Cardboard Starship #4: Transport part 2

Detailing a build can take what is essentially a cardboard box, and turn it into something else, something special. My strategy for this, for the interior was that the detailing needed to be such that it didn't interfere with game play. I used a couple of covid tests for the walls above the benches, and used some screen material for the hatches. The rest of the detailing is either cardstock or plasticard

In the above pic you can see the hatch to the cockpit along with the panels for accessing it. I haven't added the ladder up to the hatch yet, but it's coming. Below you can see the hatch for the engine compartment framed out with some additional panels and detailing. While working on this, I was doing my best to remember that this is a gaming piece of terrain, not a diorama, not a show piece... it's literally cardboard and trash, so I tried to keep from going overboard or over stressing about things not lining up perfectly. 

 What I think is more important to the look of the ship are the external panels. Once again, everything here is made of card stock and platicard (largely from old expired and used up gift cards). The basic goal is to make the card board not look like cardboard. I experimented with a variety of different shapes, some of which were more successful than others. Again, frequently reminding myself that it didn't need to be perfect, and that once painted many of the sins committed in its construction would be hidden, and largely I would be the only one to be able to see them. 

One feature that needed to be clear on the ships were the cargo hatches. To ensure they were easily identifiable each is framed by those blue straws that came from the 100 water balloons in a minute sets you can get during the summer. Personally I hate water balloons, and balloons in general for the waste they create. This is my tiny bit of effort to reduce the waste. That and the reusable ones I got for my kid instead.

One thing I didn't consider when I was doing this is that because of the shape, on the table, the panels that slope down will be largely unseen. Unless you're looking at it from the side directly, this ends up being a lot of wasted effort... ah well. It was good practice. 

You might notice the cockpit looks a lot different... I decided I hated the cardboard version, and repurposed the one I built for the cargo hauler. I still need to do a bit more work with the cockpit, but after that I think the outside of the ship is done. 

The prow of the ship was the last bit I worked on, and by this point I felt like I had the process down. So much so that I actually took a bunch of WIP pics to show how I did it. 

and finally the details!

 

Cardboard Starship #4: Transport part 1

If you look back at the "cardboard starship" tag, you'll see there have been a couple of previous builds... and #3 was never updated. That's because I never finished it. I was unhappy with the foam I'd used to make it, and decided to scrap it. 

That was 5 years ago. 

Now that I'm actually playing Stargrave again, and the next official scenario requires a crashed ship with a 10x4 cargo area that the crew can go into, it's time to build my next cardboard spaceship!

The only requirement for the scenario is the cargo bay, and while I absolutely could just put a box on the table, that's just not my style. I want a full ship that I can use over and over! On the other hand I don't want to go too overboard and make something so big it'll take up the whole table. Grabbing my trusty graph paper, I got to sketching.

 

Here you can see what I came up with. To avoid it looking like a box, I decided it should be, overall, hexagonal. 45 degree angles are easy enough, right? Plus I could make some simple benches running down the length of the cargo bay. At the front, there would be an elevated cockpit, and at the rear an engineering area and the engines. 

With everything all sketched out, I grabbed some cardboard from the recycling bin in the garage, and got measuring. I wanted to minimize the number of cuts I'd need to do and so made sure the cardboard grain was running front to back to make it easier to bend the cardboard to make the 45 degree angle that I'd planned. In hindsight it was maybe not the best decision, but it worked ok. 

 As it felt a little weak, I decided that it could use some bulkheads in the cargo bay, and so added them in as you can see above. Later I found that single thickness cardboard, cut thin like this is also kind of weak, and it buckled on me. 

 

Next I added the flooring to the cargo bay, which was simply the molded plastic of a food tray that had previously contained some peppers from the grocery store. This was hot glued in place. You can't really see it, but a couple of the spots on the trays have writing molded onto them. At this point I decided not to worry about it. I've also begin to block in the engineering compartment, and glued the ship onto a scrap piece of foam for a little extra strength and to give the engines somewhere to sit. 

