Big Thrust In Action

Over the last three weeks:

• The big work project blew up into 60 work weeks (brutal but we need the money, see below)
• Our sole vehicle broke down (still waiting)
• My daughter went in for an 18 hour surgery to fix some heavy duty back problems (she's creaky, but healing well)
• We found out we're going to be evicted sometime in the non-specific but not too distant future (we'll deal with that later)
• I caught the raging flu that's been sweeping the town (brought on by stress no doubt)

Despite all that, we still managed to host the boy's birthday party today, a day long battle-fest using Full Thrust with great big ships. Most of the guests never showed up, but the three that did had a great time.

Human fleet, ready for action.

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The first scenario was a straight-up slugfest in which the human fleet mauled a weaker and more aggressive bio fleet.  The highlight of the fight occurred when one selfless (or hapless, depending on who you ask) frigate dove in front of a bio-missile to save the crew of a nearby cruiser.  That decision was the key to human victory, and the next turn saw that cruiser light up multiple bio-ships like tiny suns.

The HSS Selfless takes a missile for the team.

Then it was time to eat cake.  And by eat, I mean take a few polite bites and throw the rest in the trashcan, because this cake tasted even worse than it looks.

Bleargh.  That's supposed to be a starfield.

The second scenario started out as a routine race around four pylons.  Five frigates paced each other for three turns when suddenly - a mysterious cruiser class bio-ship entered normal space and proceeded to hunt down the hapless and near defenseless frigates.  One frigate put the hammer down and blasted off, trying to put as much distance between his ship and the bio-ship as possible.  (He also never lost sight of the race finish line, determined to win the race, bio-ship be damned.)

The interloper rushing into the race like a wolf among sheep.

Two frigates went down to volleys from the bio-ship, and on the next turn, the human defense force scrambled onto the battlefield to hunt down the interloper.  (Meaning the players who died got new ships to control.)

"Dad, how come you killed me like that?"
"Be-Cause You. Are hu-man Scum."

The human cruiser realized the bio-ship was hunting down the lead frigate and set course accordingly:

Vengeance is mine! Boom!

The defense force pasted the interloper good and hard, clearing the path for the birthday boy to hit the final gate at a speed of 46 feet.

The official scorecard documenting the birthday boy's winning frigate.

Generic action shot.

Another generic action shot of the first battle.

 Lessons learned:

• Footers need to be bigger or heavier.  The ships are big sails that catch the wind and blow over in slight breezes.
• Beach sand is too uneven for this - we tested two ships before the game and it just didn't work, so we moved over to the adjacent grassy park.
• People love walking through the game, but are respectful enough not to touch the ships.  As suggested to me on TheMiniaturesPage forum, a sign or two of explanation would have been a nice courtesy to the public.  Shame there just wasn't enough time for that.

Ship's Record

As mentioned in the last post - the MDF board cutoffs make a great "clipboard" for the ship's registers.  Each of these boards is just a bit bigger than 5-inches by 7-inches - perfect for printing the ship records.

Ten players, ten boards.  We divvied up the ships to keep things interesting and give everyone something to do each turn.  If you get the capital ship, you wind up with two ships.  The other players get a three ship task force.

Fighters and Flights Stands

Productive weekend this weekend.

Bio-Flagship

Frankly, I didn't have enough foam to build a second capital ship.  So this foot-shaped beast is the strongest in either this force or the human force.  Instead of building two nearly identical fleets, I plan on making this ship and the escorts strong for the bio-fleet than for team human.  Team human's frigates are better than their counterparts and they have two battleships to the bio-fleet's one.  That should keep things fairly even, and open up different strategies for the two fleets.

Front

Back

Bio-Frigates

Slightly bigger, slightly badder, here is the meat and muscle of the bio-fleet.  The first two shots are of ships where the plastic domes popped off when the foam expanded.  I went with it - just painted them up as if it was still in place.  The one of the left had an odd protrusions that looked nice and tentacley, so it got the orange paint treatment to make it look like I did that on purpose.

