Friday, April 15, 2011

Space Ship Terrain

I'm not dead, I'm just working a lot!  Even so I am making progress on my North African Gladiator Arena and this Space Ship project.  I just can't stand it anymore!  We have a kagillion sci-fi minis and not much in the way of terrain.  The ship decks I built are cool for certain situations but are simply not roomy enough for some real action.  So while we are making preparations to do something a bit more elaborate I decided to go with paper models again in the interim.  Of course I looked very closely at the World Works First Light stuff, but it is quite a bit of work to get it together.  I finally decided to go with the Fat Dragon Star Tiles set which is a Space Hulk like 2D floor plan with 3D doors and consoles etc..  The final deciding factor was the playability, and of course the photographic ease of the layout for batreps.  I did a few tiles for test pieces and it didn't take long at all to put together. So far I like it and will continue building on this.
So far I did just 6 test tiles and a few prop pieces.

The doors and consoles are a piece of cake.  The chairs are a pain in the arse.

I love the poses of the Star Wars minis.  They have so many versatile poses to choose from.

These hexagonal pieces are not hard to build and great terrain for some cover and taking floor space.

These Fat Dragon tiles all mount to an 8"x8" square and they quickly and easily line up in any configuration.  I used a table saw to shear my foam-core for very fast and consistent tiles.  If you try this, make sure you use a very fine tooth blade!  I just hit the edges with a foam sanding pad after cutting.  You could cut a hundred of these bad boys in about 5 minutes this way.

8 comments:

  1. Nice indeed! Simple, effective, good to game with and nice eye candy. What more could you want?

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  2. i love this. i'm comin' over right now, let's game, dammit. wooohooooooo...

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  3. I can see you getting a lot of use out of these, Willy. Good work!

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  4. Awesome and great use of the table saw.

    "Shutdown sequence initiated."

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  5. Very nice. How did you keep the foamcore from warping when you glued the floorplans down?

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  6. Laffe,
    Unfortunately foam-core here in the Gulf Coast area always warps a little bit, even if it is just sitting flat.
    But for the application of the paper on large areas like this, without a doubt, the best method is to use something like a 3M spray adhesive like for photo setting.
    I spray the printed cutouts and then carefully place it on the foam-core and squish it down real flat and seal the edges. I actually sprayed a clear acrylic over the finished product on these. We will see if it helps on wear and tear.

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  7. Very nice work !!!! Do you sell your pictures or could you be agree too share them ? Is it possible too download them somewhere ? I create my own Boardgames and your floor plans could be perfect for one of them. Visit my blog : http://fbgames.over-blog.com/
    Sorry, it's only in french. ;)

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