Star Crafting Potnoodlandia

When I was a teenager, I picked up my first issue of White Dwarf in my local newsagent and inside was the launch of this new thing called Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader.

Yeah, I timed that pretty fucking well, didn't I?

Anyway, the thing about the game back then was we played it with scenery made from yoghurt pots and hover tanks made from deodorant sticks.  It was much more 2000 ad magazine future shock and space opera and much less rusty catholic church with pipes up the ass.

So I wanted to have a really vibrant psychadelic space opera game table, filled with cool aliens, Chris Foss style patterned ships and Roger Dean style landscapes.

So I gathered up all my scifi minis, bits, scatter and buildings with the goal of bringing it all together into one glorious gaming spread.

Turns out, I had a lot of cool stuff.

First off the bat, I found some Ion Age Crusaders painted in a grab WWII style.  After rebasing, I gave them a once over with light grey ready for their new look, and then made a note to research 70s scifi art space suits.

Naturally all my Rogue Trader minis had to come out to play.  Most are unfinished and painted in a much older style.  They will get punchier contrast and more colors added.  I started to put complementary colors onto a few but didn't far.

I had some Alternate Stars and Irregular Minis aliens, plus a few Chaos sorcerer minis that would make great Druillet or Mobius type aliens.

I also have a few space adventurer types from Reaper.  These can get more punchy colors later, but I slapped on the basic base coats.

Remember that Starwberry Punnet House I made ages ago? Well I pushed up the brightness and started to add extra stuff like dome windows from googly eyes and laser cut base rings, and flyscreen mesh onto the roof.  Think I will get some raised letters in alien font for the sign.

I gave a quick clean up to these Kyromek minis, rebased them and started looking for more vibrant alien markings to add to them.

I think this picture by Peter Andrew Jones is a great start for their new color scheme.  Maybe I could add some bendy antenna using broom bristles and some extra limbs.

Found some Minifigs alien plants, and some classic space cacti I started once.  These will need finishing and painting up.  I think I need to make lots of little alien plants to tie it all in with the olive flock.

Okay let's try to get the pot noodle pots looking a bit better...

PROTOTYPE TIME!!!

First up- let's try foam sheets.

UHG that looks really shit.

Maybe a better paint job?

Nope, still looks shit.  But not that shitty retro kind of shit, but just amateurish.  Needs finer details and panels.

Hold on... back in a moment...

Okay, progressing a bit...

I gave the whole model a dirty wash and daubed grey paint to see how it was working.

I wasn't happy with the crappiness of the surfaces, but I can worry about that late with some decent plasticard instead of cornflake packets.  I will give it a sand and maybe add some more small panels to cover the cruddy bits.  I want these to have a lot of color eventually, with various mints, sage and aqua tones on each panel.  But the panels need to look sharper than this IMHO.

Okay, might as well glue together some other buildings to get a rough idea of what the space will feel like...

I glued some junk to some other junk, but it's tricky to see with the paint slapped half arsed onto it like this.

I think what all this junk needs is some Foss-y blocky panelled raised platforms underneath to give some play options and raise it up a little.

Okay that was a monster session, I shall press on soon.