 

The cockpit and the benches were added next. The middle section of the cargo bay is where the ramps/doors will be, so no benches there. The cockpit was glued together from some cut off bits of cardboard from earlier in the build. Annoyingly it's not quite level, but I doubt anyone else will notice, plus for this scenario at least it's supposed to be a crashed ship anyway. 

The engines came together quickly, largely made from paint and Yukult bottles, embellished with bottle caps and toothpaste caps. The central area is made from a beer can 6 pack ring and a pizza box support, as well as a few other scrap bits from my junk bins. 

More detailing in the next post!  

Stargrave: Hope Eternal Mission 4 The Magnificent 10

I played, but didn't do write ups for The Great Maglev Robbery and Dramatic Exit. The TLDR version are as follows:

Great Maglev Robbery - Finding the right train car went as poorly as it could have. The flying drones were more than a nuisance, and while Chelle Ren was recovered, everyone was forced to jump from the train, as the skiff was too far away to be reached due to the drones and the large mutants crawling over the tops of the cars. 

Dramatic Exit - Chella's partner Drix was being taken across town to be loaded up onto a transport shuttle and taken away. He was rescued from the guards, but only at the last moment, and I got lucky with the rolls for additional bad guys coming onto the board. 

 The Magnificent 10

The crew needed info from a dude in a small village, but first we needed to save the villagers from slavers before he'd give it to us.    

Pregame setup the villagers are scattered around the table, and the crew set up to try to protect them. The Captain commando, gunner, red, and rocket on the tower, the mate, saw and gobbo near coner 2, Chella and Drix in corner 4.

The initial groups of pirates came onto the board in the four corners. Corner 1 two ruffians one trooper one slaver. Corner 2 two ruffians one trooper one flavor. Corner three four ruffians corner four two troopers two slavers.





Turn 1
Captain coordinated fire on the Gunner troll. Gunner troll shoots at ruffians. Kills 1. Commando kills one ruffian.

Mate shoots wounds and stuns ruffian. Saw shoots and kills ruffian gobbo kills wounded ruffian

Pirate trooper shoots troll for 10. Trooper shoots gobbo for 12 

Rocket damages one slaverbot 

 

Turn 2
Two ruffians a trooper and a slaver bot in corner 2.

Troll shoots ruffian for 3.

Saw wounds trooper

Trooper injurers first mate.

Drix & Chella kill trooper


Turn 3
4 ruffians, corner 2

Saw kills wounded trooper. First mate wounds ruffian

Trooper kills gobbo


Turn 4
Trooper 2 ruffians corner 3

Troll kills injured bot

Chella kills injured trooper. Red and rocket trap slaver bot with Vel



Turn 5
Captain kills slaverbot in hand to hand. Commando injures slaverbot. Troll kills injured bot

Mate kills wounded ruffian. Saw kills ruffian

2 ruffians leave board with villagers. Trooper wounds Saw. Trooper injurers and rocket down against slave bot non lethal. drix kills ruffian


Turn 6
Captain shoots fragmentation grenade at ruffians, injures 1. Commando wounds bot. Troll kills ruffian.

Bot takes out red trooper (non lethal)

Drix kills bot w/ Vel.


Turn 7
Captain miss with grenade. Move into combat, commando joins against ruffian. Troll kills ruffian.

Saw kills wounded bot

Slavers take 3 more villagers. Trooper wounds mate. Ruffian kills commando.


Turn 8
Captain kills injured ruffian with villager. Moves into melee with trooper.

Saw wounds ruffian

Drix wounds ruffian in melee


Turn 9
Captain wounded in melee. Chella kills ruffian.

Drix injured by ruffian


Turn 10
Troll injured trooper. Mate wounds same trooper.

Drix kills ruffian. Chella wounds trooper


Turn 11
Trooper hurts Chella. Drix kills trooper

Last trooper takes villager off the board.

 The captured villagers and their captors. 

Epilogue:

The needed info is given to the crew, and the next stop is a crash landed ship under an ocean on another planet... but first, to rescue the 6 villagers taken. 

Rescuing the villagers isn't officially part of the campaign, but it feels like the right thing to do. 

