Statio 42: More Venture Star Vehicles

Just making a quick post to show off a couple new vehicles for the Venture Star prospecting company from my space station project. First up is the company shuttle which is a G.I. Joe Shark Tooth submarine toy. It's basically just a re-paint. I did basically nothing to the model in terms of conversion. There was already a plastic ridge in the canopy that was about where I would have put one to re-scale it so all I really did was paint it up. I'm really quite happy with the way it turned out and I'll likely be picking up a few more Shark Tooth toys for the project.

Next up is this flying car I picked up at Wal-Mart. It's a Hot Wheels kit car that is about 1/43rd scale I would assume. I think it makes an awesome air speeder/flying car. Check out my previous post for more details.

This car will be the personal vehicle of Mr. John J. Biggs the CEO of Venture Star. It is pictured here with two Copplestone "Babes"

Station 42 Mr. Biggs gets a flying car!

I picked up this Hotwheels "Custom Motors" flying car today while at Wal-Mart. I'm using it as the personal vehicle of Mr. Biggs the CEO of the Venture Star corporation. It looked like the kind of over the top ride a CEO going through a mid life crisis would call his dream car. The scale of the car itself is closer to 1/43rd so it's a bit large but it is after all a "flying car" so I suppose eyeball scale is good enough. I look at it more like an air speeder than a sports car anyway.

Here's the packaging it came in. There are a couple spots on the roof that need some putty work because they are places you could attach customizable bits. This set cost about $9.00 with tax and there were several other kits that could work for 28mm vehicles. Some of the larger sets cost about $16.00 but I didn't want to try them out until I had worked with a smaller kit.

Station 42 BIG STOMPY ROBOTS!!!!

Anyone who follows this blog has probably figured out that I spend way too much time browsing the toy isles at the local stores. I love toys. I think most miniature gamers are just big kids anyway playing with big kid toys. The best thing about toys though is that they are cheap. Or at least cheap when compared to miniatures. My budget for miniature gaming is tight. Really damn tight. I barely have the money to buy the minis and that leaves almost nothing for terrain and vehicles and larger models. Fortunately I have toys.
Take a look at these guys. I found these packs of robots at a local Dollar General. They stand 3.5 inches tall (9cm) and cost $5.00 (not a lot of money in your currency either) a pack. That's right $5.00 for three "BIG STOMPY ROBOTS". That's about $1.66 each. I can't remember when I last paid under $2.00 for a brand new 28mm mini. Space Marine Dreadnoughts cost $45.00 each. I can get 27 of these guys for $45.00. That's a lot of bang for the buck. I can't think of that many sci-fi settings where you couldn't use these guys as heavy war droids. They are a bit small to be mecha but my next project is to track down some larger cheap robot toys for that purpose.

Here are three of the droids and some 28mm miniatures from various companies for a scale reference.

Here's another three with the miniatures. You can't see the green droids arms but they are a pair of Gatling cannons. I plan to use this model for my M.S.S.R. force. It just has that Commie Tech look to it.

These droids are all possible because they are constructed with ball joints. As toys these joints are really loose. The legs come apart at the knees way too easily. However I'll be gluing these guys into static poses. The nice thing is that if I get other copies of these droids no two will have to be in the same pose.

Here's a shot of the same droid in another pose. The detail on these are very nice. Fairly crisp and deep which should really come out with a better paint job.

Here's another shot of a more dynamic pose. I think I'm going to use this pose for this guy when I set him up. I also think he's going to be part of my N.O.V.A. security company. He just has a nice clean "cop" look to him and I think he will look great with the Reaper minis I'm using.

Here's the really cool thing about them. Not only are they multi poseable but they also come apart. In fact you can use any part from any one of the models on any other model. All the weapons and wargear are interchangeable too! That makes for quite a few combinations. These guys are a kit bashers dream.

Here's a shot of the scenic bases that come with the droids and some extra weapons and wargear. It's almost like the people who designed these things were wargamers themselves.

I'm going to work these guys into the forces of several of the factions in my sci-fi setting. I'm even planning on converting a few as industrial droids since you can remove the weapons from them and add other tools.

I've made a lot of high value toy purchases for wargaming but I thing these are some of the best. Not only are these going to make great war droids but they could just as easily be made into objective markers and terrain bits. Big robots are found in all kinds of science fiction settings and these guys can be converted into many variations quite easily!

3 new ships for the spaceport project!

I just got three new ships for the spaceport project on Monday. These are all G.I. Joe toys I picked up off Amazon. The big dark blue one is a Cobra "Night Raven". The smaller white one is a G.I. Joe "Sharc Tooth" and it's suppose to be a submarine but I think it looks an awful lot like a small shuttle. The grey one is a Cobra "Gunship". I've already converted and nearly finished my first Cobra "Gunship" in the "Black Dog" project. This one I will probably tramp up a bit more. The "Night Raven" and "Gunship" both cost me about $18.00 each which is much lower than the retail price for either ship. The "Sharc Tooth" only cost about $8.00 so I think I got a great deal on all these ships.

