Another dollar store find a Sci fi shuttle craft

 

So this is the type of thing I like to find when wandering the aisles of Dollarama. It is a toy that shoots some sort of rubber like disks, but to me it looks like some thing else.

To me it looks like a shuttle craft or will after a little work. It seems to match up well with my 15mm figures. So it will take a little patching here and there and I may  add some round bases to represent lifters on the feet, but in the end it looks like a pretty easy fix.

. 

Wandering around some stores the other day...

 

 I found a roll of ratty teddy bear fur! (oh joy)

The roll is 3 meters long and 5cm wide. I figure it might just come in  handy to create some soft cover, be it tall grass or crops. It should be easy to cut into smaller segments, then after it has been groomed with glue and paint I hope to make some strips of grass/crops that can be grouped together fo a full field effect, but that I can take out segments as troops move through the fields. 

Time will tell how this will work out. 

Flight stands and bases

So while walking through my local Dollarama I found two items of interest. Well actually I found any number of interesting items, but we shall focus on two for today.

First up something to be used as a flight stand.

It is, of course, an extendable device for picking up dropped metal items, as you can tell by the grip that is still attached. I have glued it onto some MDF and used washers to try and add some weight to the base. I will, ultimately, remove the surplus rubber grip to produce a smoother look.  

Its minimum height is around 7".

It can extend up to 31"

It has a built in magnet, but that can be removed and a more powerful magnet could be installed. It also has a built in light at the end for atmospheric shots. Maybe add some cotton to the end, turn on the light so as to create an image of ypur craft going down in flames. Now I do not have any gimbals to allow for attitude adjustment, but I am thinking of using these for my VSF stuff and any tilting would see troops plummeting to the Martian surface. At any rate, at $3.00 each I figure they are a good deal.

Next up are some square wood sheets. They appear to be made out of the same hardboard that is used for clipboards. I have been using cheap clipboards for a lot of scenery needs, both legal and letersize. 

These come 6 to a pack for $4.00 and are 25cm by 25cm. I have been toying around with the idea of making some interchangeable scenery and scenery boards. The idea would be to create a terrain board either 2' by 2' or 2' by 4' that had low relief terrain modeled on it. I would however leave square areas that could have higher elevation items inserted. This would provide me with plenty of options as the add-ons could be aligned in multiple ways, mixed with any number of other add-ons etc etc.

The thing was, I needed to cut some fairly uniform square tiles and that might be a challenge. These should do the trick. They are not 100%  25cm by 25cm, but they are pretty darn close. Any that are too far off will just be used a scenery bases. I could also create area where two such squares touch each other to allow for larger terrain to be added into the scene. 

So far I am in the testing stage of this project, I have them unwrapped and I am waiting to see if they will warp. I think they will not.

This would be too many for a 2' by 2' board but you get the idea

Water, water everywhere

A while ago (3-4 months) I walked into a local fabric shop and found a nice blue faux leather on sale. It was what I was looking for but I really was not expecting to find it so easily. Kind of disappointing I so enjoy the hunt. I requested a 9' long amount (it was 54" wide) and I figured that should do well enough even if it was going to leave a border on both long edges. I figured, a place for unit cards etc.

A 3" border, not too bad I guess

It was only after I got home that I started thinking about what I bought and what I should have done. My wargame table (really a ping pong table) is 5' by 9'. I belatedly realized/thought through what I was doing and realized I really needed a sheet that was 10' long or even two sheets 5' long each. It would allow me to completely cover the gaming table.  However I was not prepared to buy another sheet as this was supposed to be a quick cheap fix! So all I could do was hope that a little extra had been left on, that maybe the sheet would be close to 10' . However my gaming table was a little crowded (see other posts) and I could not stretch out the material to properly measure it.

Now the AHPC is over, and I have had a chance to clean up my gaming table.

A rare sight, the table with nothing on it!

So today I was finally able to spread out the sheet, and lo and behold they gave me a sheet that is 126" long. By my math that means I can cut it in half and have two sheets that are 54" by 63" giving me a small overlap along the long edge of the table. It also means I can use one on my secondary gaming table (1/2 a ping pong table) Oh joy oh bliss oh lucky horse shoe buried up my....