Bio-Escorts

The paint jobs are all complete.  Like the hit-mongering whore that I am, I'll be breaking up the shots into multiple blog posts.  So let's kick things off with the escort class ships.  A better man than I (gunga din) would have sat down with his bits and his ship records and decided what each bit represented to make the game truly WYSIWYG.  These ships take the opposite tack - they are just random bits stuck here and there every which way.  The only real concession made was to keep the thrusters on the backs of the ships to make it easier to tell which way the things are headed.

The eyes don't do anything for the game, they just give these ships that wonderful shoggoth look.

Bio Ship Sizes

Quick thought for the day.  Here's a comparison of the bio-ships (which really need a better name) to human ships of comparable scale.

Capitol

Frigate

Escort

No fighters yet.  We need to assemble those for both forces yet.

Bio Ships with Paint

Continuing on with the bio-ship construction, we've got paint on the field - paint which illustrates why you have to let these ships dry before you paint them - especially if you stick extra doo-dads into the foam.

Whoops.

Painted too soon.  Didn't put foam on top of the cupolas to hold them down.  Shame on me.  We can fix this - we have the technology, but man, what a hassle.

Snot fighters!

Yeah, so the paint job here is meant to evoke plants, right?  So, I painted these brown first, and then held the can over the top and applied a layer of green.  You know, like trees?

Halfway through the process (as in, these only had the brown paint on them) my son came out to the yard and asked me why I was making a whole bunch of really giant turds.  Danged if he wasn't right about what they looked like.

I may have hurried to apply the green paint, just to keep the neighbors from wondering what the heck that crazy Warren was doing this time.

More Bio-Fleet Construction

The nice thing about this construction method, is you can use it for all kinds of ship sizes.  These little pukes will wind up as fighters:

And this big bad boy is going to make for a fine capital ship.  That egg looking thing is a toy package for a dragon.  It had a cool 'veiny' look to it that will add to the feel of these alien ships/critters.

Again, remember that the foam keeps expanding as it dries.  The above is a picture taken just after 'spraying'.  The next one is a shot of the ship after it is fully dried.  Note how much bigger and smoother it is - not entirely smooth, but more than the above.

And you can build ships in between as well.  See those cupolas?  Yeah, you really want to either spray foam on top to keep them in place, or wait until the foam dries before sticking them on there.

I'll show you why next time...

New Fleet Recipe

Today we start construction on an opponent for the KoDan Armada.  We want ships that look nothing like the human ships, so we'll need new construction, new paint colors, and a unique look.  We're also going to be building an alien force, so all that works together to make this fleet nothing like the first one.  Instead of straight lines and flat surfaces, this will be an organic force with ships that look grown rather than constructed.

So let's tart with the construction material.  The bulk of our resources come in a can that looks something like this:

Not this:

Turns out the DAPtex stuff doesn't dry very fast, and when it dries it has no structural strength - it's soft and spongy.  The Great Stuff...er, stuff, does dry pretty quick, and doesn't 'smoosh' when dry.  This, it turns out, is why my idea to fill shampoo bottles with the stuff didn't work - that DAPtex neer would have dried enough to allow for more conversions.

So to build the fleet, just spray a series of 'blobs' of this stuff onto newsprint.  Experiment a bit, go crazy with the general shape of the ships.  For the most part, I've used oblong designs that will help make it clear which way the ship is facing.  Be careful when you do this, though, because the foam keeps expanding for a while after you're done spraying it.

Longer than you think - if you aren't careful, your ships will 'bleed' into each other, kind of like this.

It also means your ships wind up a bit smoother in the final analysis than it looks when you finish growing/building them.  More on that next time...

The KoDan Armada

Watch out, Space Nerds and Starfighters, the human fleet is leaving dry docks and headed for a sandy stretch of beach near you!  Okay, they still need posts and fighters, but this seems like a good time for a group shot.

