Star Trek Attack Wing Terrain Making

While we prepare for our Fostgrave campaign we have been playing Star Trek: Attack Wing. It makes a good filler between bigger games and then pre-painted models make it even easier to get up and running.
However, I still needed some terrain for the game. Firstly I wanted a gaming mat to play on. I spent some time searching around the internet for a suitable space photo and found plenty of really high quality photos that would give good definition on large scale print. I  had the photo printed out an 3 feet square as this gives a good playing area and also just fits on our dining table. Once printed I had the whole thing laminated with a matt finish. This really makes the image stand out and, of course, protects it from damage.

I am really pleased with the results and we have used the matt quite few times now!

 I felt that the flat planet templates that are supplied with the game left a bit to be desired so I bought a large Christmas decoration ball on Ebay and have painted it up to be our planet.

I had to cut off the hanging tab which was simple enough, with a piercing saw.

 Then I painted the inside of the two halves of the sphere with swirling blue, silver and gold patterns.

Once the two halves are together I am very happy with the results and I think it achieves suitably Star Trek like planet look!

The final part of this build was to mount the planet on a clear acrylic ring, to stop it rolling around the table. Just as an after thought, it has been pointed out that I could have used the two haves of the clear ball as two separate planets. This might have been nice, as I could have painted them a different colour!

I wanted to add a few asteroids to my deep space hazards too. So I bought a bag of various sized polystyrene balls. Rather than spend any time carving them into irregular shapes I simply sprayed them with several very heavy coats of grey primer. The paint ate into the polystyrene and gave quite a nice random shape. I think if I do any more I will carve into the balls a little before spraying them, but otherwise I am happy with the results.

 I have also had half a dozen other asteroids given to me, I have a quite a good collection of terrain for my space battles now.

Some time to think, planning future projects... Frostgrave!

This summer has proved to be a very difficult one for my model making projects. Earlier in the year we went through some family health issues which led to a bereavement. While dealing with that I found it impossible to concentrate on any model making or sculpting work. Due to this I had to back out of a sculpting job that I had been really enjoying, and that would almost certainly have led on to more work.

On top of that, in my day job we have just moved to a new building, which has meant creating a whole new model making workshop and also taking on a new guy to help me out... The move is more or less complete, however we are still waiting for all the new workshop machinery, which will hopefully arrive in the next couple of weeks.

Stepping back from the sculpting work gave me a chance to consider where I want to concentrate my sculpting. I have decided that I am going to restrict myself to personal projects that I have been planning for some time and not take on any sculpting commissions for a while (although I am still taking on commercial model making work). I have a couple of ideas that I have been working on and it is about time I took them in to 3D. I can't reveal what these projects are at the moment as I want to get several pieces sculpted before I do the big reveal, consequently I doubt that I will be doing many sculpting articles for a while, so the focus of this blog will be on my model making, for a bit.

On a personal level, once my gaming pals and I have finished our Star Trek: Attack Wing campaign,  we are planning to start playing Frostgrave (from Osprey Publishing) and this has inspired me to start a new terrain building project. I have gone through the rulebook and listed all the terrain needed for the scenarios. This is the starting point for the project as I want to make terrain  that can be used for these, but will also be useful for more generic games too.

As a terrain heavy game that will have wizards and their followers fighting through the ruins of a long dead city, it means anyone running the game is going to need a fair bit of terrain. I hope to be able to show that this is not too daunting a task, and that you can put together a lot of reasonably good looking terrain quite quickly and without spending a fortune!

I have started the project by cutting a series of boards that will be used for the bases for the terrain pieces. I cut and sanded a number of 20cm x 20cm pieces and also several 20cm x 40cm pieces. Each base will hold an individual ruin and once they are all brought together they should give the feel of a ruined city. Also by using this modular system it should be possible to generate different tables every time we play!

In my next post I will look at the first ruin I am building, A wizards tower!