So here is the sheet with some models on it. I do kind of like the light blue colour, not to bright not to dark. I had thought about staining it to give variable patches of blue, but I may just leave it for now. Any thoughts?

Pounding brooms into pikes and spears (updated August 27th)

 

 Found this at Dollarama, a nice stiff bristled broom. I cannot say that I have really been looking hard for something like this, but it has been in the back of my mind for a while. Well now that I have based up 60+ pike men for my Empire army, and given that I have 30 or so spear armed Martian cavalry sitting in the wings, I figured it was high time to get me some spears.pikes!

Found this nice item for someone to worship

 

 David and Abner shown for scale, this is a dinosaur mask that I found in a Dollarama store a while back, during one of the breaks in the shutdown. They had a couple of different ones, I liked this one the best. I envision propping it up on styrofoam so that the mouth will become an entrance. I guess it could also rise out of the side/top of a hill. 

Value village plastic glasses

 

Not certain if I have posted these before, but I have finally decided to work on them. At first I thought I was buying one for $1.99, then realized it was$1.99 for four of them.

An unexpected find

Thought I would go for a drive today, before we start another period of isolation. My travels took me across the border into Quebec to two stores that often sell used games. Well the first, a predominately RPG and video retailer, had nothing. But a journey across the parking lot to a boardgame store brought success!

Dollar store find...good for cover

 

 Found this during a brief excursion out of the house, looking beyond the flowers reveals two treasures!

From Value village and elsewhere...

Two different kids toys, the top one is some weird collectable set, each contains a different figure (of no use to me) but I think the containers, especially with the goo, and the 'useless' figures, look like vats with strange experimental subjects in them.

The other item are two Paw Patrol hovercrafts that I found at a value village.

Power nodes?

Not so much found, but seen right in front of me!

"Our land now succumbed to the Red Weed"

"It began to creep like a slimy red animal across the land"

So, some time ago, not even this past Halloween, I picked up some 'spider web' Halloween decorations. I bought two rolls, one black, one purple (strange spider webs?) basically for no good reason, just cause I might find a purpose for them sometime in the future.

Another nice item from Value Village (the radar dish is from my parts box)

This certainly has seen better days, but I think there is enough to make something from it. It is missing some doors, and maybe some weapons (I see holes that I assume would hold weapons)
Certainly good bones, and doors and weapons can easily be replaced.

Yet another dollar store find

I have been deliberately trying to avoid the dollar store, as I keep finding stuff, that I then buy and store for future use. As a result of this buying habit I have accumulated a very large collection of:

"I am sure this will come in handy someday"

So today I found myself in a Dollarama for some boxes, when, well, my eyes strayed away from the target and found this 9" x 12" peel and stick 'tile'.

I see an evil genius tapping some thermo energy to further some nefarious plan

A small find but could be a nice find. Found this at a local Value Village. Hopefully a quick paint job will see this go from toy to a seething cauldron of potentially explosive energy!

Future, future project

Found in a second hand store in Ottawa.

It was a good day today

A trip to Value Village and a Dollarama store, a location that I do not visit often, has netted me a fine catch! A submarine, a hill/escarpment, Bonsai trees and hair clippers (for my teddy bear fur battle mat project).

Possible game mat for Congo games

So, found this at the Dollarama store. It is a soft furry throw blanket.
To me of course it looks like possible material for grass lands. At only $4.00 for a 50" x 60" mat, I figure it was priced right to experiment. Now I have been thinking of making a teddy bear fur gaming mat, but I have just never gotten around to it, even though I have some that was bought at a particularly good sale price.

Unexpected, but should not have been "Easter" egg find

A while ago I made a find in a dollar store, this dinosaur egg, that contains a dino skeleton. I actually bought this for the egg, it had an interesting texture to it and I thought it might work as a hull of a boat. Unfortunately it did not open up the way I hoped. At any rate I figured at least I had some bones for an archeological dig. 

Some lucky finds today

Hit one of the many Value Village stores in Ottawa and found these gems. I guess after Venice we may be going to cntral or South America...

Also found another giant rocket ship, another big red one (see earlier post)