The total cost of this fleet was probably under $20 if you don't count the materials on hand from other projects.  Five bucks for a sheet of foam core, five bucks for the bright blue spray paint, and ten bucks for glue and the various doodads.  Seems odd to me that you can get a giant fleet so much cheaper than one for the tabletop.

As you can see, I've taken to calling this the KoDan armada, more to see if any of the kids pickup on the scifi reference than because these ships are faithful to The Last Starfighter aesthetic.  May have to have a door prize for the first one to spot that reference.

At any rate, next time well take a look at my strategy for a matching opponent, only a lot more alien...

Human Flag Ship - The Fleet Carrier

Can't remember if the unpainted version of this ship was ever posted or not.  Either way, here is the last and the biggest of the human ships for Big Thrust - the mighty fleet carrier.  Down the road we'll assemble some fighter groups for it, but that won't take long.  Again, this is mainly foam core and cereal box cardboard.

The funny thing about these ships is that they are harder to paint to a high standard, but the sheer size of this behemoth means that you can get away with it.  These ships are painted using the same techniques used for table top ships, and it shows - no one will mistake these ships for a store bought model.  But i think it still works, be ause it's obvious that they are game pieces, and what they represent.

Big Thrust Size Comparison

Still have a lot of ships to paint up, but here's a few shots containing one each of the escorts, frigates, and battleship class ships for Big Thrust.  These should give a better idea exactly how big that battleship is compared to the deodorant-stick escorts.

Battleship Pocheapkin

The latest addition to the human fleet for the game I've taken to thinking of as Big Thrust is fully built and painted.  This bad boy was hand made out of foamcore and lots and lots of found items.  Old medical syringes, superglue lids, a pen lid, bamboo skewers (again), disposable razor handles (again), and lots of cereal box cardboard.  The two-tiered level with the red band around it is two peanut butter jar lids glued on on top of the other. The most expensive part of this ship was probably the super-glue used to hold her together.

If you look close you can see two little white doors with blue dotted windows.  That should give you an idea of the scale of this battleship.  It's not as majestic as some others, but rules-wise it'll pack the same sort of wallop.

Frigate Paint Test

So very tired. Operating in a bit of a fugue state at the moment, what with sleeping in a hospital and the every-two-hour feeds. Had a great post showing the paint process for the big spaceships ready to go. Deleted it in my torpor. Not even sure if that's a real word or not, so tired. Anywho, the loss of a bunch of pictures is a bit of a bother, but that just forces me to stop being coy and make with the goods. Two human frigates are pretty much done. Here's a look at the nearly-final look of my first Big Thrust fleet.

These are the first two frigates. The cruisers and capital ships are assembled and spray painted. I made a big push to get them done and spray painted before baby comes home. All that's left to do is the hand painting. And the protective coat. (Gloss? Flat? Which one will look better on the field of battle?) And sleeping, but that'll have to wait a few more days. I'll sneak in a post on the paint job and some shots of the bigger ships in progress sometime in the next few days, too. Might as well tie full advantage of this paternity leave while I can, right?

Foam Core Cruisers

Turns out those deodorant bottles are frigates, and we're moving on to assembling the cruisers and battleships.  At least that's the terminology for Full Thrust.

The first attempt at the bigger class ships didn't go so well.  The plan was to fill odd shaped shampoo bottles with Great Stuff foam, wait for that to harden to give the bottles more internal stability, and start slapping on bits from there.  After 24-hours, the foam inside the bottles were no closer to hardening than they were after one hour.  So those got put into the circular file, and Plan B put into action.  

Plan B for this project is basically the same as Plan B for every wargame project of mine - foam core.  Lots and lots of foamcore.  A big sheet of foamcore provided enough material for the skeletons of three cruisers and one fleet carrier.  Here's an example of the skeleton side by side with a detailed ship ready for painting.

We're looking at all sorts of bits and bobs there.  The most recognizable are the Schick disposable razor handles, bamboo skewers, the top of a 25-cent ball for a dome, and a toothpaste tube cap for the thruster.  It'll look way better painted up.