads and mutants filled the stadium for a heat race, and all 100,000 would come back to enthrall themselves with every race that followed, all the way to the Major.

The engines sputtered, popped and exploded into growls, and the crowd roared in excitement to the thunder on the track.

It took just seconds for the track auxiliaries to confirm the engines were all running and to clear the track. After the last mechanic was off the track, The Recumbent of Easy Chair -- the high priest of the Church of Oak Street – dropped his fist signaling the drivers, and the infernals were off!

The Race

(Note: The vehicles are long-titled for the canonized names of their makers, but I used the colors of the cars in this narrative for the sake of brevity. Also, since a race narrative is tedious and repetitive, I just covered the highlights.)

After some initial jostling, Red took the lead followed by Yellow, White, Purple and Blue.

Going down the straightaway, there was a little bit of exchanged weapons fire, but the status quo was maintined.

Entering the far turn, Purple took a high lane to pass White and, having the better tires, easily gained position. But the real action took place at the rear of the pack as Blue and Yellow fought for the scraps, neck-and-neck, grinding metal, exchanging fire. But neither could gain the advantage and shared last position.

Coming out of the turn, Purple pulled close to Red at the head of the pack and opened fire with his twin machine guns, hoping to knock Red out of contention, but Red’s turret gun got a lucky hit direct on Purple’s gun systems! Purple dropped back and White gained second position. Having not been part of the action in front or behind, White had been able to save momentum, and he set up to pass Red for first position.

The vehicles were not reliable as was evident when Red, easily holding onto first, suddenly had his brakes lock up! He fell back and White gained first with no effort. Purple was also in position and passed Red.

Entering the near turn, Yellow saw Red falling back and moved in to take advantage.  Having a heavier machine, Yellow easily bumped Red back yet another position. Unfortunately for Blue, this final loss of position for Red blocked Blue’s last chance of gaining any position. 

Yellow tried pushing his luck against Purple. He was able to pull up next to Purple, and they ended up side-by-side tearing down to the finish line.

The final running order coming across the finish line was White, with Purple and Yellow side-by-side, Red and then Blue. Since the first three finishers moved on, it didn’t matter if Yellow or Purple finished ahead of the other. Red started off strong, but having that one turn of bad luck with his brakes cascaded into more problems. 

With the fights for the lead and the last spots wearing down those cars, White, who had been in the middle of the pack, was able to take advantage of weakening opponents to slip into the win.

With all the bashing and shooting going on, it was somewhat surprising that all the cars finished the race. Though, it was only a 1-lap sprint.

It was just the first heat race, a simple warm-up, but the crowds had waited four years and cheered as if a champion had already been crowned. And there were two weeks of races yet to be run.

Game mechanics notes: For those who play Charioteer, one of the major changes (really, just about the only change) I made for this version was to allow vehicles to share a spot (though, not a slot.) It made for some exciting and tight racing, but there are still a few contingencies I need to write down and find solutions for.