Building a Starship

I got the idea when surfing this site http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/  and found a ship that was built for "Star Wars" using the larger figures for the Star Wars RPG games

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/competitions/entry.php?id=622

UPDATE (1/20/15)  See full build of this monster here
http://www.terragenesis.uk/showthread.php?tid=33

This thing is 12 feet long!! Plus it's 2 feet wide

Used to play 28mm or a little larger scale for the Star Wars RGP figures

So why not build one that's for 15mm play action.

I can get a lot more stuff built into it and maybe add taller bulkheads for catwalks or maintenance corridors of sorts that runs down the middle the length of the ship.

Okay the plan is to make it almost as long and widen a section to 3 feet wide then another to 4 feet giving it more of a wedge look and with all sorts of gizmo's.

Using the same materials used in the description of the ship that inspired this project will mostly be the same, using luan, foam board, card stock and plastic card and lots of other odds and ends.

It will be built in sections for ease of setup, moving and storage.

looking forward to the Traveller games, Alien bug hunt, and others scenarios

The gathering of materials has begun

Cheap shipping containers

Shipping  Containers

Everyone out there that has a Miniature company has a shipping container of one sort or another. With the cost of their models, a large area for a Post Apocalyptic world can add up in cost really fast and model train supply companies are not any cheaper by any means. Paper models can work but the draw back is they are very light and can be blown over too easy at times, don't stack well, plus they are not strong enough in my opinion to risk stacking minis on.

So I have been checking out 1x1x36 inch square wood dowel you can get one for less then $3.00 (USD) and the math is 15mm scale = 1/100 as general rule, it's not written in stone so don't blast me with comment as to it being other scales. So 1 inch in 1/100 scale would be 8 feet and 3.3 inches so a 1x1 inch square would be 8.3x8.3 foot, the average height and width of a container, so a 20 foot container would roughly be 2 and 1/2 inches long.

I should then get 14 container. So one can also get 7 containers at 5 inches equaling 40 foot containers 

That's 14 containers for about .21 cents each! Plus time to fix then up to look like containers or 7 containers for .42 cents each and again the time to make them up. Okay I only got 13 remember measure twice cut once oops!

One could make the outside of the container different due to different manufactures, or for a future time set as well, which in turn would give more of that random feel as, You could make one if you like and then make a mold and cast the rest you need as well.

So here is the start and some more pictures for size comparison

Again it's only the begining of this project and will update as I go along, blocks still need some cleaning up and adding the details and painting but you can see from the next picture you can have a whole shipping yard full fairly fast and cheap.

Hope you have a large shipping yard for your port you'll need it for all your cargo and your containers too.

Wasteland Raiders

Concept idea is to combine several grav bikes from different 15mm Miniature companies to form a nomadic raiding party just one more hazard for your Traveller party to deal with or to be your Traveller party, heck they could be your escort across the no man's land.

The more of a mix of Grav bikes the better, for the more random look as one would expect to see in a marauding group, picking up a bike here and there as they go and the parts they would need to keep them running as they raid camps or outpost as needed.

The concept came to me when I had seen a concept artwork piece of such a group when image surfing google and then saw the start of something similar at David's Painting and Modeling Log  http://billinghurst.spalding.gen.nz/Webstuff/hobbies/paintlog.html

Here you can see he is using GZG's Grav Bike http://shop.groundzerogames.net/  and Rebel Minis AP riders http://www.rebelminis.com/index.html which has inspired me to do fairly much the same only I'm going to add more to it.

I want to add bed rolls, saddle bags, pouches, sacks of goods and alike and I would do this by using modellers putty "Green Stuff".

Equal parts yellow and blue and knead together until it's an even green all around then you can work with it for awhile until it hardens, working with 15mm things a very little goes a long ways.

So now the list of Grav bikes for the Raiders

 

Grav Bikes from GZG http://shop.groundzerogames.net/

Grav Bikes from Critical Mass http://www.criticalmassgames.com/default.asp?category=homepage

Gave bike from Spriggan Miniatures http://www.sprigganminiatures.co.uk/index.html

Grav bikes from The Scene http://thesceneuk.com/

 

Grav Bike from 15mm.co.uk http://www.15mm.co.uk/index.html

 

Grav Bikes from Khurasan Miniatures http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/

Now I will be doing some head swaps and switching out riders as well, Riders from Rebel Minis AP riders.

I am thinking of some other Grav vehicles as supply vehicle and for carrying additional raiders and thought that I would need some dismounted Raiders so the jury is still out for those items for now.

In the mean time, if your players have to investigate a surveyors camp, or outpost that hasn't reported in be mindful of what may be out there. Not everything has to have teeth and claws.