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Wow, those are old.

Are they actually made of plastic or more like rubber?

 Shandara wrote:
Wow, those are old.

Are they actually made of plastic or more like rubber?

It's a hard plastic but not styrene, it feels a little waxy. I think it's same stuff toy soldiers are made of.

Can anyone help me ID it?

I'm not a plastic engineer, but the buck rogers stuff definitely feels like polypropylene. As you say, it's the stuff toy soldiers are made of.

Luckily these days that's not a barrier to painting if you use Krylon Fusion or a similar plastic-specific paint. Krylon's Camo line isn't called "fusion" but it works well, comes in a range of useful flat colors and does have a small logo saying "made with fusion tech".

I'm not sure what plastic the 144 spaceships are made of. They felt like styrene and they primed up well witih basic spray paint, but based on the difficulty with gluing they probably aren't.

Decided that I want to try out the Panzer 8 hex-based game, but I didn't have a space Hex map...

I bought a roll of this "Gaming Paper" hex paper:
http://www.miniaturemarket.com/ggp0302.html
It's cheap and big (30 inches x12 feet) but it's basically hex-print gift-wrap so it's pretty thin and not really suitable for re-use on it's own. So, I've glued (spray adhesive) it down to the backside of a second hand Axis and Allies board which measures aprox 33"x20".

Just finished flicking it with a bit of white gesso to make a subtle star background and it looks pretty good. When it dries I'll varnish it and snap a picture or two for you all.

Not a bad deal for less than $10 (7.65 shipped + a $2 resale shop boardgame) invested and I've still got over 10 feet of paper left so I may make a few more for some of my club members.

I also dug out my EM4 spaceship bases. They're almost exactly sized for 1 inch hexes (maybe 1mm over) and they look like they'll work well with the 144 ships and/or the Buck Rogers stuff.

I also broke down and bought these:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Also found some more science fictiony planes on Amazon but SUPER PRICEY! $15 for 72!

Spoiler:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009FF3VD4/ref=s9_simh_gw_g21_i1_r?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-6&pf_rd_r=0F7XXS4BA2MNVKPBBTQV&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2437869542&pf_rd_i=desktop

Same company as the 144 space ships and the airplanes.

Not sure if these are included in one of the other sets I linked to but for now I don't think I'll be ordering. Not with a few 100 ships on the way already.

I couldn't find it listed at the Rhode Island website and if they are close to N scale and are discontinued I know I'd kick myself later if I didn't buy them. I may basecoat a few and try and get some of my money back at the next FLGS auction.

I took a look at my Buck Rogers ships and...







OK






See what I got for $20? Looks like a lot huh?



Yeah. Except... That's 1/10 of what I got!

I only opened 1 bag of each and each $3~$4 set comes with 10 bags!

The sculpts are pretty basic. The turrets are fine, the shuttles are good (and even have a nice retro feel) but the fighters and warbirds are under detailed.

But again, several 100 for $3.

Now I don't know what I will do with a few thousand little fighters, shuttles etc. But for less than the cost of a dinner with the family I'm sure I'll find a use for some of them someday.

Fighters come in at about 3/4 of an inch and the bag I opened had 90 (so i should have around 900)



Turrets are about waist high to a model and come 14 to a bag (140 total)



Looks like they'd be great for 28mm terrain too.



Warbirds are a bit bigger, not quite an inch but really lacking in detail, they're almost abstract representations of a space ship.



The shuttles are the other winner, just over an inch long, nice detail for a small game piece and I love the retro 'War Rocket Ajax' style.





Alongside a BFG ship



Launch fighters!



Launch the troop ships! Prepare to invade!




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hmm.



http://shop.hydraminiatures.com/index.php?cPath=40&osCsid=e05b56e633a19703b218afdb1a5d4221

Those turrets and shuttles look like great buys.

Next Black Friday, keep an eye out for deals on Eclipse: Spaceship 1. I got one a year ago, and it comes with a lot of fun spaceships to fit your retro look, as well as some 90's brick ships and some vaguely Star Trekish ships. Twilight Imperium expansions sometimes hit some sweet low prices.

If you want some underdetailed little ships and tanks, I have some leftover from the old Ronin plastic range. I believe they are 1/250 or so.

