Hover Tank!

 A while back I picked up a military play set that scaled about right with 28mm.  One of the vehicles I got in the set was a simple little tank.  It is about the size as a Games Workshop Predator tank and I considered just painting it up as is.  Then I decided to make it look more futuristic so I added some bits from a 1/35 scale X-wing starfighter kit.  That looked ok but it still wasn't right. 
Then I decided to turn it into a hover tank by cutting the tracks off and adding some hover drives made from cheap razor handles.  I think this looks much better.  There are some areas I could cover up like the fact you can still see some wheels and track but I don't think it will look to bad with paint.  For a cheapo toy with some junk added to it I'm pretty happy with it as is. 

Moving house at the end of March!

We are moving house at the end of the month to a new location that is much closer to our work and babysitter and just about everything else.  Right now we live about 6 miles outside the town where we work is a pretty nice community but gas prices are going up here and it's getting difficult for us to afford to stay.  The rent at the new place is only a bit more and we will have about twice as much house including some really cool options for gaming space. 

We plan to finish up a couple more projects tomorrow and play a game or two of AE Bounty while we pack but that will be the last game and set of projects that we plan on doing until we move so I will have perhaps a post or two more between now and the end of the month.  I also have one more "Maxed Out" game report to write which I hope to get done soon. 

We are all really excited about the new location and our new game space!

Old MacSpacey had a farm, ee i ee i oh!

 I just wanted to show off a brilliant space farm that was made almost entirely by my wargaming wife.  We built this for our generic and as yet unnamed sci-fi game setting.  It represents a farm in the area surrounding Station 42 and is part of that setting although this farm could be used in just about any sci-fi setting even the "Grim and Dark" ones I suppose.  Here are the buildings from left to right.  The pig barn, the hydroponics lab, a fuel tank, a com station, the farm house, a water tank, the garage, and the tool shed.  Below are some close up shots with several 28mm miniatures for scale.

Modular Tables Made Stupid Easy

I haven't made a productive post here in a bit so I thought I would share with you my stupid easy solution for modular game tables.  The only materials you need for this project is cold hard cash, or credit, or debit, or checks I guess.  That's because the perfect modular game table has already been made for you in the form of 2'x4' folding tables you can get from hardware or department stores. 

 These are "Lifetime" brand folding tables we picked up at Lowe's.  Several years ago we picked up two similar folding tables from Walmart but they are slightly different heights so they need to be shimmed up to work with these.  We wanted to have four tables so we could make up to a 4'x8' table without this hassle.  However we can put up three 4'x4' tables at this point which is pretty handy for RPGs or Wargame night.  The best solution is to try and get the same brand so that the heights will match up.  Each table cost us roughly $35.00 so it's not the cheapest solution but it's not too bad either. 

 Here are two of the tables put together to create a 4'x4'x table.  We have a number of different table tops for 4'x4' tables made from Masonite.  Another nice thing about these tables is that they can be used for project tables when you aren't using them for games.  They are plastic and clean up easily but you don't even need to bother cleaning them really since you will be putting some kind of top on them or some kind of cloth surface down to game on. 

 Here are three tables put together to create a 4'x6' table.  It's nice that these tables fold up so you can store them easily in a corner so you can put up or take down a good size table quickly and store them quickly if you have limited space to game in. 

Here are all four tables we have put together to make a 4'x8' table.  I'll note here that these tables make for a less sturdy surface than a dedicated game table but of course if you build up a large table it's hard to move.  You pretty much need a dedicated playing room to make a permanent 4'x8' game table and even a 4'x4' table will get in the way unless you have a special area for it.  These are more sturdy than slapping a 4'x8' piece of plywood on some saw horses but they are not jostle proof. 

We also have four 2.5'x5' tables so we can make a massive 5'x10' game table which we use for for our space port but it takes up most of the space in a two car garage and because the tables aren't the same brands we have to shim some of them up a bit to make them match. 

As I said this isn't a very cheap solution but it's super easy to deal with and store away when we don't need them.  We've tried other types of game table solutions but this is the one we favor because it's so easy to deal with.

Station 42 "Outskirts" update!

 We've been working on several projects for the outlying points of interest around Station 42.  I've been working on "houses" for Hardscrabble and Ramshackle.  I made several buildings out of cork tile to serve as basic residential houses for the two villages.  I wanted to do a simple roof treatment for some of them so I chose to make it look like they had tar paper roofs. 
First thing I did was take a paper grocery bag and cut it up.  Then I crumpled the paper and soaked in water.  I then used an Iron set on "cotton" to flatten and dry it. 

 After that I cut rectangles out and glued them to the cardboard roofs with a slight over lap.  This way it would look like it was rolled out over the roof. 

