Spaceship X from Creative Gamescapes

This is a single set of Spaceship X from Creative Gamescapes. I received it as a Kickstarter award from awhile back. There were delays in getting the product out and communications could have been better. On the other hand, getting it late was better than not getting it at all. That's far more success than some Kickstarters can claim. Bottom line - Creative Gamescapes could have done better, but they ultimately came through for me.

Set with almost all of the pieces - one door was being stripped for repaint.

This set featured in a few previous posts - most notably a description of a Star Trek Adventures encounter and a work in progress post after I decided to have another go at assembling and painting it. Since then, I've sprayed the corridor pieces with a coat of clear sealer. This seems to have solved the silver overspray problem. I also decided that I didn't do as bad a job with two of the doors as I thought. The paint job on the third door didn't come out at all - that one is getting stripped and repainted down the road. Still, the set is in a state where I feel comfortable about writing a review, especially since I've already used it in play.

Door close up. The one with the green keypad is intended to look more worn.

Spaceship X represents the interior of a large spacecraft. The level of detail - floor grating, round bolts, doors with keypads - is sufficient to convey a futuristic industrial appearance. The aesthetic is well suited for a game about exploring a derelict spacecraft inhabited by violently aggressive extraterrestrials, although some might lament the lack of decorative skulls. The rugged industrial look is generic enough for a variety of sci-fi settings. Spaceship X is also handy for representing other sci-fi environments - a built up underground area like a moonbase, a confined industrial area, a supervillian lair, etc.

The scaling of Spaceship X is flexible by design. The corridors work equally well for 15mm or 28mm figures. The keypads on the doors are a little large for 15mm, but the effect is not too jarring.

15mm figure comparison. Maybe tall enough to reach the top row on the keypad?

Assembly is relatively straightforward. The parts did arrive with mold lines, but nothing that a little work with a hobby knife and some sanding couldn't take care of. I made a couple of minor errors when I reassembled the parts due to my misplacing the instructions. Unfortunately, Creative Gamescapes did not respond to my inquiries about getting a replacement instruction sheet and it isn't available for download. The sides and bottom of each corridor segment do lock together, but I don't feel that the fit is snug enough to rely on. I ended up using plastic cement to bond the parts of each corridor segment together permanently. The details on how I assembled and painted my Spaceship X set are presented in a previous WIP post.

Who needs keypads when an anti-armor weapon is available? Just mind the back blast!

Each corridor segment is designed to slot together with the others. Unfortunately, the interlocking tabs and slots don't always fit smoothly. They line up well, but the slots aren't always large enough for the tabs to fit without forcing them together. Priming and painting the pieces has only made the issue worse. However, the fit issue is likely to resolve itself as the interlocking tabs and slots wear down.

Close up of interlocking tabs and slots.

Creative Gamescapes used a sturdy plastic for Spaceship X. I'm more concerned with the paint job and cement bonds than the plastic getting damaged during normal use. A piece did fall on the garage floor while I was preparing the set for priming - it bounced off and wasn't even scuffed or scratched. Durability doesn't seem to be an issue with Spaceship X.

28mm figure comparison. The girls are having an easier time with reaching the door controls.

Spaceship X is an affordable product with limitations. Spaceship X is at its best when its used for assembling tight corridors and claustrophobic rooms that result in intense close-in encounters. A single set of Spaceship X retails around $35 USD before shipping and tax. It provides a variety of corridors arranged on a single level, a couple of small rooms, and an assortment of accessories such as doors - a good value for the price. There are other products on the market featuring multiple levels, more expansive rooms, and a higher level of detailing. Such products allow for more maneuvering and better use of ranged attacks during play. However, those products tend to be correspondingly more expensive and many use less durable materials such as card. Spaceship interiors are a niche market within a niche market - trade offs may be unavoidable. Potential buyers would be best served by carefully evaluating their needs before making a purchase.

I'm satisfied with Spaceship X, but I have concerns about Creative Gamescapes. They demonstrated a lack of good communications during the Kickstarter and when I reached out to them for support. On the other hand, they put out a good product. There were some issues during assembly and with how the tabs fit, but nothing too serious. It looks good and works well on the table.

Space Corridor Terrain WIP

This project is a single Spaceship X set from Creative Gamescape. It's a backer reward from their Kickstarter from awhile back. Going into the ups and downs of that particular Kickstarter will have to wait until I do a proper review.

Makin' progress.

I've been making slow and steady progress on this project for awhile now. There was a setback or two, but things have sped up lately due to the current state of affairs. I'm now at a decision point. Which is as good a time as any to look back and see how things have gone so far.

I originally assembled and painted this set for an encounter in our Star Trek Adventures campaign. Unfortunately, I ran in problems with both the assembly and the paint job.