Finished up the space board and played my first game of "Starcrashers" with the a few of the 144 ships and my 5 year old son.
Brief report and some observations here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/691684.page

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
And just to round this out if you're looking for cheap and different Capital Ships.

http://www.mondayknight.com/Miniature%20Pages/GalacticKnights/GalacticKnightsShips.htm

Galactic Knights is apparently the latest incarantion of a 70s era space ship fleet game originally called Star Fleet Wars (a name which is about one sylable from a lawsuit).

Spoiler:

Trying to decide which of these 2 looks better with my Space Fleet models...

$3 for the little dudes but only goes up to $20 for the 'Super Galactic Dreadnaughts.

Pretty impress en mass.

http://supergalacticdreadnought.blogspot.com/search/label/Starfleet%20Wars



And if you're looking for cap ships that are a bit more 'familiar'...

http://studiobergstrom.com/

1" starships for $1.25





Bigger ones for around $5~$15

 Eilif wrote:
Finished up the space board and played my first game of "Starcrashers" with the a few of the 144 ships and my 5 year old son.
Brief report and some observations here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/691684.page

THanks for sharing that and for the link to Star Crashers, I didn't realize it was by the Iron Hands guy, he's one of the old masters of scratch building!

Interesting to hear your 5 year old could play, Kyoto Secunda and her clone sister Kyoto Secunda Prime are 3 now...

Thanks for the BatRep. That looks like something I could play with my six-year old. He doesn't do well with games more complex than Carcassone or Dreadball, so it seems pretty close to prefect for him. Plus he would probably enjoy pushing around a lot of tiny spaceships.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
THanks for sharing that and for the link to Star Crashers, I didn't realize it was by the Iron Hands guy, he's one of the old masters of scratch building!

Interesting to hear your 5 year old could play, Kyoto Secunda and her clone sister Kyoto Secunda Prime are 3 now...

You're very welcome. He really is one of the masters. Virtually everything I know about toybashing and terrain making draws a line to Sean Patten. I don't know how your kids would do. My daughter is 3 and she's definitely not ready yet, but I was reading when I was 3 and probably could have played this, so there's a pretty wide range of 3-year-old abilities.

JoshInJapan wrote:Thanks for the BatRep. That looks like something I could play with my six-year old. He doesn't do well with games more complex than Carcassone or Dreadball, so it seems pretty close to prefect for him. Plus he would probably enjoy pushing around a lot of tiny spaceships.

It's definitely easier than Dreadball and probably a bit less than Carcassone. We only used two ship types and as I mentioned above I simplified the actions. However, he did so well that I think I'll add a couple of ship types and restore the original 2-action rules. It was great for having him count and compare numbers on the dice. Also he's a bit "active" so having to concentrate on moving the correct number of hexes where they are nearly all identical seemed to be good for him as well.

I think this will be the first of many games with him.

Some progress today, the Buck Rogers ships I am happy to say take model cement!

So I got some quick experiments done.

First up they fit fine on 20mm bases which will make moving and tracking them much easier.



Second off a small sacrifice of a few of the 1000 ships got me both torpedo volleys and a mine field.



A Xeno vessel swerves to avoid the mines, only to be targeted by torpedos.

(Wingless fighters and the noses from the warbirds if it's not stunningly obvious)

The minefield needs work, I think I'm on the right path but not just yet. Maybe just moving to a round base?

So the Buck Rogers ships still get my highest recommendation. Now to see how they take paint.

The US Toy ships arrived and alas are as disappointing I was told.



The good news is I got some great variety more than 20 different designs among the 72 ships. So if you need ship counters this is a good buy. They're each about an inch and a half. Most are variations on delta wing planes but there's a few whimsical ones in there.

The bad news.



They're bendy rubber and there's no way they'd take paint or glue.

So if you just need ships and will never paint them great, but for me I think the Buck Rogers and Rinco ships are the better buy.

I still have 2 more shipments incoming (when I go nuts for something I go nuts) the Chinese and EM4 versions of the Silent Death ships. We shall see how they go.

Oh and my Space Fleet, uh, fleet got a new flagship. The =I=SS Heart of Nova Yeboracum.

Nova of course meaning new, and Yeboracum being a corruption of Eboracum, the Roman name for York.

Thus the fourth wall breaking I heart NY across her sides...



And while at first glance this might seem to be an Imperial Super Star Destroyer closer examination will show the intense conversion work that went into integrating this ship with the detailed iconography of the Warhammer 40k universe. For example I added a skull, with wings! And an angel!