As an aside, it was great to play on my own board with minis and terrain that were all painted by me. Of course now I need to make the crashed space ship... which is half the reason I'm going to do the rescue mission first! It'll give me more time to build it! 

Stargrave Trashbash Fuel Tower part 1

Following hot on the heels of the foamcore farmhouses, I got right to work on my fuel tank tower workshop. The only appropriate basis for the fuel tank was of course a coffee can. Digging through my bits boxes to find things to make it look less like a coffee can and more like something discarded from a passing spaceship, I grabbed a crevice attachment from a long broken vacuum cleaner, a peanut butter jar lid, and a plastic 6 pack can carrier. 

There was still a long way to go before this was going to be table ready... but I liked the start of it.  Except the crevice attachment was a little too tall. So I cut the bottom of it off, and stuck it on top of the main tower.

Of course there needs to be more to this... it' supposed to be the home and workshop of the main NPC for the scenario! I don't have any good tools at the moment to be cutting metal, so the can is going to remain intact. This means that everything I do to it will be adding onto the can. 

If this is a workshop that all the locals come visit to get their tech things repaired, he might have build out a shed/store front to work from... and a balcony because what's the point of having a big terrain piece like this if there aren't multiple elevations to put your minis on?

 I "built" paper mockups for what i was thinking, and... yeah. I like it. Originally I was going to base this on a bit circular 5" base, but the more I worked on it, the more it felt too constraining, and hindering what I wanted to do. So at this point I'm planning no base. I got a little ahead of myself and build the first support for the balcony out of match sticks. 

I then realized that I needed to do more work on the can before building the balcony, but... I might as well check to make sure it's strong enough, right?

 Yeah, that'll hold up ok it seems. 

 

So I started working on the can. The first thing I did was to cut out strips of cardboard box and wrap them around the can, and also to make some to wrap the crevice attachment to the can. At this point I started wondering how he's going to get out onto the balcony... So back to the bits boxes, this time checking out all the various tank bits I've collected, and I pulled out a bunch of hatches and doors. A Rhino top hatch will work for the ground floor doors, and a round tank hatch for accessing the balcony. 

Yeah, the Rhino hatch works. I made a frame for it out of corrugated cardboard and then framed out the build out structure from foamcore. 

I also added 2... handles? brackets? flanking the chimney that I imagine are used by the ship to help secure the tank in place. They are made from the tubes at the center of dog poop bag rolls with foamcore braces wrapped with zip tie, with the zip tie clasp on top.

I then started to build out the rest of the braces for the balcony. You'll note that the balcony and the door are no longer on the same side of the can. It started to feel too busy on the one side. There are also some clamps added to the opposite side of the can from the chimney. I found them in the street years ago, and I don't actually know what they're from.
 

I then added the stir sticks to the build out to match the wattle and daub I did on the farm houses. 

And finished the balcony. I decided that I'd skip the railings, as there isn't an OSHA to enforce safety regs. 

 I decided to add a satelite dish. Originally I was going to put it on the chimney tower, but decided to use a chopstick, topped with a bit from a lotion pump, some wires, and bits of matchstick and stir stick to secure the dish. I don't actually recall where the dish itself is from. I used various wires twisted together to make cabling running from the dish down to a box on the side of the tower, with one twisted wire cutting behind the vacuum attachment down to the front door.  

 I took some mesh from an old screen door out in the garage and cut a circle out for the top of the peanut butter lid, and glued it down with superglue, adding the little tube on top built from a can cap from a 6 pack of beer and the cut off bit from the vacuum attachment. As a decoration I added the same 3E shape as on the main body, and unseen, is the cap from a used tube of superglue inside the tube. Oh, and the little decoration? It's actually the carved out bit of the grey clasps so that I could bend them enough to glue onto the can. Literally just the scrap bits leftover and reused. 

 

Next (and last) up is the hatch for balcony access. Using a combo of match sticks for the outer frame, and stir sticks as the hatch itself, I glued them all together on a bit of paper, added the green wire to indicate the hinges and the handle. And because the tower is rounded, I added a pair of stir sticks to either side to accommodate the curve. 

