Dollar stores are full of scratch building supplies. One stand by recently for me has been the Final Faction brands toys and accessories. I have put the machineguns and engine parts from the accessory packs into a number of builds. There is a pack of guns to be welded by the biological looking alien villains. At $1 per pack these toys were too great a bargain to pass up, even if I hadn’t figured out what to do with them at the time I bought them. Until now I didn’t quite know what to do with these, but it suddenly dawned on me that the guns would make for great biological alien spaceships.
These builds were made specifically following the base size rules for Warfleets: FTL (https://onepagerules.com/portfolio/warfleets-ftl/) for the xenos fleet type, but could easily represent biological aliens in other settings.
The creation was very simple. I merely clipped off the grips of two of the weapons, then with a pin vise drilled a small hole in the bottom of all three to act as a seat for a plasticard rod. I snipped three 1/5 inch pieces of rod and glued them into the toys. Then I took stare round 60mm bases and drilled holes in the center. Some superglue to assemble everything and they were ready to prime.
Some white spray prime, and then a paint job where I did my best to restrain the amount of paints used. Rather than using proper washes, I opted to thin and darken paints to make ad hoc washes, shades, and highlights as somebody who was building on more of a budget might be limited to using.
To make the quadrant marks, some Tamiya tape to make masking lines.
Carefully peeled back while the paint was still wet, and I think the results are pretty okay. Good enough to get onto the the table for a space battle.
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