Perils of the Warp?

Way back about 14-16 years ago I was an avid Warhammer 40k player. My primary army was Space Marines and my wife's primary army was Orks although we dabbled in most of the other armies that were part of 2nd edition. I had a 500 space marines with over 150 painted and My wife probably had 500 Orks with even more painted. Then 3rd edition came out and we sold off everything after about 4 games. Well almost everything. Stuff lingers. I still had a formitable force of Battle sisters and some odds and ends. Anyway we've barely touched the stuff since we 3rd edition came out. I think I could count the number of games of 40K I've played since then on one hand. We have played fantasy off and on for year but we were done with 40K.

We picked up Assault on Black Reach when it came out before the rediculas price hike. I probably also got a discount on it from my FLGS. Anyhow I played one battle with my Sisters over a year ago and put together five of the Marines. A friend of ours who we use to play 40K with quite a bit has kept playing this entire time and ammased more figures than any 12 players need to play the game. Quite a bit of it was our old stuff. He finally convinced me to play a couple 1000 point games last night and I felt they weren't bad. The new eddition of the game is better although still not as interesting as 2nd edition. It seems to run ok and of course there are t0ns of local players for it.

For mostly social gaming reasons we've decided to give it another try. I have a pretty good Sisters army and we have enough Space Marines and Orks to get started. I've got two tactical squads of marines, a scout squad, and three terminator squads, plus two drednaughts and the captain from the boxed set. My wife has the Orks from the boxed set plus hundereds of fantasy Orks and Goblins that could be converted for 40K easily. So our plan is to build slowly and smartly on these three armies only for at least a year before we start "buying" new stuff. Almost all the OrK vehicles and a lot of troops will be scratch built or converted from toys and junk. The only thing I'm buying for the Space Marines will be vehicles and a perhaps and Assault and Devistator squad. The Sisters are only getting vehicles and in fact we may even paint up what imperial vehicles we get with a generic scheme so they can do double duty.

That's my plan for not getting bent over the barrel by GW prices. We plan to play games mostly at home with friends to avoid the asshat fanboys and tournament mentality that makes a game with a decent setting no fun to play. Basically I refuse to pay $33.00 for an Ork truck when I can convert one from a $2.00 toy and some plastic junk.

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 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.