And once installed, I realized that I still needed a ladder to get from the balcony to the roof, so taking bit from the bits box, and adding to it, I built a simple ladder.  It was then I noticed the grey hook wasn't quite big enough for my Sgt. Forscale to stand on, so I added another little platform so a mini can stand on it, which brings the usable elevations on this tower to 5! Not bad for a coffee can.
 

 And now, it's time to paint... but that's for next post, as this one has gotten way too long! 

Simple Foamcore Farm Houses

 Sometimes you just need some quick and decent looking terrain. 

 Scenario 4 of Stargrave Hope Eternal campaign is set on a world far out in the boonies of the galaxy, and as such is a little lacking in tech. The settlement is described in the book as being a combination of prefab structures, homes made from locally available materials, and one tower made from a recycled fuel pod. You need between 6-10 structures for the scenario. I own 2 small 3D printed prefab huts and so need at least 4 more structures, one of which needs to be a tower, so I need to make at least 3 houses. The game is played on a 3'x3' board, but the village needs to be at least 8" away from any board edge so none of these should be very big...

 Keeping the size manageable had me laying out a couple of different size bits of paper on the board, and placing some minis in and around them. 2"x3" was tiny, and 4"x6" was too big, but a 3"x5" note card felt just about perfect. Big enough for a full sized door and a couple of windows, but not so big that they'd dominate the table.  

 Not wanting to spend a lot of time or money on them, I grabbed a scrap of foam core that I'd been saving, and got to measuring. Prior experience reminded me that I couldn't just cut out 3" and 5" wall sections because then the footprint would be too big. I opted to trim the long edges by the thickness of the foam core so that the walls would fit neatly on the 3x5 piece that would serve as the base/floor of the huts. 

I kept the height of the walls at 2" knowing the roof would greatly increase the height of the finished builds. I measured out the doors and windows using a 1" square base, then cut them all out. I opted for one door for each building, and 3 windows. 

I turned on my glue gun to get it hot, then I pulled out some aluminum foil, rolled it into a ball, and rolled it all over the exterior sides of the walls and the floor. It really is a fantastic way to add texture to cheap foam core. Once done, it was time to get gluing. 

 

Not perfect. My measurements were not exact, but close enough. I do like how it's possible to shoot through a building. Then it was time to grab the cardboard recycling and dig out a cardstock box and start cutting thin strips. I was actually more careful with this part than I was cutting the foam.  I framed out the corners and all the windows and doors. 

 All told this was about 2 hours worth of work. I then brought it down to my painting desk and slapped on a heavy coat of mod podge mixed with black craft paint, and once dry, followed that up with a heavy drybrush of antique white.

 I was unsure at this point whether I wanted to paint the interior walls or tint the exterior... I decided to try tinting the exterior using just a tint bit of watered down speedpaint.

 And then onto the roof! My original plan was a standard sloped roof, but my cousin suggested an asymmetrical gable with offset ridge, so that it might look a little less average medieval fantasy 

Once I had the foamcore frame I used cardstock to make the roof, and then started cutting and gluing the shingles... This was a pain to do, and messy.  

I was finally reminded that you can do whole strips and it's a much easier process! Also less messy with the glue and looks neater. It was almost enough to make me redo the other 2... almost.  

Then it was time to put a hole in the roofs for the chimney pipes. These were made from the tubes inside dog poop bag rolls. I also added some trim to the gables under the roof line.  

 Then it was back to the mod podge, and onto painting! The gables were painted just like the walls with antique white and the zealot yellow speed paint, with the brown for the trim.

 The roof was done with a sponge leftover from a mini blister pack and a soft blue craft paint, with a gentle dry brush of antique white to give them some highlights. 

 

Overall, these are great. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but solid looking and usable for the games I want them for. I still want to make little HCAV units to fit over the chimney pipes, but that's going to be its own little project. For now, it's onto the fuel pod tower!

The kid decided the houses needed a little something extra, so they all got some stickers. 

 And credit where credit is due, a hefty dose of inspiration came from this video.