• The pieces started coming apart from routine handling. The bond from the cyanoacrylate glue I used was brittle and weak.
• The metallic spray paint I used was coming off on my hands. A little research on some online forums revealed that this "overspray" issue was common to that brand.
• The wash I used looked patchy. A wash shouldn't be evenly distributed - after all, the point of a wash is for it to flow into the details. However, the bare spots looked less like weathering and more like the wash mixture broke during application. To be fair, the particular bottle of wash I used is years old.

Starting over looked like a better approach than trying to solve each problem piecemeal. I disassembled the pieces and gave all the parts a long soak in Simple Green to strip off as much of the paint and glue as possible. The parts also got a good scrubbing in soap and water.

I started each step with a couple of test pieces. Overall progress slowed down a bit, but this approach allowed me to evaluate the results and make adjustments as needed. No sense in wasting time going down a blind alley.

Reassembly:
I took the opportunity to file down some molding lines and other imperfections that I neglected earlier. Next I used plastic cement to bond the parts together. The plastic cement resulted in a stronger bond than cyanoacrylate, but left noticeable gaps between some of the parts. Some slightly watered down PVA glue worked as a gap filler and to reinforce the bonds holding the parts together.

Primer and Base Coats:
The same research that turned up the overspray issue also suggested a fix. The spray paint I used was supposed to be an all-in-one primer and paint. The fix is to not rely on that and to go ahead and apply a separate primer layer. The theory is that the metallic spray paint would bond better to a primer than directly on the plastic. Unfortunately, that theory didn't pan out. The metallic paint still came off on my hands. Washing the pieces in soap and water improved things only slightly. I decided to press on in the hopes that I could find a solution later.

Comparison: Base coat only (left), base coat + wash (center), and base coat + wash + detailing (right).

Wash:
I mixed a large batch of dark wash for this project using a formula I found online and stored it in a plastic bottle. This would help to keep the color of the wash consistent over all of the pieces. I repeated a method of applying the wash that worked well for a previous project. Rather than brushing on the wash and leaving it, I used a sponge to wipe away some of the excess. This resulted in even coverage on the flat areas while letting the wash settle into the details. The downward motion I used also helped to simulate weathering - nevermind the notion of "weathering" in space.

After highlighting. Note how the center of the room and corridors are a little brighter in color than the rest.

Highlight:

While my goal for the base coat and wash was an even coat in the flat areas, the pieces were looking a little too uniform at this point. I remedied this by applying a small amount of Craft Smart Premium Wax Metallic Finish with a soft cloth. This method provides a subtle gradation between the darker and lighter areas. I considered drybrushing a silver metallic paint to achieve the same effect, but I wanted to experiment a bit.

Detailing in progress. Note the difference between the gold colored rivets and the plain ones.

Detailing:
At this point, I felt that the pieces needed something to make them more interesting to look at. Coloring the round "rivets" with a Metallic Gold Sharpie gave them a little more detail. I choose a Sharpie over paint for convenience. It was easier for me to grab a Sharpie and color a few rivets in between doing other things than to deal with a bottle of paint and a brush in the same circumstances. I also had a Metallic Silver Sharpie on hand for corrections.

Door closeup.

Doors:
I choose to make the doors visually distinct from the rest of the set. During the first time I tackled this project, I spray painted the door pieces the same metallic color as the walls and they tended to blend in. The first test was in a bright orange color that didn't coat well. That test piece will be stripped, reprimed, and repainted later. The purple spray paint I tried next coated well and stands out from the rest of the set. I used the same wash as the rest of the set to bring out the details. The buttons on the keypads were colored using a Metallic Sapphire Sharpie. I applied some thinned down Reaper LED Blue 09288 to rest of the keypad to simulate the appearance of a backlight. I tried something similar in green on the other side, but it didn't work as well. That side on the doors will be repainted to match the blue keypads later. A Metallic Gold Sharpie was used to pick out a few details. The wear marks where the doors meet and near the keypads were applied with a Metallic Silver Sharpie.

Next Steps:
I'm considering options at this point. There are the issues I mentioned above with the door that I need to fix. The corridor pieces looks good enough for tabletop use and are an improvement over my previous attempt. However, the overspray issue is still a concern - I don't want to be washing silver paint off my hands every time I handle the pieces. I'm considering spraying a seal on the corridor pieces to see if that fixes the problem.

Asteroid Ship Corridor Encounter

Initial test set up of the asteroid ship interior. This configuration ended up as the first area. Note my helpful assistant being helpful.

This post describes a set of encounters that I ran for our Star Trek Adventures campaign a few months ago. My hope was to present the players with an exciting and visually interesting session. My other goal was to provide some motivation to make more progress on the pile of miniatures and terrain that I've purchased over the years.

