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.

AE Bounty Battle Report "Bloodborn Pirates vs Boons Irregulars"

We tried out first game of AE Bounty and we used out new spaceport terrain for the first time tonight. The game pitted Boon's Irregulars against the Bloodborn Pirates. Boon's men were trying to destroy a pirate starfighter which had been repaired at Rosie's workshop. The pirates were attempting to save their ship.


The Bloodborn Pirates
Standard Crew

Captain Cyclopes (Human Veteran Blooded Warrior Hero)
M/3 RC/3+ CC4 A/5(7) S/3 DR/5 W/3
Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field
Ability: Apathetic, Command, Get up and shoot!


Quartermaster Grimm (Human Regular Individual)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/5(7) S/2 DR/4 W/2
Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field
Ability: Apathetic, Issue Equipment

Quartermaster Vinnie (Human Regular Individual)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/5(7) S/2 DR/4 W/2
Equipment: Particle Beam Rifle, Light Armored Suit, Personal Magnetic Field
Ability: Apathetic, Issue Equipment

The Ductrats (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: LFR Slugthrower, Light Armored Suit
Ability: Apathetic, Random Equipment


Da Gurlz (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugthrower Pistol, Light Armored Suit
Ability: Apathetic, Random Equipment

Dirty Trick: Scouts



Boon's Irregulars
Mercenary Large Crew

Sargent Carson Boon (Human Veteran Unkillable Hero)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/4(6) S/2 DR/6 W/4
Equipment: LRF Slugthrower, Personal Magnetic Field, Cybernetic Eyes
Abilities: Inspiring, Command, Get up and shoot!, Impervious (5+), Unstoppable, Night Vision, Aim

Redjack Unit Sniper (Human Regular Sniper Individual)
M/3 RC/3+ CC/3 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/2
Equipment: Slugthrower Long Rifle, AP Rounds, Cloaking Field
Abilities: Hunter (Human), Crack Shot

Smith and Jones Hired Guns (Human Regular Squad)
M/3 RC/4+ CC/3 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: LRF Slugthrower, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Frank and Jessie Fresh Meat (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugtrower Rifle, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Bonnie and Mr. X Fresh Meat (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugtrower Rifle, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Chuck and Red Fresh Meat (Human Green Squad)
M/3 RC/5+ CC/2 A/3 S/2 DR/3 W/1
Equipment: Slugtrower Rifle, Fragmentation Grenades
Abilities: Inspiring

Dirty Trick: Satchel Charges

The pirates set up the Duct Rats as scouts. Armed with LRF Slugthrowers these guys did some nasty damage to the approaching mercenaries.

The fighting started to heat up around the objective. Early on it looked as if Boon's men might over run the pirates and end the battle quickly.

Things started to get nasty. Both the group leaders were trading shots and both sides were taking wounds and casualties. The particle rifles that the pirate captain and quartermasters started taking their tole on Boon's crew.

In the end the pirates prevailed pretty handily. The particle weapons and the personal magnetic fields made the pirate individuals very nasty to deal with. Vinnie the quartermaster was able to get to the fighter and fly it to safety although most of the mercenaries had been taken out of action by then.

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.