This is Not a Test: Witness Me

Recently Joe McGuire, the creator of This is not a Test commented that he had been working on vehicle rules to add to the game.  I was pretty stoked because as much as I like Fallout my Post Apocalypse isn't complete with Mad Max which means the rising crescendo of supercharged engines guzzling precious gasoline.  I built a few PA vehicles intended for the tabletop in the last year but the project I just completed is a story of terrible failures and hopefully; Redemption.

These two boring pics are important because they show the anchor...

.....points for every addition I made to the model.

I imagine all hobbyists experience this because I do all too frequently.  I'm excited to do a new build because I have what I think is an amazing idea yet somewhere in the process it all falls apart, your muse cucks you and the disasterpiece ends up in the trash or buried in a box or oubliette somewhere deep in the lead pile.  The easiest failures to accept are when I realize my hobby skills can't match my imagination.  It's a common problem and we would be smaller for it if we were so stifled we could create anything we could imagine.  It's easy to tuck a problem project like this away and learn some new skills and return to it.

Sorting the big parts for assembly; The engine was too much and didn't make the cut.

The Bugatti was a very different problem.  It was part of a lot of antique vehicles I picked up for Strange Aeons last year.  Because I got two Bugattis in the lot I intended to use the second one for TNT.  I painted the first for Cult Leader and all around arsehole Valentine Black.  I imagined him motoring around post explosion Halifax in his fancy ride eating chocolate as he was waving to starving orphans.  As joyful as the scene was something went horribly wrong with the paint.  It was as though there was a film between the surface and the applied paint.  The coverage was terrible and I figured that my primer had gone wrong.  The entire piece was repelling paint.

 

Once the main parts were in I added details with styrene strips and bits and bobs.

I was able to get adequate coverage and figured I was out of the woods;  Then I tried to seal it.  The varnish wasn't curing and seemed to be reacting with the paint so it was smudging and tacky.  I was pissed and binned it.  A few hours later I recovered it and tucked it into the hobby junk pile.  The form of the vehicle saved it because I loved the lines but it was a write-off.  A couple weeks later I checked it again and it was still tacky.  I tore off the metal parts and threw them into the paint stripper vat.

 

The pre weathering hot with flat paints shows my Bf 109 styled colour scheme better.

In mid December I was on vacation and revisited the model.  I had put aside gribbly bits for the project in spite of it being a mess and started test fitting them to see how they would look together.  I was enjoying it so I grabbed some plasticard and started making some fittings.  I ended up slapping everything together and added so copper tubing as long exhausts.  

 

Close in on the weathered hood

The stylings of the vehicle are definitely built around the rat rods that the War Boys were driving in Fury Road.  The paint scheme actually wasn't meant to be.  I based that on a Bf-109 because I liked the light grey playing against the yellow and as a nod to the more blandly painted Me-262 that supplied the rods jet engine.