WEAPONS READY!

by Christopher Kidder-Mostrom

In less than a fortnight, it’s going to be May. The lusty month is going to be dirty and dusty, as the racing world will be rife with wasteland-style racing. As the weather turns toward summer in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a primal call for violence and carnage on the track.

Gaslands, a miniatures combat game that uses 1:64 scale cars as playing pieces, was first launched in 2017. Over the last four years, it has become immensely popular. It has even had a second edition called “Gaslands: Refueled”.

Many in the diecast racing community were first introduced to the game last summer when Robby Comeford of Diecast 64 hosted his June races. The stock and modified divisions were the same as every other month of 2020, but the featured race of the month was Gaslands.

“I loved the Gaslands race last year,” remembers Comeford. “People sent in the coolest cars…I think a bunch of racers had a fun time building them.”

The track itself is of some importance in this race. Rather than the regular four lanes of orange track that Diecast 64 viewers have grown accustomed to, the track is wide and open from top to bottom, with a taper toward the finish line. It’s still a drag strip, but it is a drag strip in which the cars can all collide with each other from the moment they leave the gate. And the surface of the track is not smooth. It is rough and bumpy, so that contributes to the general mayhem and carnage.

Comeford offers this bit of advice for competing in the Diecast 64 Gaslands race: “One thing about this track is that cars can get a little squirrelly, so I’m not sure that there is much advantage to building big.”

The specs for the race do allow for cars that are taller than normal, and wider than normal (at least above the edges of standard orange track). Nevertheless, “cars with a low center of gravity and that can get out fast and avoid other cars are the ones that perform best,” Comeford shares. At the time of our interview with Robby C, he hadn’t yet received any entries for this year’s races. By now (two weeks later) that most likely has changed. “I usually start seeing cars arrive a couple of weeks prior to the deadline.” In this case, the deadline is May 1 (more info at www.racehotwheels.com)

There’s just enough time to put together a ride and submit it, but don’t worry if you’re a little rushed. “People can submit the same cars as last year,” states Comeford. “Hopefully everyone learned a little something last year and some builders will at least make a few tweaks ‘under the hood’, but mainly I want people to have a chance to race and have fun”.

Comeford encourages everyone to try being a part of these races. “I can guarantee you’re going to have a blast building a car for this one,” he claims. “If you need some ideas, get on the internet and Google Gaslands. You'll find so many

cool pics and tips for building cars…. And I have found the Gaslands community to be super cool and helpful, so check out the Facebook group as well. And who knows, you may even find a new way to play with your Hot Wheels cars.”

Looking for a new way to play was exactly what got Luca Caltabiano of Montreal, Quebec, involved in diecast racing. He was already well immersed in the Gaslands community.

“I never got into the racing community,” explains Caltabiano, “I only really watched it.”

But then he built a track of his own. “Now everyone wants to build and send me cars, and it looks like it is picking up quickly,” he confides.

Caltabiano didn’t come to diecast racing in the same way as most racers. He didn’t play with Hot Wheels as a child. “I played with Turtles and GI Joe,” he says.

And as an adult he runs a gaming shop and does board game reviews on YouTube. That’s what led to him discovering Gaslands, and then the Covid-19 Pandemic gave him a nudge towards diecast racing. Being unable to gather folks together to play Gaslands as a tabletop game, “I had to find another mature way to play with Hot Wheels,” says Caltabiano.

Just as in the racing community, there is a high demand for 3Dprinted materials in the Gaslands modifying community. And Caltabiano answered the call for bits and bobs at the beginning of the pandemic. He started producing weapons and other accessories for players to use to turn their diecast cars into dystopic carnage machines.

So, Gaslands TV is sort of a general store for all your Gaslands needs. There’s bits and bobs for builders (via an Etsy store), there’s the YouTube channel with How-To videos and races, and there are contests to get involved with, including the Gaslands UK Car of the Month contest, which used to be hosted out of England, but now (for some reason) is hosted out of Canada. Perhaps Commonwealth status is good enough for hosting the titularly British monthly event.

The racing has been secondary to the other parts of the channel up to now, but that’s about to change. A whole lot of cars have already arrived at Gaslands TV, and more are expected. The deadline for submissions is the end of April. And then the fun begins!

“I will shoot many races within the month of May,” reveals Caltabiano, “and then edit them during the year, maybe one race every week.”

The course he’s built has a dark theme. “I went with the theme closest to the Gaslands miniatures game,” he says.

There is well-established bit of world-building that has gone into the Gaslands game. Much of it involves settlers moving to Mars and then eventually declaring war on Earth, leaving their native planet a wasteland that serves as a deadly race course for those left behind, all for the entertainment of viewers on Mars.

That may be the shortest and most inadequate rundown of the in-game history of Gaslands. For a more interesting and complete telling of the Gaslands mythos, you can check out this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hq5PqEiidak

Luca Caltabiano made sure that his track shares in the aesthetic and some of the rules of Gaslands. Drivers get points by driving through gates, just as they would in a Gaslands death race. And racers who finish with flourish and make it out an escape tunnel earn themselves a one-way trip to Mars to live in paradise, or at least get off Earth.

So far there are sixteen people who have sent in cars. There are more cars than that, as competitors could send in more than one vehicle. There is still time to submit, although for international submissions, delivery can take a while, so take that into account when shipping.

May is bound to be a busy month in the Wastelands of Utah (Diecast 64) and Quebec (Gaslands TV). It’s going to be great racing!