Tuesday 8 September 2020

2020 Summer of Scenery - Part 4: Crashed starship

A recent e-bay purchase provided me with several Star Wars "mini-rigs" plus a few larger objects which included the lower hull of a Rebel Transport (Gallofree Yards GR75 Medium Transport to be specific).  Along with an ISP-6 shuttle pod mini-rig, I thought this might make a good crashed starship.  Being over 2 feet long, it will be the centrepiece for a game.  Scenario ideas so far include rescuing passengers trapped inside, defending crashed ship until troops/vehicles can be unloaded, attempt to deny crashed ship to enemy forces (ie. go in and plant explosives), retrieve secret data recorders, race to capture alien technology...

Shuttle pod and transport with 15mm figures in foreground for scale.

To form the crashed vessel's bridge/cockpit, the shuttle pod will have the wings removed and some additional structure added to blend it into the main hull.  The fuselage is held together by screws on the back, so easy to take apart.

Shuttlepod with 15mm troops for scale.

The e-bay lot also included some CAP-2 Captivator ships.  These included legs with suckers and arms with claws that fit into the holes.  The reptile-like bounty hunter Bossk was shown with this vehicle.  Their destiny is to be sawn up into smaller pieces for use as scatter scenery etc.  The jaws on the back open and close, I think these will make good airlock doors if I cut them off and mount them part-open in a suitable hole on my crashed starship hull.

CAP-2 Captivator with 15mm figure for scale.

Strangely, I will need to add additional kit-bashed detail to hide the existing kit-bashed detail on the Rebal Transport hull.  Some of it is fine, you can see there are lots of slices of plastic tube which are fairly inoffensive.  There's a tank hatch lower left which is OK.

Detail of the hull.

The main problem is the large number of Panzer IV parts which dot the hull.  Turret side hatches are visible and a lot of individual track links have been used all over the place.

Panzer IV parts dot the hull.

A Crusader tank also makes an appearance.  Some of the large road wheels are visible, with their distinctive patter of holes around the curcumference.  The front hatch (which replaced the forward machine gun turret of earlier model Crusaders) appears bottom right.

Crusader parts also make an appearance.

I might just leave the road wheels unchanged, the Crusader is perhaps not quite as well known as the Panzer IV.

Crusader road wheels.
The plan is to cut the main hull into 3 or 4 sections which can be magnetised to fit together as a crashed ship.  Alternatively, the sections can be spread across the board as separate pieces of wreckage with spilling patches of freight (eg crates from Lego wheels) or piles of rubble attached to the magnets.  This gives me the option of adding internal decks or other interesting bits inside if I want to.

Hmm, time to do some thinking on how to cut it and what to fit inside...

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