More Droids: Floating Robots Made from Craft Store Materials

    3 Droids assembled from sparkly craft store materials with a couple Sci-Fi figs in for scale

I saw the prismatic (color shift?) miniature glass bottles that I used as the "head" on these droids at my local Hobby Lobby a few months ago. I was considering scratch-building my own droids for my Star Wars skirmishes, and couldn't resist their bright and colorful appearance. I pulled out my beads, MDF bits, and other things I use when making my own stuff and tried to imagine a way for it all to go together. The stopping point was the legs, though. I was envisioning a walker style droid with a tripod leg arrangement, thinking that would look really cool. However, I simply couldn't come up with any way to do it.

    The materials from which the 'Prism Droids' were assembled -- eventually!

So, last week I took all of the pieces, which had sat on my desk for more than a month, and put them away in their various ziploc bags. I was officially giving up. I simply couldn't figure out a way to scratch build the legs I had in mind for them. Maybe I could find something I could use at a toy store? I put that on my list of things to do -- stop by a toy store and see if I can find any inexpensive robot legs to glue to the bottom of the rest of the construct I had pictured in my mind.

    Key to solving how the droids would be put together: thrusters to float instead of legs to walk!

Two days later, I was driving home from visiting my mom and had a thought. "Why not make them floating droids?" Grogu had his little floating bassinet. The imperial probe in Empire Strikes Back floated along. Land speeders appear to be floating. The Star Wars universe is fine with floating thingies, why not my droids? And there I was, less than 48 hours after putting it all away, I was taking it all back out! Besides the prismatic jars which would be the "head" of the droid, I had two sizes of craft store gems, detailed circular bases meant for Sci-Fi figures, gold-colored decorative beads, and MDF sprockets.

    MDF sprockets to look more 'machine like' atop two 3-D printed bases (1 facing up, 1 facing down)

I stared by gluing the beads to one of the bases that what would be the underside of droid. On top of each of the four beads (or bottom, once turned right-side up) was a tiny gem representing the "thrusters." I added Tacky Glue to the base, too, just to make sure the beads stayed attached to the 3-D printed bases that I'd picked up from Diabolical Terrain. I took the other, more detailed 3-D bases and glued the MDF sprocket to it. Once dry, I glued the two bases together to form the cylindrical "body" of the droid. I painted it Iron Wind Metals Steel color, highlighting the raised bits with Pewter metallic craft paint. 

   Three brightly-colored and prismatic droids float past domed habitats on a random Sci-Fi planet

For the heads, I glued the larger craft store gem to a 20mm MDF circular bases. On the underside, I glued the prismatic jar. I painted the base Steel, as well, and made tiny marks on it in Pewter to give it a more detailed and 3-D appearance. Before gluing the upper half and bottom half together, I used a pin vice to drill through the body and the round birch wood bases the droids would be floating above. I inserted brass wire though them, snipping the bottom off to size so the bottom thruster gems were only just above the birchwood base. I reinforced all of the points where the brass wire exited or entered the body or base with Tacky Glue. 

    Material for the glass bottles refracts light, so the color changes as they spin or your angle changes

All that was left was to glue the two halves together, once again with Tacky Glue (and an extra amount inside the "jar" so gravity would pull it down and give it a wider area of connection to the MDF sprocket). I put a few rocks for texture on the bases to break up their flat appearance. I flocked the bases with my standard Sci-Fi method of Fine Blended Gray Ballast with a black vehicle wash and light gray dry brush. Add four tufts each and my craft store floating droids were finally done!

    Close up of one of the floating droids from above

What's up next? My random batch of seven 28mm civilian miniatures are almost done. The Bad Goblin Games Water Tower is still primed, but not begun, yet. I decided to make room for it on my painting desk by clearing off these two batches. So, hopefully by the next update, I will have started the actual painting of the 28mm monstrosity!

    In hindsight, maybe I should have gone with silver beads of that style rather than gold?

Starfighters: Empire Remants vs. Rebels, er New Government!

    We had 7 players and a GM for our game of Starfighters, with lots of laughs heard around the table

Keith wanted to run a Starfighters game using the Wiley Games rules. We had played it once or twice before and enjoyed it, so why not? After our first game or so, I felt there was a play balance issue with X-Wings being incredibly deadly. Keith felt he had discovered a patch for this problem in online, so this game was to give it a try. The scenario was set in the Mandalorian time frame, with the Empire being reduced to remnant holdouts and the Rebels being promoted to the new government.

    The new government squadron (formerly known as Rebels) were escorting heavily-armed freighters

The New Government players (Mike W, Mike S, and Allen) each controlled a large, heavily-armed freighter and an escorting fighter. Keith had two sizes of the Millennium Falcon and a Mando Razor Crest. Two X-wings and one Y-wing completed their flotilla, with the mission of simply moving from one edge of the table to the opposite, eight feet away.

    A flotilla of Tie fighters & bombers draw a cordon across their path and attempt to turn them back

The remnant imperials job, of course, was to ambush them and stop them from crossing our patch of interstellar turf. We had four imperial players (Jenny, Joel, Tom, and myself) each controlling an identical force of three ships. We had a classic light Tie fighter, an advanced Tie Fighter, and an imperial bomber. In our previous games, the Tie Fighters had been consumed like popcorn, blowing up at an alarming rate. Keith tried to minimize this with making only 1/3 of our force light ships, the other three being classified as "Medium" and heavier armed.

    It was four remnant imperial players (12 ships) against three former Rebels (6 ships)

The biggest change, though, was the damage table when scoring a hit on an enemy. The classic Wiley Game model present throughout most of their rules was modified in one crucial area. The 9-10 on 1d10 was no longer "Out of Action". Instead, it was a single point of damage (our light Tie fighters could take three), and a score of 10 leading to a d6 roll on a separate critical hit table. Only a "6" was a kaboom, the others causing the loss of a weapon or movement or something. As it turned out, this was too much of a fix and absolutely erased the X-wings chief advantage.

    Keith had placed his foam planets and asteroids as terrain on the tabletop for ships to hide behind

In previous games, the X-wings were armed with four lasers, getting four separate rolls to hit. Each hit would make its own roll on the classic Wiley Games damage chart, with the result of every other shot or so leading to an exploded Tie fighter. Now, there was less than a 2% chance of that happening per hit instead of 20% per hit. The result was the empire drove off the former Rebels' squadron. There was a rule that if your ship had more "Pilot Shock" than remaining hits it would disengage and fly away. When we called the game, more than half of the enemy ships were in retreat and we had suffered almost no damage. 

    Jenny channels Darth Vader and closes in on Mike S's ships, 'I've got this one now...'

Keith went home that night and promptly came up with a new damage chart which we will doubtless try again some Sunday evening. It was fun to get the star fighters out on the table again, though. Of course, with our success, it was even more fun for us than them, possibly! Still, laughs were heard all around the table on both sides. I credited our victory to the leadership of our new tactical mastermind, our friend Tom, who has been attending again on Sunday. It is good to game with him regularly again, and hear his chuckle across the tabletop!