So having previously built some 3D obstacle to replace my tokens, today I decided to create some AA laser turrets for a campaign I am slowly piecing together for my friends and I.

Overall, took around 6 hours, and cost about £10 in materials. (bought as many bits and pieces I could from the £1 shop! )

Materials:
- Balsa Wood: 5mm thick
- Dowel Rod
- DIY putty pellets
- Pack of 5mm bolt nuts
- Auto Spray Paint (black and gray)
- Pack of cheap car fuses
- Gardening wire
- Lava rocks

I already had some left over lava rocks and dowel rods from my asteroid field builds, so my plan was to create some asteroid mounted AA turrets (for use in a "squadron attack phase" part of a campaign mission I am designing.

After hunting around town for bits and pieces, spray paint, more balsa etc, the main thing I was looking for was something that would make a good basis for the turret platforms. I managed to find a pack of car fuses for £1 which were ideal.

Stage 1: So, after picking out 4 of the fuses, I cut up some pieces of balsa (for the turret columns and the platform mounts), a small piece of thin plastic for the back platform section, and selected 4 of the smallest lava rocks:



Stage 2: The mounts. I cut 4x40mm square, around 50mm cuts of dowel rod (screwed into the 5mm nuts) and then glued them to the centre.


Stage 3: Spray that s**t



Stage 4: While waiting for the pieces to dry, I cut up some small lengths of gardening wire and painted them black, these will be the turret cannons

Stage 5: Now dry, I touched up the grey coats on the platforms and columns, then dry brushed with a Tamiya Light Sea Grey.



Stage 6: The turret cannons were placed into the columns with some tweezers. The grain held them quite firmly, so I decided not to then remove and glue back in, (to prevent and damage to the fragile balsa).

I made level mounts on the asteroids, using some DIY putty (which I forgot to photograph) i placed the putty on, leveled it off, then applied some pitting with a small make up tool of some description that I stole off the missus, to give the putty a natural, rocky effect. The asteroids were then touched up with dark grey, washed with nuln oil wash (a lot of it, those rocks absorb a lot of liquid!) Then drybrushed them with light grey.

The turrets were then glued to the platforms. The asteroids to the stands. And finally the turret platforms glued to the asteroids...



I know, those laser aren't quad! haha. I just couldn't get four wires into each without the risk of the "head" breaking

Now just need some Dice armament and Hull value tokens to print out at work and mount onto them.

Here they are, with all the other 3D scratchbuilds that this awesome game has inspired me to build...

Each one of these has been very rewarding to build, and look awesome on the table. Now I just need to finish off that Stations base stand!

Are these just regular garden-size lava rocks from like home depot?

Are these just regular garden-size lava rocks from like home depot?

Yep, that actual ones I got were Hi Gear BBQ Lava Rocks from a camping store. It was a 3kg box for about £6 ($8) , 90% of them were too large, but the smaller ones and bits that gathered at the bottom of the pack were the prefect size.

Nice! I lack your general ability, but I decided I really really want to give this scratch build a try. I just needed good rocks, but I spend some time at a hardware store this weekend and couldn't find anything suitable.

Honestly, they are so simple to build. I totally forgot to take any pics when I was making my standard asteroid field tokens, but they followed the same basic step as these turrets. (I just made the bases token shaped and put 2/3 little ones on a piece with 3 different height cut of dowel rod.)

Once you spray and ink up those rocks, after a really quick and crazy drybrush they look brilliant

Then its just a case of drilling some holes in and making a simple stand with the balsa base and doweling rod. (those bolt nuts at the end really help weigh them down too.

Yeah man, I was looking all over the place for the rocks, but try some camping stores, or failing that I saw these online as well: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Landmann-0273-Lava-Rock-Pack/dp/B0002DF1TK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465853065&sr=8-1&keywords=lava+rock

Got the rocks today! Took looking in 4 separate stores because I did not have the patience for shipping, but I found them. Going to give this build a try tonight, if I am not too terribly tired.

As far as painting the rocks go, the steps you used were:

Light Grey Auto Primer -> Dark Grey Paint -> Light Grey Drybrush?

Got the rocks today! Took looking in 4 separate stores because I did not have the patience for shipping, but I found them. Going to give this build a try tonight, if I am not too terribly tired.

As far as painting the rocks go, the steps you used were:

Light Grey Auto Primer -> Dark Grey Paint -> Light Grey Drybrush?

Pretty much, but don't forget the black ink wash (vital to getting that final contrast):

Spray > grey paint (to touch up the coat - missed bits) > Then black wash > light grey drybrush

they are porous as hell, so they drink that stuff up, but so worth it

I used a GW citadel Nuln Oil wash, but sure any kind of black wash will do

I make my own wash, so I won't cry as I empty an expensive bottle. Excited to give this one a go!

I make my own wash, so I won't cry as I empty an expensive bottle. Excited to give this one a go!

Ha! good plan.

Awesome, lemme know how you get on

I'll post some pictures when I get there!

Started working on the turrets and promptly ran out of grey primer. Got one rock in, but my dry fit already looked great. Hopefully by Monday I will have something to show for all this haha.

Work in progress, but hopefully will have it done by the end of the week. Been super busy so after getting everything primed and a couple coats of wash I haven't been able to do much. But my wife did mock me for not only painting plastic spaceships, but now painting rocks for plastic spaceships. Evidently, I have reached a new level of nerdiness, which makes me pretty proud. Thanks for inspiring that!

Ha! Yes mate, my missus also rolled her eyes at me during my lil sci-fi craft project Although she did admit they looked cool.

Keep up the good work, nerd and proud muhaha.

Got the components finished! Just need basic assembly and I will be good to go. Hopefully tonight.

Wrapped up except for detail work! Have to insert the cannons and add some shadows and highlights but for all intents and purposes I wrapped up last night!

I could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME get the little bases you had fashioned for the turrets to sit on to look good, so after spending way way too much time on it I threw in the towel and just fit them flush to the front lip of the facility. I also just countersunk the dowel into the base and the "asteroid" since I realized too late I didn't have any nuts to spare. The weight wasn't needed on the base since I ended up using Basswood instead of Balsa cause my local stores don't carry Balsa in anything but sticking. It looks about half as good as yours, but I will settle for that since I am probably less than half the artist! This weekend I will have an excuse to get these on the table and have a go at them. My thought is to adapt the Objective "Minefields" into "Turretfields" and see how much carnage I can produce!

Awesome! Great work man. Sorry took a while to reply, loads of overtime at work plus the insanity of the EU referendum over here kinda of knocked me through a loop this last couple of weeks!

Looking good man, I finally used mine a few weeks ago in a absolutely crazy 3 player battle (which used pretty much ALL my stuff and took about 4/5 hours! haha) with the station and the 4 turrets in the middle. Placement was a bit off so me and one guy battled it out as the other slowly crept up and took over the station and AA. Look cool as hell though!

But yeah, really cool to see someone going for it and building their own stuff as well

It's ok, works been crazy here too. This weekend I got just a few minutes of free time and got the lasers placed and painted, some touch up painting done, and got everything set. I am trying to think of what other detail work I want to do on them, or if I want to just leave them be since it always seems to be when I go to add the finishing touches that I end up botching the whole thing. Keeping it simple might be best. I am hoping this week now that things are more or less back to normal I will be able to varnish the whole thing and glue them and get a game in with them next weekend. I don't have the fancy station, since that I know is out of my ability level to create, but the turrets will look awesome as replacement asteroids/objective tokens.