Friday, January 14, 2011

A Pair of Sat-Comm Towers


With the completion of these two satellite communication towers I have now constructed as much terrain in the first two weeks of the new year than I did in all of last year! All of it! Again using cd's as my "small terrain base" standard I made these two pieces. This time I used even more junk and more spare parts.

The parts that form the basis of the towers themselves, the largest pieces, are actually plastic spindles that hold the ends of large rolls of paper inside their cardboard boxes. Each end plugs into the paper roll and they had large square bases, which I subsequently had to hack off a bit so they would fit the diameter of the cd base. The gravel and rocks are just that, just some of my basing dirt. For the radar dishes I used Lego parts, a couple of leftovers. The dishes are from Lego sets and sell for three cents a pop, there is a lightsaber handle in there, and on the underside of the dish is a flax 1x2 tile to keep it level. The antennae themselves, and well as the other cylinder piece are actually from a knock-off company. I super-glued all of this together when I was done, and there you have it, sat-comm towers!


I made this originally with the intention of 15mm sci-fi gaming, so the first size shot is with some of my GZG troopers. As you can see, there's enough room for a sniper fig or what-not to stand on the dish itself. I used leftover Tau transfers, but tried to use the kind that didn't scream "Tau" and said "techno mumbo jumbo" instead.

Here's a view with some 28mm troopers...

By request, here's some 6mm stands...not a bad size scale!


I might've shown these guys before, but while I had out my box of 15mm troopers out, I thought I'd show it again. These aren't all of my 15mm troopers, but a single army I had painted up for Star Grunt II (now free!) a while back. It consists entirely of GZG figs, broken down into three platoons of regular troops, a platoon of power armor, and an HQ squad. Hopefully they'll be storming the sat-comm towers sooner than later!

9 comments:

  1. Man they look sweet, I like the idea of using the CDs a bases I have a ton of those lying around that I can use.

    Thanks for sharing man!

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  2. Very nice. Work fine for many scales.

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  3. These towers are very nice. Congratulations.
    At soon

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  4. Imaginative. I must check out lego.
    J

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  5. More excellent terrain - well done! I think it actually suits the 6mm best.

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  6. A + + + + + + + (in the immortal words of Ralphie's teacher in the Christmas Story)

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  7. @Meatball: I'm telling you, cd's are the new terrain standard...in base size!

    @Double B: They don't look half shabby next to the 28mm troops do they?

    @Sylvain: Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the comment!

    @John: I had the dishes laying around alreayd but I was very surprised to find them for just three cents a pop. You'll notice one is slightly leaning, even though it's glued, I was able to straighten it out as well.

    @Tristan: It looks pretty cool with the 6mm guys. It reminds of those huge sat-comm towers in the northwest corner of the Fallout 3 map. My character used those for a weapons stash a couple of times. Falling off them however was not good.

    @Joe: Ha! Thanks, although you could still put your eye out if you lean over one of these for a model's eye view!

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  8. Really nice work there! I didn't realise they were quite as big until reading that it was a CD base! I did a double-take on the 28mm pic - very cool!

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  9. Very cool looking terrain pieces Mik! Have to agree about using CD bases. Been doing that for a while now myself and they work great for quick and easy terrain bases. Can't wait to see what you come up with next!

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