I spray panted the roofs black after I got the paper glued down then drybrushed each roof with grey to bring out the texture. 

                                    

 Here are the six buildings I finished with simple roofs.  The com station in the back row has a more complicated roof which I plan to use on some of the other buildings. 

 Another project we are doing for the outskirts of Station 42 is this farmstead.  In fact we plan to build a few farms that can be re-arranged to represent several different farms.  This farm is a small subsistence farm.  The building in the foreground will be a pig barn.  The small building is a utility shed.  The painted building in the center is the farm house and the building in the upper right corner is going to be the hydroponics lab.  There are also water tanks a silos.  We also have a garage for this set that isn't pictured. 

 For the hydroponics lab we are building little container gardens.  The containers here are made from water bottle caps.  We then glued a cardboard disk in them then glued sand over that for the "soil". 

 We picked up a number of different fake plants from Hobby Lobby for the "crops".  We tried to pick ones that looked like they would make good scale crops.  We figured with genetically modified crops we didn't have to make them look like anything specific. 

 Here were the first three I made as test subjects.  The one on the right is the most exotic.  If I ever make an alien jungle I'm using these extensively.

 We had nine caps made up so here are the results of a couple of hours of clipping and gluing.  I really like the way these came out and this seems like a reasonable number of containers for the Hydroponics lab.  Of course we will be making more for other farms. 

 My wife has built most of the buildings for the Station 42 project.  Here she is adding detail to the hydroponics lab. 

 Just for fun I thought I would include this "Bag of Cthulhu"  I picked up at a local game store.  I can't wait to build a temple for my Call of Cthulhu games. 

Finally I picked up a copy of Tomorrow's War by Ambush Alley.  We plan to use this rule set for larger scale battles in our 3031 setting that Station 42 is part of.  I've barely looked through the rules but they look interesting so far.

Station 42 Outskirts project.

Now that we have Station 42 in a playable state as far as the buildings are concerned we have started working on some of the points of interest that are near the station. I outlined the various points of interest in this post http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2011/06/klancys-general-store-wip-and-station.html.
The buildings above are some I've been working on for the villages of Hardscrabble and Ramshackle. Most of these are basic houses but I have a com station (the finished one) and a light industrial building. I did the com station about a week ago but the other 10 buildings I knocked out a couple of days ago in one building session. I'm also going to build some more "ramshackle" buildings to fill out the villages. There will also be a large crater filled with water that will separate the two villages. This set will be designed to be played on a 4'x8' table. There will actually be more buildings than station 42 but they will be much smaller and more residential.

Here is a closeup of the com station. The buildings are made out of cork tile. You can find some great ideas and tips for building with cork at Matakishi's Tea House: http://www.matakishi.com/makingbuildings.htm

The roof is made from scraps of card from various cardboard food packages. The detail bits come from; model kits, bottle caps, toys, disposable razors and other things. I still need to make the doors for this building.

We've also been working on the pirate based. These are the main buildings. The Pirate base is suppose to be an old abandoned military bunker complex. We decided to base the complex on this bunker: http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2011/06/quick-and-dirty-bunker.html we made a few months ago. We will be buildings an underground complex to go with the bunkers based on our "Simple Complex" project: http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2009/06/simple-complex.html

We will probably simply expand on this project with some more specific rooms for the pirates who use the base.

Last up is a simple farm house. We hope to build 3-6 farms that can be set up in various configurations to represent the various hydroponic and livestock farms surrounding Station 42. My wife made this building and I think she did a great job getting both the futuristic and farm house feel.

Station 42: Phase 1 Complete!

Well we have the Station 42 project to the first phase of completion. The buildings are all done and we have about 7 ships and a number of vehicles ready for the table as well as a number of miniatures. We still have a lot to do not only on the Station itself but also on a number of the surrounding locations. We have already made good headway on the pirate base and we should have some updated for that soon. Here are some pics of the Station as it is:

Shadowrun: Orcs in progress.....

Got on a pretty big converting kick for my Shadowrun project. Yesterday I went to my FLGS and picked up some figures to make Orc conversions. I already had a couple done. The two primed figures are converted from Reaper orc heads and other bodied. The one on the far left is Jäger in his combat gear. I used the same head from the Reaper 1/2 orc monk that I used for the business suit version from my previous post.

I used various Reaper heads and a few Games Workshop Beastman heads with their horns cut off for the most part. The beastman heads will also get tusk added. The Foundry Street Violence fig on the far right makes a pretty good orc as is but I'm going to add tusk to his face as well. Other than that he is good to go. I'm particularly proud of the orc with the minigun 2nd one from the right. He came together quite well.

I still have quite a bit of green stuff work to do on these but I feel they are coming along nicely. I'm also looking at some conversion ideas for five more female orcs.