The thing is 5" long and has been sitting in a box for 6 years so I think it counts for this thread.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Also found some more science fictiony planes on Amazon but SUPER PRICEY! $15 for 72!



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009FF3VD4/ref=s9_simh_gw_g21_i1_r?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-6&pf_rd_r=0F7XXS4BA2MNVKPBBTQV&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2437869542&pf_rd_i=desktop

Same company as the 144 space ships and the airplanes.

Not sure if these are included in one of the other sets I linked to but for now I don't think I'll be ordering. Not with a few 100 ships on the way already.

Well I did order and got them today. Pretty big, I'd say 5" justifying the higher price tag but hollow on the bottom.

Very light on detail.

Not bad, but not great, I like the smaller ships better.

I'll write something more thorough in a few days.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Well I did order and got them today. Pretty big, I'd say 5" justifying the higher price tag but hollow on the bottom.

Very light on detail.

Not bad, but not great, I like the smaller ships better.

I'll write something more thorough in a few days.

Mine arrived yesterday and I agree with your observations. What detail is there is good and should be easily paintable, but there's some wide bare swaths that cry out for a bit of drawn-on panel lines. Some of them should work great for 10mm, especially the Osprey'ish VTOL, but some of them are larger and are probably better suited for 15 or even 20mm.

Mostly incompatible with the smaller ships, but I could see them being very useful for larger scale gamers and at about 20 cents each, they're quite a bargain. If one wanted to run a larger scale game of Starcrashers, the pulp adventure feel of the ships could be a pretty good match for the rules.

Some things I like about the set, it's apparently a bunch of Ultraman toys from different eras so it's kind of tour of sci fi eras.



The green jet screams 60s to me, the purple and orange ones scream 90s and the blue and red 80s.

The pink box however leaves me very confused, I still can't tell you what it's supposed to me or even which side is the front. Can anyone ID it?

I think if you put the mines on a round base and put some of the individual mines on a short rod of some kind to create a "floating" look, they'd look pretty good.

I agree. It's more work, but mines, torpedoes and fighters all tend to look great multi-based on rods.

In other news I just gave six of the 5" Ultraman ships a heavy scrubbing with dish soap. When they're totally dry I'll have my first go at priming them.

Has anyone tried making their own star field mat?

Looks like any mat is going to be costy especially with shipping, would it be better to go to a print shop and have them mount them on a 4x4 foam core?


There's lots of public domain star fields out there.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/star/

Foam Core might be a good option, but perhaps having it printed out directly on some sort of signage would be the best option.

Sintra, Gatorboard, or just a vinyl canvas might be sturdier than foamcore. I'm not sure what they would cost, it might just be cheaper to use a pre-made gamingn mat.

I saw a pretty good star mat done with black felt and various colors of paint flicked onto it.

Great minds think alike.

I have all the plastic models from page 1. Unfortunately I haven't done squat with any of them.

To be honest, I don't even know where any of them are, but I remember buying them and fiddling with them trying to dream up what to use them for.

Another option for cheap fleets, Metal Express has the same plastic sprue as EM4 for $5 about the same as EM4 but US shipping. They also have 100s of metal ships and some of the worst pictures I've ever seen...

I mean 90% of the models have these line illustrations with no photo and nothing to illustrate scale



Even the plastic ships have no picture I found one from a 3rd party.

http://store.metal-express.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=208

But tehre you go, another dirt cheap space ship option.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Good shuttle/cargo ship for $1.75



http://store.metal-express.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=0&products_id=188


Automatically Appended Next Post:
& a necron

http://store.metal-express.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=186

Good to be reminded of the Metal Express site. I didn't realize there were so many different ships for less than $3 each. At that price point there are also some great deals to be had from places like http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/index.html and http://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/index.php?_a=product&product_id=1594
Of course I'm too cheap even for that...

Since we're on the subject of Silent Death ships,
This fellow has used the SD sprues to make myriad different ships.
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/636657/eclipse-xeno-project-diy-spaceship-customization-d
I recommend to reading through the whole thing. He even provides the recipes for which ships went into which kitbashes on the second page.

& I'm back from vacation so I can pick this thread up again. I still have 3 more sets of dime store ships to show off.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009FF3VD4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I got the Rinco large airplanes and while they're lower detail than the other set they still have uses.

