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 a couple of painted War Droids

I finished a couple of my cheap war droids! The one above is for my "Bloodborn" space pirates.

This is one I painted up in a generic cammo to use as a mercenary war droid. I'm going to be doing another in this cammo scheme. I've got all the rest of the droids primed and ready to paint up so stay tuned!

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!

Station 42 more vehicles

I'm always on the lookout for things I can use to improve the realism of my spaceport. One of the things that is important to making any type of city or village or what have you look realistic is the extra details. Having great buildings just isn't enough. You have to have all kinds of other things that would exist in any settlement anywhere at any time. Having Vehicles is a very important part of my spaceport project. Not just vehicles for people to drive around in but utility vehicles as well.
The vehicles pictured above are examples of utility vehicles. One is a tractor toy I picked up at Dollar General and the other is a dump truck I picked up at Walmart. The tractor will be part of my fuel station. I'll probably be picking up a few of them. The idea is that not all shuttles and ships will be able to land at the fuel stations so these tractors would be able to service other ships at and outside the spaceport. With the truck I'll probably modify the bed and make it look like a regular truck and less like a dump truck. I'll be doing a heavily weathered pant job on both of these vehicles.

Station 42 building layout!

Well we managed to finish building all the buildings for the main part of the station. Of course we still have a lot of detailing to do. In stead of setting them up on a 4x4' or 4x8' table we used four of our 2.5x6' tables which make a 5x12' playing surface. This will allow us to put some other things on the outskirts of the buildings. At the moment we've got some larger ships set up on the extra space but we are talking about adding some residential buildings to at least one side. of the station but we may build them on another section entirely.

Here's a shot of the Venture Star base on the left and Rosie's Workshop on the right. We've used this section for a game of A.E. bounty already.

Here's another shot of the Venture Star base. This facility is the most complete of the buildings in the space port so far. Venture Star has these three mining vehicles as well as a small shuttle and a flat bed truck. I also plan to add a prospecting vehicle or two and 14-20 employees.

Here's the shot of some of the newer buildings. The black on in the foreground is going to be the new clinic. The building directly across from it will be a cantina and the building the the two attached platforms will be the fuel station. The platforms will have fuel tanks on them.

The other new building is the Nova Corp Security Station up in the top right of this picture. There are two landing pads for Skysweeper Patrol Ships and they will have four light patrol vehicles as well as a riot APC and some sort of paddy wagon.

Nova Corp's "Skysweeper" class patrol craft

I've been working on converting and painting the two "Skysweeper" jets for my Nova Security Company that I'm building for my spaceport project. I've pretty much followed the same method for converting this ship that I used on my original Skysweeper project. The only difference is that I have left the Missile and bomb pylons in place because I intend to fully arm the Nova ships with missiles and bombs.
I've tried to evoke the idea of the "Black and White" look of a Police car with my paint job. I'm pretty satisfied with the results. I will be adding a light bar and some Police decals as well as soon as I find something that will work.


Here is the ship sitting on one of the two landing pads I'm creating for my Nova Corp. base. I've got a lot of detailing left to do on the landing pad but the project is moving along nicely.

Nova Corp hired for Station 42 security!

I've started working on a new security company project for my space port. The project is based around the Nova Corp miniatures from Reaper's Chronoscope line. These minis have a great look for a futuristic security company. These first five troopers are ones I purchased when they first came out and Reaper only had two poses available. I've had them base coated for a while now but I only just started painting them yesterday.
I'm also working on some vehicles. The "Hummer" based vehicles behind the troopers are 1/43rd scale toys I picked up at a local Dollar General. They are from a company called Burago and I think they scale quite nicely with the minis. I plan to eventually paint them as black and whites and add light bars to them to give them a "police" look.
The flying craft in the background are a pair of G.I. Joe "Skysweeper" jets. I plan to turn these into aerospace patrol craft for the company. Just like the ground patrol vehicles I plan to paint these up as black and whites and add light bars to the tops. I've already finished one of these craft for the project. That project can be found here. For these security ships I may add back some of the missiles and bombs that came with the jets since a security company would be able to have the license for such ordinance.

Here are some new trooper blisters I picked up recently of all the new sculpts. This will bring my total number of troopers up to 12 which I think is a good number for the spaceport. I also plan to add a "chief" and a couple of detective teams as well as a few civilian personnel. That should bring the total number of employees to about 20.
I will also be building a station for the security company with landing pads for the ships and holding cells for prisoners.

Stargate Stuff!

I'm running a short Stargate game for my regular gaming group using the Savage Worlds rules system. I put together this "flying saucer" spaceship for that game. The ship is made from two microwavable plates glued together. I put a deck on the top made from matt board and plaster then I covered that with bits from a couple star wars model kits. I would like to have added more detail but time did not allow. I'm fairly happy with this as I was going for a cross between a retro flying saucer look and a more modern concept of a space ship. I think it came out well enough to use in a number of sci-fi settings.

Here you can see a closeup of the detailing on the ship. Most of the bits came from the "Battledroid on STAP" and a large X-wing model but a couple parts came from the "Anakin's Podracer" model.

This is a group of as yet unidentified "Aliens" that the SG teams in my game have encountered. They have found them extremely hard to kill but oddly armed with unusual sub machine guns that fire rounds marked "9 Luger". They seem to be the owners of the space ship. The figures come from East Riding Miniatures . They are nice little minis but not over detailed. I speed painted the whole group up in about an hour.

Here are some SG members made up of swat and militia minis from Wargames Foundry. I have 7 players in my Stargate game divided into two SG teams of four with on of the teams rounded out with an NPC.

Just thought I would show off the furniture I've finished lately. Unfortunately I'm not sure who made any of these pieces as the packaging got away from me. The lockers and containers are from a different company than the beds.

Another closeup shot of these pretty nice pieces. If I can find out who made them I'll make a post about it.

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.

TMNT Spaceship!

Well today I was at a local junk shop and I ran across a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle space ship. It was a great size for converting into a game ship. The biggest problem I have with coming up with ships for my space port and sci-fi games is that toy space ships are usually no bigger than a large shuttle and only suitable for very small parties. The TMNT ship is larger. At least light freighter in scale and reasonable enough in size for most RPG parties.

Here's a few shots with some of my other ships. As you can see it's larger but not so large as to make it unplayable. I can wait to get started fixing it up.

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.