The Fleets Gather...

With Krazygit's offering to the Aeronef setup, I was inspired to put something together myself. As I had notted before, I was hoping to go with something different. Using the Anatoray Battleships from Last Exile as inspiration, I cobbled some ships together from scrap balsa wood.

Using plastic sprue for detailling as well as a collection of metal brads in various sizes for turrets (along with the road wheels for some 1/72 scale tanks). The results have been crude by most modelling standards but this is a judgement made prior to any serious detail work and panting. Many of the designs are experimental and may not be put into "production" as I flesh out the fleet.

So far, I have managed to come up with a battleship, carrier, escort carrier, two types of crusiers, something I am calling an invasion barge, and what will be either a frigate or a destroyer. I've also managed to build a dreadnought, a couple more cruiser deisngs and a destroyer as well. Below is a picture showing a general idea of the theme I am going with.




The battleship and carrier are massive, with the battleship measuring 9cm long and the carrier at least 10cm. Do keep in mind that these ships are not the conventional, flat-decked style common in Aeronef, but rather are proportioned to be tall and narrow (cutting through the air easier?). The carrier is designed to be a mammoth beast with a cavernous internal landing bay. This will likely be a one of a kind ship in the fleet...okay...maybe two of a kind.

I'm not sure if these are VSF enough, and I am still working on ways to detail them properly. But this is my first stab at building ships in small scale, so who knows what will happen.

Homegrown Jungle

There are a lot of options out there for terrain. You can buy completed trees, tree kits, or totally detailed and finished sections of wild terrain. All of these are good, but there is something to be said for getting your hands messy making your own.

When I needed jungle terrain for my Pulp adventure games, I decided that I wanted to make some of my own. I started by collecting a number of pieces of natural material, having my kids go into the woods near my home to collect interesting looking sticks and rocks. When they had collected enough of them, I put them aside until I could gather the rest of my stuff.

Prowling the local craft superstore, Michaels in my area, I found a number of nice bits in their flower arrangement and garlands selections. What I found are some garlands that resembled green bamboo as well as another that had some leavy foliage on it. There were also a more ridged piece that looked like some sort of evergreen branch with removable sprigs of foliage which in 28mm scale resemble ferns or small fronds.

I started by cutting some randomly oblong shapes out of scrap cardboard (pizza boxes are your friends). Once I had a number of these cut out, I looked at what I had in the way of rocks and sticks and found those that looked the part of tree trunks, deadfalls, and boulders in 28mm scale. These I then arranged on the cardboard into what seemed like natural arrangements. In some cases I positioned the sticks upright to represent large trees. As these are terrain markers and I want to be able to move figures freely around them, I didn't worry about having tree tops (the canopy is WAY up there). Around these, I hot glued some of the length of bamboo-like foliage.



Next time we'll look at fleshing out the terrain with some of the other plastic foliage pieces. Adding ferns and broader leafy greens and such adds to the layering and makes the terrain seem more jungle-like.

Thanks for reading,

-Eli

Pulp Adventures

Sorry to have been so quiet. The holidays really make it hard to post. So, while I am working on getting some new stuff ready for post, I thought I might post some of my more recent previous work that hasn't graced this blog yet. You may have caught it elsewhere but take a look here.

Recently, I have been running an ongoing series of games set in a Pulp Adventure type setting, using Rattrap Productions' ".45 Adventure" rules. A great set of rules, they keep getting better with every expansion and allow for a wide variety of games. We have been using a central cast, run by the guys in my gaming group. Below are a few of the Heroes from our game.

The daring industrialist/adventurer and his trusty righthand man.

Some of the extras that have appeared. All crewmember on the steamer ship used by our heroes.

There are also bad guys that show up as well. Like the U-boat crew below. These guys gave the heroes a real run for their money on an island populated by giant ants. Of course, both sides found themselves overrun and undergunned for fighting the mindless horror of giant insects.

Of course, no game is complete without adequate terrain and as you can see, the jungles of our adventures are well represented with some custom terrain made from natural sticks and twigs, real stones and plasic flower arrangement foliage.