First off they are big, easily usable in a 10mm game, some even in 15mm. They can dress up terrain, plant one on a landing pad or cut some up as derbies for a rescue mission. They can also be pressed into service as transports or even fighters and bombers if you're looking for a budget option for Dropzone Commander or other large scale game.



The planes vary from 3~4" long and since they seem to be taken from different Ultraman shows over the decades are like a musueum of fictional aircraft.



They're underdetailed and hollow on the bottom, that at least can be corrected with green stuff or plasticard.



Starting with Supersonic Red you get a streamlined Jet Age looking transport plane that could easily serve as a civilian luxury jet or shuttle for any sort of air, space or ground war game. Whether you're meeting with that defector in West Germany or headed for trade negotiations on Naboo it will get you where you need to go.



The orange VTOL can be a military or civilian Osprey type vehicle. Just the thing to dress up an office tower or base for when the Japcorp Execs have a meeting with Aztechnology or when the black ops team needs a ride to hunt that xeno morph.



This green one can be a plausible bomber or ground attack plane.



While this purple one has the look of a high tech fighter.



The blue one is not as plausible but could still work too.



The green box is smaller so maybe better for 5mm but makes for a nice troop ship or cargo shuttle. Heck it's almost a perfect match for the RT era thunderhawk. Still not sure which end is the front...

If you're looking to play fleet scale some of these might still work, especially if you're not too proud. And if you are proud, well why are you reading a thread on dime store space ships anyway?

As for their intended use as toys all I can say they kept my girls entertained for part of an 8-hour flight which is easily worth $15 right there.

Still need to try priming and painting them and gluing them, so I'll be back with more info.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit-additional comment from Kyoto Secunda "Now mommy airplane and baby airplane have fun on the slide.

Nice review. I have these also and a few will probably end up in my 10mm sci-fi games though most likely as terrain.

The big jet and the Osprey looking thing could serve well in 6mm as well.

I think the last vehicle might actually be a ground car. in which case it might be closer to 15mm

The purple one would make a fine fighter in 15 or 20mm.

Quite a variety of sizes, but I'll definitely get some use out of at least the first 2 or 3.

3 takes on the same ships, US Toy, RINCO and EM4.



Will do more of write up on the US Toy Silent Death ships later.

Thanks for that comparison. I was debating whether to pick up the US Toy company ones. Looks like they're not much bigger than the Rinco versions so I think I'll pass.

Nice to see though that for the last one they don't have the ejection points on the top of the wings the way the Rinco ship does

I just primed a few EM4 ships yesterday and the detail and casting is much better than either of the others. No surprise there.

Another low cost wargaming option Babylon 5 minis are still available.

https://agents-of-gaming.myshopify.com/

Lots of different designs and in two scales 'ship' and 'fleet' with the smaller fleet ones coming in at under $5.

My favorite listing:

Fleet Action Civilian Bag-O-Targets

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1272/7961/products/51Ze773GPfL_1024x1024.jpeg?v=1462041096

Just need some civilian targets to shoot at and don't care what you get? Order the Bag-O-Targets (tm) - 20 random freighters from the Fleet Action line (minimum 2 of each type: freighter, fast freighter, tanker, bulk freighter, and ore barge)! A handful of merchant vessels waiting to die! (Note: The quantities you receive may differ from those in the photo, but you'll get at least 2 of each of the 5 types, as explained above.)

https://agents-of-gaming.myshopify.com/collections/fleet-action-raider-and-civilian-miniatures/products/fleet-action-civilian-bag-o-targets

Another low cost wargaming option Babylon 5 minis are still available.

https://agents-of-gaming.myshopify.com/

Definitely worth a look. There are quite a lot of good Babylon 5 space combat games floating about out there.

A Call To Arms is good for bigger games, although Mongoose went through two editions and countless erratas 'tweaking' it to get things balanced (2nd edition + Powers & Principalities is close)

Babylon 5 wars is insanely detailed - which is great for two cruisers beating up on each other but not for 'big' games.

The Earthforce Sourcebook (essentially Full Thrust) is a nice balance between the two.


I'm watching my way through Babylon 5 again at the moment.
Damn. Really want to get in a few games again.

I have a $50 order sitting in my cart now...

BFG Space Marines and Ark Mechanicus I'm thinking...

Must resist!

Those B5 ships are what got me into gaming.