The scenic route to a game

In a twist of irony I've been absent thanks to being busy making a ton of scenery.

It's ironic because this year's Season of Scenery challenge has ended, and here I've been knocking out more scenery in September than I managed for the two months of that challenge. I've also been away from this and other blogs thanks to getting a retail job, which frankly has left me knackered. Sitting around on your arse all day painting minis and doing laundry really doesn't prepare you for lugging bags of dry dog food around a dollar store.

Anyway, the reason I've been making all this stuff is because I've actually bought a game. Well, the rules for a game. It's called Space Station Zero, and it's a sci-fi survival/skirmish game set aboard a gigantic ancient space station full of killer robots, traps, mutants and other horrors.

The reason I bought Space Station Zero is because it popped up on the list of recommended videos YouTube shows while you're watching whatever you're watching. Why a video about a sci-fi game popped up while I was watching a Slowdive concert is beyond me, although they do have a song called "Souvlaki Space Station". Anyway, I clicked on it, watched a play-through of the first mission, and immediately shelled out $13 on the PDF rulebook. Here's the video:

It seems pretty straightforward to me, and doesn't involve lots of buggering about with modifiers and line-of-sight rules like 40k or Kill Team. Not to mention it's a damn sight cheaper; even if I didn't already own a ton of sci-fi minis I could easily build a team for about $20, less than half the cost of a Kill Team. You can use whichever minis you want regardless of manufacturer. I also have a lot of D12s for some reason and a game mat, so all I needed was scenery. 

I stuck to making pretty simple stuff. I have a tendency to take the word "challenge" in, say, Season of Scenery challenge or Monster Mayhem challenge, seriously and try to do the absolute best I can. This time around I decided I wouldn't be buggering about with little details and just wanted to get shit done. All this scenery is made with stuff I had lying around the explosion in a charity shop spare room, and the only things I had to buy were three yoghurts just to get the pots.

So here it is...

First off are these three pumping stations. I made them because I need them for the first mission, so it seemed a good idea to get them out of the way early. They're made from three yoghurt pots, which cost me about $1.90. They're stuck to three-inch wooden discs and have some kind of cap I found at the local dump's giveaway table glued to their tops. I used bendy straws for the pipes and snipped bits out to make them look broken, and the valve wheels are just small cogs stuck to short lengths of paper straws.

Painting these paved the way for how I'd paint all the scenery. It was basecoated with a mix of matte Mod Podge and black craft paint, then given a few coats of a random craft paint (terracotta in this case). Because the station is supposed to be very old I used a sponge dipped in a mix of black and burnt umber craft paints to add rust, then gave the metallic bits a once-over with Plate Metal as my silver craft paint is crap. A thorough wash with homemade black wash (Carbon Black acrylic ink, flow improver and water) added some dirt. 

I used a hexagonal gift box (get used to seeing this shape) with its lid glued on for this one. I turned it upside down and stuck it to a piece of chipboard, which is thick cardboard, and then added the bendy pipe and the wheel thing to two of its sides and a random bit to the roof. It was painted with Florida Keys craft paint and weathered like the yoghurt pots. 

The plastic trays from packs of chocolate chip cookies make great power generators. One was painted Antique White, and the other finished off the last of the Kings Gold I used to paint La Petite Sourie back in February. 

Happily the yellow tray was from a dollar-store own-brand pack, meaning the plastic was a lot thinner so I dented it while putting it together. It just adds to its ancient look.

The bowl is from a take-out meal and the tower is an empty pack of Mentos mints with another one of those cap things stuck to its top. The pipes are from a kids' toy set which I picked up from Amazon ages ago. They're the perfect scale for 28mm gaming projects and look great.

I painted the bowl Pewter Grey, and the tower Antique White.

The white things to the right are some kind of clip for holding closet shelves in place. They were another find at the dump, as was the blue box that I think might have been a toothbrush holder. I stuck some granny grating to the clips to cover up some embossed serial numbers and another piece to the base just to add a third detail. The hatch thing on the tower is the lid from a bottle of Smart Water.

I painted the tower Cool Blue and the clips Antique White, and after this piece was finished I banned that colour as I thought I was overusing it.

