15mm Fornight: Shopping Spree

Back in January, I wrote an article about shopping for SF terrain parts. Well, I went to Wonthaggi (the nearest town with a decent shopping district) today, and rummaged around in the Op Shops and $2 Shops. Apart from discovering that the wonderfully named Kikazz Hobbies, the closest thing I have to a local hobby shop, now stocks Evergreen styrene, I also found several great little items.

First off I found a little dust buster designed for use in a car. At $2, it's a perfect small space craft shape. I also found some cheap hose nozzles and tap connectors at a $2 shop to make engines, and then some plastic door stops at another $2 shop which will be used for the cockpit area. Total cost? $9.50. And I'll have four door stops spare with which I intend to decorate a slightly alien looking tower. Look out for the space ship in the near future!

Remember when you are shopping, don't look at products, look at their shapes. Try not to see what they are but what they could become. Try to break any item down into it's component shapes and work out what you could do with each. It's really amazing what you can find if you look in the right way!

15mm Fortnight: Tiny Tuna Towers Remix

Way back in Ishoo Six, I showed you how to build a Tiny Tuna Tower. I always liked the design, but the paint scheme never really worked. Well, now that it's 15mm Fortnight, I've taken the opportunity to repaint the tower to match the new stuff I've been building. It's amazing how much a little paint can change a model!

This is the original tower (the paint looks better in the photo, in reality the colour was odd and the ink around the milk bottle top looked awful)

And here's the new version!

So remember, if you have some old terrain which you don't like any more, it's probably worth giving it a new paint job to fix it. Repainting and repairing old terrain is quicker than making new after all!

Ishoo Firty-Sven: 15mm Space Port Part One

Welcome to the first instalment of 15mm Fortnight! There have been a few minor changes from the original plan (I realised that the space port would be quick to build, but involve a LOT of photos, so I've split it into two parts, and I changed the design of the fuel tanks) but the basic idea is still the same - build a nice, solid set of 15mm SF buildings for use in GruntZ and other similar games, for a minimum expenditure of time and money.

When you start to play a new game in a new setting in a new scale, it can be pretty daunting. You need a whole lot of new terrain for a start. 15mm can be a bit intimidating if you are used to 28mm scale, as everything's so small - but don't worry! It's really very easy and very rewarding to build 15mm terrain. In fact, it has a few advantages - since the scale is so much smaller, you can build things which would be enormous and impractical in 28mm scale.

PART ONE: HANGER STYLE WAREHOUSES

A good place to start is with some simple buildings, and these hanger-style warehouses certainly fit the bill!

PART TWO: FUEL TANKS.

Here are some really quick and easy, yet very effective 15mm pieces. It's best to use five minute epoxy (such as Araldite) for this sort of thing as super glue and polystyrene cement don't work well on the sort of slick plastic the paint caps are made from.

And there you have it! Four nice, solid pieces of 15mm SF terrain, all ready for use. Although these are part of a space port project, they could easily be used on their own. You could also change the paint jobs and decals to re-purpose them. I've printed off a whole set of decals for the Radium Falls Mining Company to go with my Militia army, but you could use any decals you can get your hands on, or design and print your own!

Next ishoo, we'll look at how to build some larger warehouses and the star port control building. Although the star port project is spread out over two Ishoos, it's not a very time consuming endeavour. You could probably fit it into a weekend (especially if you work with a team) and it'll certainly fit into a week.

Until next time!

UPDATE:

Here are the plans for the hangers. They are at 1:1 scale, so you can print them and take measurements if you want.