Finding a use for stuff in my wargaming stash

One of the benefits of packing up and moving house is I now have a much better sense of all my wargaming stuff, having late last year packed and then unpacked everything. This is especially true for items that I had stashed away a good while ago with the thought, "This might be useful someday," or "It would be a shame to throw this out." As it turns out, I found a use for two such items this week to add to my Star Wars project.

The first item was a piece of plastic foliage, an orange thistle-like plant, that I would have picked up from a local craft store. I often find myself browsing for items that may be useful terrain while my wife shops for fabric for her quilting hobby. I find many of these plastic plants can be pulled apart, with individual pieces repurposed as wargaming scenery. In this case, the orange thistle consisted of clusters of plastic spikes attached to a central ball. I peeled them off, and they turned out to be perfect for creating colourful alien plants. They stand reasonably well on their own, but I plan to hot-glue them to washers for added stability.

A tabletop with the new orange alien plants.

A closer look.

This is the type of plant. I had pulled all the spikes off all the plants and did not take a photograph.

The second item was a crashed sci-fi plane from an old Games Workshop starter set that featured Tyranids and Space Marines. I had picked up two of those sets back in the mid-2000’s, but the second plane never made it to the painting table. Now it has finally been prepared and painted for some scatter terrain.

A old Games Workshop crashed plane added to the Star Wars terrain.

In addition to the alien plants and the crashed plane, I also managed to complete another building and some scatter terrain pieces, which can be used either as sewer covers or rooftop vents. The sewer covers will be used in ambush-style scenarios, where units can emerge from underground tunnels to strike behind enemy lines. The sewer covers were found at the hardware store in the plumbing section. I have no idea what they should be used for.

New building and sewer covers.

The sewer covers can also be used as vents on a building.

And finally, on the gaming front, I have been trying to adapt the Squad Hammer Core rules to work on a 6-inch square grid. The goal is to make it easier to run a remote game. A gridded board simplifies movement compared to freeform movement. In the picture below I use the new repurposed orange plants to mark out the corners of each square.

A test game of Squad Hammer Core using a 6-inch square grid.

It has been a rather productive week for wargaming, helped along by some wet weather that kept me indoors and away from outdoor chores.