WWG Mayhem Petrol Station

This was the very first World Works Games model that I built. It is the petrol station from the Bits of Mayhem set. Bits of Mayhem, Mayhem Armoury and Streets of Mayhem were my first purchases from WWG. As soon as I'd downloaded the three sets and had a good look at the contents I was hooked and I couldn't wait to get started. These three sets are ideal for beginners. Armoury contains three fairly easy buildings (armoury, apartment and garage) and a set of 5 pick-up trucks. Streets is essential for your road and rail tiles, as well as some useful pieces of street furniture. Bits contains only one building, the garage, as well as more useful pieces of street furniture and lots of vehicles.

The garage comes with two sets of livery - Golden Shield (shown here) and Mayhem Petroleum. I chose Golden Shield as it sounds more generic and could fit into any town or city, whereas Mayhem Petroleum seems to me, to be restricted to Mayhem City. Having said that, all of my games so far have taken place in Mayhem City. If, or more likely when, I make another petrol station it will be for Mayhem Petroleum. In the photo above, I have left the roof off the kiosk so that you can see inside. Most people will just leave it glued in place, but as you should know by now, I'm not most people!

I don't know why, but the large roof of the central island has started to sag. It was probably those hellcats of St. Trinian's who were to blame! (See my review here http://vampifansworldoftheundead.blogspot.com/2009/06/st-trinians-and-living-dead.html ) Anyway, as you can see my petrol station covers two ground tiles. It is supposed to fit on one but I wanted more room a) to give cars more room to manoeuvre and b) to fit in extra features like the portaloo, the price sign and the propane tank. The additional tarmac tile was the loading bay tile that comes with Mayhem Industrial. I used a strip of grassland from the Bits of Mayhem set to hide the markings on that tile.

The tree is a Games Workshop tree from their trees and hedges scenery pack. Note that I stuck the strip of grassland onto a piece of mounting board and stuck that on top of the mounting board I used for the two tarmac tiles. This gives the grassy area a slight rise above the tarmac, which I think looks more realistic. I use the same technique for sticking pavements to my road tiles. Sticking the two sides of the large price sign to mounting board worked really well as it gave it enough strength to remain upright and to not bend over, which I'm sure must be a problem if you print it out on thin cardstock.

The sides of the propane tank are reinforced with thin card, like that found on cereal boxes. With it being curved, there is no way that you could use mounting board to reinforce it. I did use mounting board for the top and bottom of it, however.

The portaloo is a free download that I found on the Two Hours Wargames website when I first ordered the All Things Zombie rules from them. The relevant web address for the portaloo is http://www.angelfire.com/az3/twohourwargames/files/scenery/Port-o-let.pdf Of course, nowadays you can use the portaloo that comes with the WWG Mayhem Junkyard set. But when I built this model, Mayhem Junkyard was a long way off. If you want to use the THW portaloo you get four of them on an A4-sized sheet, and as I said, they are free and free is good! One thing that I particularly liked about them was that they were painted green, which fitted in perfectly with the livery of Golden Shield.

Here is a better view showing the interior of the kiosk. As part of my philosophy of going the extra mile, I made sure both doors opened and closed. The windows were printed on transparency paper, so that they resembled real glass. I made the counter out of mounting board and although you can't see them, I cut out all of the maps and snacks, etc. and stuck them onto mounting board then stuck them back in place. This gives them a bit of depth and was a technique that I used a lot in my Mayhem Garage model (see review here http://vampifansworldoftheundead.blogspot.com/2009/07/wwg-mayhem-garage.html ).

Outside of the kiosk I added a drinks machine. This particular one came from the same place as I got the THW portaloos. However, when I went to check out the web address for it for this review, I found that it is no longer available. Not that it matters too much, as WWG make a couple of generic drinks machines in their Bits of Mayhem set, either of which would be perfect replacements.

Finally, here is a close up of the petrol pumps and the forecourt. To be honest, there is not much to say about them. The base of the island has a piece of foam board stuck underneath the mounting board to make it a solid item. I used a similar technique for the large roof, although for that the foam board is sandwiched between two pieces of mounting board. This gives them both great strength and durability and means that the holes cut out for the two support pillars should grip the pillars firmly in place.

This is not one of my more spectacular builds and it did not take long to make - less than two weeks. However, it will always have special meaning for me, simply because it was my first WWG model that I made.