Star War -ish Freighter on the cheap... Scratchbuilt and trashbashing a spaceship PART 1

I am still a big fan of Starwars Miniature Battles after all these years, and after accumulating enough junk, I've finally decided to build one freighter on the cheap. This could be used as a prop, background terrain piece, or simply a possible gaming piece.

First of, some of the important tools used :

The cutter on the bottom has a thick, short blade which is very useful for cutting thick plastic, its better than the orange paper cutter I have next to the scissors. For people who like to trashbash and clobber common household items into their mad modelling fantasies, I could recommend the drill and hotgule gun enough!

Some of the items:

 A cheap water bottle.

Yakult bottles! I used five of them, one was used as the cockpit. The design and paint scheme will more or less mimick/copy the Millenium Falcon:

Of course it will be very different, but I hope the paint scheme will more or less go in that way hehehe...

After hotgluing all the parts together...

 

 

The twin lasers are made from an empty dental floss casing and 2 plastic tubes.
Some cards and various junks like contact lens casing, etc are then PVA glued on the body of the ship.

IMPORTANT:
1. When hotguling the parts together, drill a few holes on both sides so the hotglue will flow inside both parts and lock it so the hold is stronger.

2. Use some sandpaper to sand down the surface of the plastic so that paint will stick better before you prime it.

Now onwards to painting !!

Now whats a good name for the ship....

TO BE CONTINUED.....

PART 2 HERE

Gear Krieg 1/72 Walker

OK its been awhile, heres a little 1/72 Gear Krieg I've made sometime ago.

Its based on Revell's kit:

I saw off half of the body and added legs to it.

 

The tracks are from FOW bits and the legs from from EM4 some mechs, but I guess you can easily use any pair of left over legs from mech. The reverse joint is good! Some plastic tubes were added for rocket launchers and a cannon was added on the left side, and the body of the cannon is actually a left over ECM pod from some aircraft accessory.

 

The toecap is actually disposable shaver's handles cutted at an angle so it resembles some triangular shaped thingy hee hee...

 

The finished product is quite satisfactory, and I originally have plans to make some more..but many distractions made me shelf this aside [not to mention no one deals with Gear Krieg here, let alone its in 1/72 scale!]

 

 



Now except for touching up and adding sand and flock for the base !



Vampire Count Black Coach

Going to show you how I build my Vampire Count Black Coach.

The wagon is the small house from the Garden of Morr...
The wheels are from Lego! I was dam bloody lucky to have found it selling for lose at a local toy store for like 50 cents each, the cairnwraith is from Reaper miniatures.

I decided to keep the stems at the horses foot and cut slots at the bottom of the base to further secure them and make them stronger.

I wanted to buy the coffin with the vampire bit from ebay but decided the poorhammer in me will make a cheap foam version of it, as its going to be dark and you can't really see it...so...LOL

It's going to be dark inside, so some shape on the coffin is just enough if you can't resist peeping...hee hee...

Chaining up the horses to the wagon is the toughest part as I've pinned it and connect it all the way to the wraith's body to show as if he's holding to it.

The curtain is actually wavy cardboard ! The 2 lamps are bits filed to appropriate size and glued to the side.

Black Coach done!! Now onwards to priming and painting !!

More Damels and ladies

Hurray, my ebay stuff arrived today!!

They are from Reaper miniatures :

These 2 minis are Hannah Blackruby, Wizard 03329 and Tinley,Female Wizard 03563
both will work as Bretonnian Damsels for my Bretonnian army !

They produce some of the best minis at affordable prices, and the range allow you to mix and match if you are not too bothered about it or going to sanctioned tournaments!

Looking forward to have them painted !~

Meanwhile, my bretonnian army WIP. They are about 40 percent painted and largely still in progress.

My trebuchet and Chimera are amongst it !

Defensive Stakes

De Rochefort's article on defensive stakes at the Round Table of Bretonnia is soo cool that I have to have a go at it ! My old edition Bretonnian archers would need them as they dont come with it....so DIY away!

First off, some disposable chopsticks! These are easily availble but some twigs or dowel wood would do just fine! Some chains and some balsa 20mm wide balsa wood strips.

They are cut to appropriate length:

From this point onwards, I used a hotglue gun instead, including making the metal bands connecting to the chains! Its pretty crude compared to De Rochefort's lol..