Background

The player characters' vessel - USS Yamato, an Akira-class starship - was investigating a century-old Starfleet distress signal. The trail led to an enormous sublight ship constructed from an asteroid. The asteroid ship was similar in principle to, but clearly of different origins from, the world ship Yonada from "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (TOS). The player characters had reason to believe that Starfleet personnel in cryogenic stasis were aboard the asteroid ship. Unfortunately, the dense rock of the asteroid and the materials used to turn it into a functioning spaceship were interfering with USS Yamato's sensors. An Away Team mission would need to board the asteroid ship to investigate further. Naturally, the Away Team deployed from USS Yamato was composed for the player characters - the Captain*, the Science Officer, and the Chief of Security.

*TNG establishes that starship captains do not lead Away Teams, but DS9 and Voyager tend to ignore the idea. Since this was very early in the campaign, I preferred to have the player running the Captain use his character rather than putting him into the shoes of the First Officer or other Supporting Character. My justification for the purposes of the campaign was that the relevant regulation existed, but was sporadically enforced.

Planning phase. Always need coffee for the planning phase.

Rules Overview

Once aboard the asteroid ship, the Away Team found that their tricorders were limited to short range due to the same factors that interfered with USS Yamato's sensors. Tricorder scans also lacked definition - the operator was able to detect that something unusual was in a given location, but could not identify it without further analysis. Communications between the Away Team and USS Yamato were also degraded. It was quickly determined that the amount of static would increase as the Away Team ventured deeper into the asteroid ship, but that contact would not be lost entirely.

The rules were fairly simple. After the corridor board was set up and the miniatures representing the Away Team were placed, the Science Officer would roll for their tricorder scan. The scan would reveal anything of interest within short range. Technological items such as data terminals and cryogenic stasis tanks detected by the scan would be placed on the board. Biological sensor contacts would be represented by "blip" tokens placed on the board. The Science Officer could select a blip token and use each success rolled to determine its exact nature. A given blip could be revealed to be anything from the corpse of an asteroid ship crewmember to a group of alien predators to a type not previously encountered. A new board was set up when the Away Team entered another area of the asteroid ship. There were two boards set up in total.

Data terminals could be accessed to gather information about the asteroid ship. However, extensive security protocols limited access to the asteroid ship's data networks.

Cryogenic stasis tanks could hold a member of the asteroid ship's crew or a long-lost Starfleet officer.

Corpses of the asteroid ship crew littered the corridors. The corpses showed signs of predation.

Running into a group of predators resulted in a combat encounter. Curiously, the predators showed signs of a communal intelligence that communicated through the use of natural radio transmitter/receivers. The predators were clearly of different biological origin than the asteroid ship crew.

Test set up of the second area of the asteroid ship. Note the closed doors blocking free movement of the critters (represented by "blips") and the cryogenic stasis tubes.

Inspiration

The encounter was mechanically inspired by Star Trek Adventures' rules for gathering information. Each successful result behind what is needed to succeed at such a Task allows the player to ask a question of the gamemaster. In this case, each additional success allowed the Science Officer's player to ask what each "blip" token represented. Within the context of the game setting, this reflects the Science Officer's efforts to use her tricorder to dial in on a specific sensor contact.

Visually, it was inspired by a certain board game about investigating a massive derelict in space. The board game is based in a certain grimdark space fantasy setting where there is only unending military conflicts and endless debates over what is considered canon. That board game was, in turn, clearly inspired by the second installment of the "Alien" movie franchise.

The full set up of the first area during actual play. The Away Team just cleared this section of the asteroid ship and are preparing to press on.

Miniatures and Terrain Sources

The asteroid ship interiors area single set of Creative Gamescapes Spaceship X modular spaceship corridor tiles. As shown, the tiles are not in a complete state. They are assembled with a silver basecoat and a layer of wash, but still need some work. I intend to write a separate post on them when I finish that project.

The Away Team was represented by Effigy Miniatures' Havoc Girls. They were featured in a post earlier this year.

Litko Scanner Blip Tokens, Fluorescent Blue were used for the tricorder contacts. In retrospect, green might have been more thematic.

The alien predators prowling the corridors of the asteroid ship were represented by the Parasachnid Warriors from Khurasan Miniatures. They are featured in their own post.

The data terminals were Warsenal's Access Terminals. They were featured in a post from April.

The cryogenic stasis pods were a "trash bash" built from bits I had in storage. See this post for details.

The crates and other small terrain pieces scattered along the corridors were Spartan Scenics Warehouse Accessories. They were featured in a post from way back in 2015.


Wrapping Up

The encounters worked as designed and were well received by the players. I was also happy to get a few more painting and assembly projects completed. Having an immediate use for specific miniatures and terrain helped to maintain my focus.