As I've noted here previously, I've recently started dabbling with Osprey's Rogue Stars sci fi skirmish rules. Reading them I straight away envisaged an urban street wars kind of setting. Something like 1970s New York in space or the underworld scenes in Demolition Man.
For my first couple of test games I just used bits of scenery I already had. I tried to suggest some kind of fuel refinery fenced off on the edge of a scummy part of town. Pretty soon though I was inspired to have a go at some theme-specific pieces. First up was an overpass. With the rough streets of Hill Street Blues in my mind I was envisaging the denizens of the under-city picking through rubbish while the corporate wage-slaves in their Datsun-Mercedes electrocars whizzed by above.
I made the overpass out of foam core and cardboard. I originally planned three long pieces but then decided that it'd be more visually interesting to have it cross the board at an angle so I sliced one of my road pieces diagonally. I think I may add some rare earth magnets to make the roadway sections stick together.
The piers holding up the road deck were a simple construction. I obtained some rubber stamps that were surplus to requirements. To the handle of each stamp I glued two Renedra plastic bases - I never use the ones that come with Perry or Warlord figures. The road sections were very much a rushed job to see if I could get something made in a couple of evenings. I really should have primed them with spray paint before painting them.
At first the overpass was completely isolated from the under-city. In a way I quite liked the symbolism of this idea but I always intended that at some point I'd build an access ladder or something. However, after a bit another idea came to me...
If you look at pictures of collapsed highway bridges after earthquakes or bombing attacks it's not unusual to see whole sections of roadway fairly intact but at crazy angles.
I chopped the foam core road-bed with a craft knife held vertically and then added bent reinforcing bars from pieces of paperclip. The attached piece hangs partly from the paperclip and partly from the intact bottom paper layer of the foam core. It's flexible enough to be adjusted to meet the ground below.
The sporty roadster is a kid's toy. The twins now being in their mid-twenties, I think they can manage without it.
After that I started watching Youtube videos of people building terrain out of junk and thought I should give it a go. First up I made this radar/comms tower. I thought it would work in a spaceport type of setting.
The body of the model is a robust card container for posh hot chocolate glued to a CD as a base. The dish itself is a reflector from one of those rotating warning lights. It's glued to a plastic box and detailed with bits from model kits and part of the mechanism of a deodorant spray can! The whole mechanism is glued to the plastic top of a sauce pot from the local Indian take-away that just happened to be the perfect diameter to fit inside the rim of the cylinder. This means that the radar dish can be rotated or even omitted altogether.
The door and surrounds are cardboard with plastic card and rod detailing.
A little more weathering is probably wanted but I'm declaring this usable as-is.
A trip to Poundland (other Pound-based low-cost stores are available) got me a plastic make-up organiser that I thought had an interesting shape. In the end I decided to make it into a row of lock-up garages to go under the overpass.
The roller doors are textured plastic card. The security entry pads are bits from a plastic kit. All other additions, including the roof, are from cardboard.
In painting the lock-ups I decided to try some painting techniques I'd learned from the videos. Lots of streaking where dirty water has dripped down from the roof as you can see. Perhaps less clear is the extensive rust effect on the doors and door frames. I painted them in patchy brown/orange colours before masking off the door areas and then roughly spraying them with hairspray. I then applied the red and green paint and wiped much of it off while it was still wet. On the patches with hairspray the paint won't adhere fully.
I then got ambitious and started on a larger structure, again using techniques learned from Youtube. I envisaged a small industrial unit that had been abandoned and then taken over as the headquarters of a street gang.
Again two cardboard cylinders make up the tank arrangement. I cut a hole in the top and built in an access shaft up the middle. This was made from the cardboard tube from the middle of a roll of aluminium foil. I added a ladder inside made from square-section bamboo skewer. Jamie then pointed out that figures might fall down the hole and get stuck inside so I painted up a winch from a plastic kit and mounted it vertically in the shaft to stop any based figures fitting. The ring structure around the top of the tower is some plastic doohickey I've had lying around for years. No idea what it was originally
The office-cum-works part of the building is largely courtesy of Steve Jobs. It consists of an old iPhone box with part of the packaging of an iPod Nano glued to the top! I'd previously extended the roof of the building with card to meet the base of the tower. The side walls were also extended with card to follow the roof line.
I think I might add some weathered, old lettering advertising the former business to the plinth above the front of the building. I'll also, when I've decided what they are called, add some graffiti tags from the occupying gang.
I've really enjoyed the freedom of building sci fi scenery from junk. I have a couple more plans in mind. I have a disc of MDF that'll make a good landing pad and I'd love to build a small shuttle craft to sit on it. I also have some ideas for advertising alongside the highway but more of that later.