As hotglue are no known for being v "sticky" or strong in their bond, I smeared it all over the place and interconnect the glue like "roots" to the stakes [see above] so that the contact is stronger.

PAINTING :

• The whole thing is brush painted with black as primer.
• The stakes are simply painted with any wood color and the sharp point bonewhite.
• The metal band and chains are drybrushed with boltgun metal.

The "metal bands" connecting the chains are a bit crude and too thick in the beginning, but after getting used to controlling the flow of the hotglue, I quickly apply thin amounts consistently to more resemble metal rings.

And three more I have four now!  I hotglue some rocks, smear the base with watered down PVA, add sand and its done! Now waiting for the PVA to dry, and apply one more layer to strengthen it.

Oh, in case you wonder, below are the case file of Vallejo paints I have..very great paints!

A Note about Wargaming on a Budget

Not every wargame needs to kill your wallet. For newcomers to old veterans alike, it really depends on your interests and the feel about it.

I have a bunch of fellow men who only play GW, spend endless amounts of money on the expensive models and new editions.

For new people trying to have a taste of wargaming or would like to play with their miniatures, some free and good rules are out there! You just have to look hard enough and HAVE AN ACCOMPLICE or a few more to make it last!

Here, I present to you some of the free rules that are easy to use and doesnt have all that nonsense, endless,buying of new codex/editions and keep telling you your rulebook is outdated !

Horde of the Things
(click on above to go to wiki link, the FREE rules are available for downloading at the bottom of the wiki page)

This simple fantasy wargame rules allow you to build and collect minis ranging from 6mm to 25/28mm depending on your preference and budget. It has a huge following and there are conversions to Sci-Fi and other genre too.

The sci-fi conversion of HoTT can be found here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061206064922/http:/www.barr.karoo.net/hws/dbx/hottscifi.htm
by Humberside Wargames Society

You can join the Yahoo! Group here:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/HOTT/


Always download and print a copy, and save a copy in case they removed it! Like what GW has done to their specialist games like Necromunda, Mordheim,etc. Slowly killing their business indeed !


Free Wargame Rules
(click on above link to go to site)


The site contain a collection of wargame rules covering different genre, from carwars like games to Sci-Fi to WW2, from simple to complex ones.

You can always download a copy, have it printed and organised a game or 2 showing off your collection of minis and models, have fun and rope your friends in!

Before you fully commit and invest, you can always use counters, chips to represent them if you are conscious whether the rules will work for you.

If you simply like buying minis and collecting them, what are you waiting for? Just go ahead already!

Have a look, and have fun!

Trebuchet

My Bretonnians need a trebuchet [actually 2, lets see I can muster enough determination to build another!], but the official one is expensive, and as I have many bits and plastics lying around, might as well build one!~

Any seasoned Bretonnian players should be familar with
http://www.roundtable-bretonnia.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

A fantastic site where all the knights and generals of Bretonnia gather and discuss tactics, modelling and everything Bretonnian !

As I scoured through the postings, some of the dudes there have made their own trebuchets from scratch and even cast them !

Rafael de Bois et Guilbert (Rafael) 's trebuchet

So, first of, I have some square rods lined up according :

The square rods are cutted up and glued, with a thin strip of plastic glue in between the rods with two studs to resemble metal works with bolt-ons.

 Two were made.Make sure the dimensions are the same so they can fit later.

The counter-weight are made from light weight foam! They are about 1cm thick so two pieces are glued together with PVA and cut to good shape.

Some spare foam are cut to be glued to the base later to resemble rocks [ammo] lying around for ye peasants to load them into the trebuchet. The "leather" rock holder is from a thick card, later to be soften with wet PVA.

The main pole was from a disposable chopstick, with a bit of a jeweller's chains attached by hanging a paperclip to it. The counter-weight "rock" are glued with 2 strips of cardboard from those postcards.

A shield shape was cutted from those free postcards and glued to the rock counter-weight too.

The rope were some kite strings but it wasn't thick enough! So I twist 2 strings together by using a drill gun, but before that, I wet them with PVA glue so they'll stick togther!

After assembling all the pieces together:

It was quickly brushed with black acrylic as a primer, then painted up !

The finished product :

Onwards to lobbing rocks at the enemy !!