More hexagonal gift boxes, which for about $6 were really worth the money. I glued them together and then to the chipboard and painted them with Concorde Grape craft paint. I added some pipes to the sides and more bits to the roofs. The wheel to the left is from the pipe set, the thing on the small roof is out of a water pistol and the bit on the right roof has been floating around my collection so long I've forgotten where I got it.

A couple of electrical junction box thingies. Both of these came out of our kitchen wall when we had some electrical work done earlier this year, so I think I can safely say these were the cheapest bits of scenery I made. The left one is Marsh Green and the right one is Flamingo Pink.

Another electrical junction box that I found in our garage. The two small towers on the right are plastic shot glasses from the dollar store, so you're looking at literally 20 cents in total cost for this piece with maybe another five cents for the chipboard.

The box is painted Laguna, a green-blue, and the two glasses are Coral Orange. The bits of wire hanging from the right of the box were added to fill the slots where nails would usually go.

Oh look, another hexagonal gift box. Again I added a couple of pipes after painting the box Apple Red. The large cogs are from a DVD player I found at the dump, brought home and took apart for bits, and they're sitting on two lids from tubes of peanut butter dog treat paste. 

I painted the cogs with lots of Plate Metal and slathered them with black and orange washes. The lids they're sitting on were painted Antique White because I forgot about my ban the day after I came up with it.

By the way, when I say I found stuff at the local dump I don't mean I'm standing in a dumpster going through garbage. The Shaftsbury Transfer Station, to give it its full title, has a shed where people can drop off things they don't want or need. Along with all the books, jigsaw puzzles and photo frames are toys, tools, broken electronics and various DIY bits left over from home improvement projects. Alicia does despair at the crap I come home with, but it's come in handy for this project.

As well as scenery, I needed some robots to represent some of the various ancient androids that populate the space station. After looking around I bought this tube of 52 plastic robots from Amazon, as well as another set that I'll get to soon. They're made from plastic so soft that it makes Reaper's original Bones White look like reinforced concrete, but no problem as it'll make conversions easier.

I took two types I didn't like too much, snipped bits off both and glued them back together to make these four tracked bruisers:

Like the scenery, they were basecoated with the Mod Podge mix and painted with the rusty black-brown shade. I used a sponge to dab on a colour (Sybarite Green) and brushed some Ivory on their eyes. Plate Metal worked for their tracks, and then it was a case of plastering them with homemade black wash to add some age.

These two have a great 1950s feel to them. After the basecoat and rust shade were on I applied some Khorne Red with a bit of sponge and a brushed on a dab of Scorpy Green to make them look like weird cyclops droids.

I also picked up these armed robots from Amazon. They're 54mm Russian models and I love how their look combines Darth Vader, the Terminator and Necrons. You get six, but thanks to some ridiculously wide stances only four would fit on 40mm bases.

Again, I did the black basecoat and then the rust before dabbing on Heavy Blue and Deep Sky Blue. Their weapons are Plate Metal and homemade black wash.

Of course the other thing you need to play Space Station Zero is a team. You can have eight, six or four members (actually it's nine, seven or five according to the Errata that's just been released) and you can choose from a variety of backgrounds for them. I've gone for a team of space pirates with seven members, although technically I could add another. Here's my motley crew:

From left we have Globrik, the assistant engineer; Vashtal, the soldier; Ensign Packman, the medic; Betty, the leader; DeeDee, the ace pilot; Misloi, the chief engineer; and Axon, another soldier. I thought that as they're pirates they'd need a couple of chaps who are handy with guns, hence the two soldiers. I picked two engineers because a lot of missions involve shutting nasty stuff off, and also because being pirates they need a ship in tip-top condition so they can make a quick exit after nicking stuff.

I still have to choose their equipment loadouts such as scanners, weapons and medpacks, and I have a couple of ideas to modify their skills based on what they do. I'm hoping to play my first game this morning and if it all goes well (in other words if I actually manage to read the rules correctly) I'll post a mission report as soon as I can write it up.

As far as minis go, I've bought some horrifying monsters off Etsy and I'll be getting on with those soon.

Till next time!