Crashed Spacecraft Sections & Alien Tech Gems

    My crashed spacecraft sections made from various random things I had & a cheap plastic toy

This post probably exemplifies the cart-before-the-horse idea. For this past Sunday's game, I needed to build individual sections of an alien spacecraft that had come apart on crash-landing on a planet. My intention was to scatter the components in the center of the game and having my players searching among them for objectives, aka Alien Tech. Well, I have already posted about the game and you've already seen pictures of the items I'm describing in the post. So, cart in front of horse...!

    This section probably had the most random pieces glued onto it, including scatter from A Critical Hit

I had an idea for those and they were the easiest part. Long ago, a friend handed me a quart ziplock back of 3-D printed tires of various sizes and shapes. While going through all of my bins looking for parts that might look like bits and bobs for an alien spacecraft, I came upon the bag. I pulled it out, sorted through them, and found that some were the exact size to fit a craft store "gem" onto. So, first, I pulled out the various colors of gems I would be using, deciding in a completely random way to make eight of them. I found eight of the tires that the gems would rest upon with part of the tire showing as a rim around the colorful, glowing alien power node (or whatever it was that I was creating!).

    Created my 'Alien Tech' objectives with cheap craft store gems glued to 3-D printed tires & a washer 

I based the tires on appropriate sized metal washers, first. Then I epoxied the gems onto the 3-D printed tires. Next, I did a base coat of Iron Wind Steel -- a very dark metallic -- on the tire, making sure I also covered up the little wave-shaped edges of the gems, as well. Next, I chose one of my dozen-plus metallic paint colors that somewhat matched the gem color. I painted the outer edge of the tire that color. Finally, I chose a different metallic to paint the washer base and voila! These glowing Alien Tech objectives pieces were finished! 

    Many of the bits I glued onto the pieces of the plastic toy were to break up the outline & complicate it

Now, it was time to tackle the spaceship sections! My thought was to find a cheap plastic spaceship at the discount store or failing that a piece of construction equipment. I found an earth excavator for a couple bucks, and took a pair of wire cutters to it. Well, after buying -- just to be clear! I disassembled it into various mechanical component looking pieces. I based those on pieces of styrene plastic, epoxying them into place with space around for various pieces that had fallen off. Even the four tires were set on their side and became a piece of the spaceship. Now, it was time to junk them up! I had a pile of various pieces from a number of sources. I simply began epoxying them onto the plastic excavator sections making it look more mechanical and interesting. Some sections got more junk added to them, some less. Once I was satisfied they looked like a complicated mechanical and futuristic spaceship section, I pronounced myself done.

    It's probably easy to see the cab for the excavator here, but I tried my best to 'tech it up'!

Then, I flocked the base so that it looked like it had sunken a bit into the ground from the impact. I waited for a reasonably warm winter day and spray painted each base and components on there black. The next step was to go over everything in a craft Gunmetal Gray metallic paint. I didn't want to use up my precious Iron Wind Steel -- I'm down to my last bottle! Hopefully, I can pick up a re-stock at Cincycon at the end of February. Once it had dried, I looked at my various metallics and decided that the dark red would look the best for the accent color on the spacecraft sections.

    After my lovely accent painting, you could NEVER tell this was one of the excavator's tires, right?

This step was the most time-consuming of the process. I did each piece, one by one, deciding what part of the piece was accent color and what would remain the dark metallic. Some sections got more accent color than others. It took about four days or so to go through all of the pieces. I decided that I wasn't going to spray coat these pieces because they honestly won't get a lot of use (my guess). Plus, I was worried about a matte coat dulling the gleam of the dark red metallic down too much. The gems were then added to the top of the four wheels, hopefully forever disguising them from looking like giant truck wheels...haha!

    I even tossed random bits of scatter or pieces inside this open area on this piece of the excavator

The last step was to add fine black ballast (meant to be coal for railroad hobbyists) to the base. I went back and forth whether to go with sand to match my Tatooine or black. I finally decided that the black looks like the ground was burnt from the spacecraft's thrusters desperately trying slow the impact. Honestly, no matter what color I chose for flocking the crashed sections, it was going to look out of place on some gaming surface. Perhaps I was choosing black as the simplest and most expedient method of flocking these. I would need them on a Sunday and I finished the flocking only the day before!

    Note how I matched the objective tokens' metallic bands with their gem colors -- or tried to!

They looked okay on the tabletop. I had considered blackening sections of the spacecraft to represent scorched surfaces. In the end, I decided not to do that. The idea for the scenario was that the ship's emergency thrusters slowed the decent enough that it did not explode and burn up on impact, but instead merely broke apart. Plus, if they're not burnt, they can be random, generic, Sci-Fi bits of mechanical terrain for other games. Jenny and I are talking about re-starting our Space Station Zero adventures on weekend evenings when we want to stay in and play a game. So, they can join the tons of other Sci-Fi scatter I have on hand for that.

    This was one of my favorite pieces for looking like random machinery

I realize that, by no means, are these the greatest scratch-built pieces of terrain ever! I hope they're passable, though. And they cost next to nothing to make! The only thing I went out and bought for all of the things pictured on this post is the plastic toy excavator. As I mentioned in the previous post, the spacecraft sections I'm counting as "Terrain" and the objectives are "Scatter."

    I'd been wanting to pick up this solo/coop alien hunting rules set and finally did, recently

So, what else is on my painting desk, at the moment? I have six 28mm orc casualties that I will be using for my "Battered" markers for Dragon Rampant games. They're about halfway done, I think. I also have begun working on five modern figures that I bought as part of my 28mm Vietnam figures from Crucible Crush's Black Sun range. They're from the Children of Hastur line, supposedly whacked out cultists. Instead, I'm going to use them as my "team" for games of Majestic 13, which I bought recently. More on that potential solo gaming project when I finish them, though!

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026

• Miniatures acquired in 2026: 6
  
• Miniatures painted in 2026: 24

TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026

• Terrain acquired in 2026: 0
  
• Terrain painted in 2026: 17

SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026

• Scatter acquired in 2026: 0
  
• Scatter painted in 2026: 24