Here are a couple close up shots of the "Sharc Tooth". As you can see the landing gear consist of really simple pegs. As I've said before I'm not a bit fan of scratch building landing gear and the gear on this ship does at least hold it level really nicely. I may still decide to add some simple runners to the pegs probably made out of plastic cloths pins but I'm not going to go crazy and do something complex.

Here's a couple shots of the "Night Raven". It's a pretty cool ship and a good size for RPGs. Large enough to look impressive and also large enough to be a party ship for an RPG but not so huge as to take up too much space on the table. It's landing gear are fine for this project but the little grey gun handle thing near the back of the ship has got to go. All in all I think it will be a pretty easy ship to convert and fix up for 28mm miniature games.

I didn't take any additional pics of the "Gunship" because I've already show it extensively in my "Black Dog" project.

Venture Star Prospecting Main Office

We managed to finish up the exteriors of the main office for the "Venture Star Prospecting Company" and their excavation machine. The "Venture Star" office is for our spaceport project. My wife made the two main buildings and I made the refinery station and converted and painted the vehicles.
We still need to make a couple access ramps for the buildings and a small landing pad. We have a small G.I. Joe shuttle coming that we are going to use for the company shuttle and I plan to add a semi truck with a flat bed to the company vehicle fleet and hopefully some kind of van or truck for the manager and science staff.
I've already got one mining crew of four half painted for the vehicles. We are also working on four scientist and a manager and assistant. We will probably also add a couple shuttle pilots and a couple of mechanics bringing the total staff to about 14.

The $1.00 Pirate Starfighter

Several years ago I purchased several little plastic starfighters at a $1.00 shop because they looked like they would scale well with 28mm ship. I think I bought 6 or more. After all they were only a dollar each.

They each had one of those pull back motorized gear boxes to make them roll on little wheels. I've never understood why you would make aircraft/spaceships with this kind of thing but I've found it's pretty common especially with cheaper toys. Anyway I took the wheels and motors off and messed around with a failed landing gear idea and them boxed them for over a decade.

I think they sat around that long mostly because they were too cheap for me to feel the need to put much effort into. They aren't exactly stunning looking either but they seemed like too good a deal to pass up. Well I decided yesterday to start digging them out and putting some landing gear on them so I could paint them.

I know I make a lot of ships out of cheap toys but I suck at making landing gear. In fact the gear on this ship is scratched from: some wooden stir sticks, wooden beads, a toothpick, and some plastic clothespins. They are simple and the hold the ship up and don't look too awful. I'm not a scale modeler and I'm not building these things for display.

Here is a shot of the new pirate starfighter along side two other ships in my collection also modeled from toys. I'm pretty happy with the way it looks considering it's cost in time and money. I've got another of these set up right now with landing gear but my daughter has claimed it. I'll post a pic when or if she finishes it.

The Ships of Station 42

I decided I should put up a new pic of my fleet of space ships for my space port project. I have a few others but this pic represents the ones I'm sure are going to be finished as functioning ships A lot of the others I have may end up as wrecks or junkers.

I'm going to try and get some of these ships ready to prime today and hopefully work on finishing up the "Black Dog" (the gold and black ships in the front row).

My goal for Febuary is to try and finish up at least one ship a week. A couple of these ships are going to take a lot more than a weeks work but there are several that won't need that much work and I need to make myself a deadline.

Processing plant primed and more

Well I did a little more work on my spaceports refinery/processing plant. Here is a shot of the primed model. It's always nice to get to this stage so you can see how thing thing holds together. I'm planning on doing a lot of weathering on this project. Most of the Venture Star equipment is going to look heavily used.

I'm also pretty sure I'm going to change the name of my setting. The setting as a whole will be called 3031 A.D. and this outpost will be called Station 42. I decided Star port 69 sounded a bit too "swinging" for how the project is turning out. Don't be alarmed though because I still plan to do a seedy dive of a bar with pole dancers and the like for part of the project. Eventually I might put in a fancy star port but for now I'm going for more of a truck stop kind of feel.


As I said in previous post I'm planning on making this a kind of "living" setting and I'm building it and developing the setting for various games and game types. I've been considering various different role playing system to try out first including Savage Worlds and Traveler but I decided on D20 Future which is based on the D20 Modern system.

I chose this system for a few reasons. For one thing I own the books. D20 Modern, D20 Future, and D20 Modern "Future Tech". I don't own Traveler although I do have a somewhat questionable digital copy of the rules I'd rather have a book to sit down and work the game out. Savage Worlds is a great game system but it's pretty basic when it comes down to it. Pretty good for beer and pretzels but I wanted something with space combat rules in it so I didn't have to do all that work myself.

Pretty much everyone in my group has played some kind of D20 game so it will also be easier to pick up especially since I'm not using any kind of magic or psyonics in this setting. I'm also tired of buying new books at the moment and it is unlikely that anything new will be published for this system. So I have just enough of the work done for me to get me going, a familiar system, and some decent rules to expand with new equipment and vehicles.