Re: Impovrished Gamer Tip: Not just Jungle Trees

Blister packs can make good vehicles as well. I have 2 MICV's  (SGII)
made
from two GW blister packs glued together (the ones with the one very
sloped
side) 1 gal. milk bottle caps for the wheels (two caps glued together
for
each wheel) and straws, card, and toothpicks for the details. Almost any
box
shaped item can make a good wheeled tank with some milk bottle caps, or
even
soda caps, medicine caps,....... ( A knight in full armor walks up and
smacks me with a rubber chicken) ..Ahem... for wheels.

Milk caps (wash well before using of course) also make great fans and
A-Grav
Generators. I have two grav-tanks that use milk bottle caps glued to the
underside as A-G generators, one milk bottle cap as a turret, a straw
and
some card make up the cannon mount. It has rotary machine guns made of a
bendy straw and three toothpicks (the texture on the straw makes an
excellent heat vent.)

There's a lot of great plastic wasted in the bathroom too. I have a
missile
carrier that the missile racks are made from razor blade 5 pack packing.
The
packaging consisted of a cover piece for each razor blade, in a "rack"
that
holds 5 blades. The modular style of the packaging just looked like a
missile rack to me, so I washed off a couple of the packs I had used and
glued them up into a missile rack with some straws as the missile tubes.
Once painted it looks great.

A lot of hobby stores have tank extras (shovels, small sandbags,
machineguns, ect.) very cheap. Most tank kits come with these extras
already, so not many people buy them seperately, and the overstock ends
up
in the discount bin. Glue some of these to your improvised vehicles to
add
detail, or more usefully, cover unwanted details without using lots of
putty
or extensive knife carving (removing the molded copyright dates on cheap
toys is a pain in the [BUZZ])

FT players take note as well, Impovrished gamer fleets can grow
exponentialy
faster than white-metal fleets. The old sprues from the epic square
infantry
bases are in a majority of my fleet. I used four of those sprues ( for
those
that haven't seen them they are a long bar with two crosspieces,
squareish
not round crossection) two vertical and two horizontal to make my
FTL-Tugs,
with jump field generators on extended booms. a few added features
(bridge[toothpick head], sensor dome[ pellet gun bb]) and they were
done. My
light and medium cruisers are made from sections of those sprues. The
plastic was perfect for modeling and the square shape of the sprues made
excellent hull pieces.

Need cheap fighter groups? find some party toothpicks with the playing
card
tips. Select two of the card shapes and glue one on top of the other,
staggered (my favorite is a spade on, and slightly back of, a heart. it
looks good with a Not-Macross "Not-Skull Squadron" paint job.  ;-)  )
glue
them to a base, a good paint job will completely disguise what they are.
You
can use varying combinations of pieces to make various types of fighters
(my
torpedo fighters are a diamond on a heart, it has a very "lifting body"
look
I thought was good for a fighter carrying such a heavy weapon.)

I have a family friend that needs inhaled medications. She is constantly
geting the "elbow" shaped plastic cases even though they are reuseable
(just
don't use different medications with the same inhaler). When she learned
that I scratch-built a lot of my figures I got a pile (okay about five
or
six) of these inhalers. They make great carriers! Cut off the mouthpiece
and
close the hole where it was. (I put the mouthpiece back on paralell to
the
main body so it looks like a squarish oval fin.) Put some "fiddily bits"
on
for intrest, I used toothpicks extending from the "Fighter deck" in the
main
body as "fighter alignment beacons" (PSB: a friendly IFF signal will
transmit a holographic "runway" to the inbound fighter's HUD.) a bridge
from
some sprue, some engine blocks, and the whole thing looks rather Babylon
5ish.

I hadn't thought of using matte board for a firebase. I just graduated
from
an art college and I have the better part of two sheets laying against
one
wall in my room. I would like to see more of this thread, I think that
all
of us could use the information to help cut some of our gaming budgets
(okay
okay not cut the budget, but definately get more for our money.)