From: Jeremy Sadler <jsadler@e...>
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 23:25:19 +1000
Subject: Terrain - craft shop style
Greetings all, I have a new appreciation of craft/manchester/sewing shops (Spotlight, Lincraft, et al - don't know what Yanks and Brits would have). I have been wandering around these shops with my fiancee every now and again, checking them out for possible terrain/other stuff for gaming. They have various shaped hard carboard boxes, for use with decoupage (sp?) - basically, for gluing paper to or painting to make pretty present boxes. Some of these boxes come in the shape of _houses_. BING! went the lightbulb. Suitably painted and decorated, these boxes would make perfect buildings. Also, since the top (roof) is removable, figures could go INSIDE - which means that games could be played with fighting going from room to room inside the one building! I kicked myself for never having realised this before. Then I looked at all the other boxes, and realised most of them could be used for various sci-fi type buildings - all shapes and sizes, round, square, hex, long and thin. Then I also realised that if you put one box atop another, you had a MULTI-STOREY building - with each level removable. I heartily recommend people interested in cheap buildings check these out. I paid A$5 for a small building (lengthwise, about the size of my hand - in 25mm, would make a back yard shed or a hovel). Painted, decorated, I'm sure it'll come out nice - so far so good, anyway. When its completed I'll put pics up on USG2WS. And since it's cardboard, it's cuttable - cut open doors and windows if you want, cut whole ends off in a rough way to make blown away walls. Insert internal walls to break up rooms. Cut away the roof for a skylight or to insert a loft/attic. Of course they wouldn't stand up against purpose cast resin buildings, but for people interested in quick, cheap terrain that actually allows room-to-room and floor-to-floor fighting, I'd definitely recommend checking these out. Also, I've now removed the remote control from the Trade Federation tank that I picked up yesterday. The wheels are gone too, so it wont roll. I now have a nice hover tank. Sure it's recognisable... but does that really matter?:) ---