With 5150 Fever in my brain, I've been trying to beef up my Scifi gaming terrain collection. Well, "beef up" in the sense of taking it from nothing to something. :-)

The easiest and cheapest way to do this is with cardstock scifi models.  There's a very nice if simple collection over at Momir Farooq's page.  I've built a whole mess of crates (because if I've learned anything from video games it's that crates are the most common fixture of any scifi setting), a few bunkers and a communications station.  Since they're only cardstock, they aren't the sturdiest things in the world, but as long as I don't let the cat sleep on them, they'll be ok.  I need to carve up some foam rock outcroppings and make some fences too.  And a space/helo pad would be pretty cool also, since my little base needs a way of getting more crates. :-)

For the buildings, I'm seriously considering affixing them to a hardboard (or maybe foamcore) base, but I can't decide how much "sidewalk" I should give them.  Part of me wants to fit the base inside the model (the bottom is hollow), but I think it would be better to build at least 2" of border that I can texture a little.  Not only will it make the table look a little nicer, but the extra weight will hold the paper building in place better, and if I make the bases wide enough, will give me a handy spacing effect between adjacent buildings.  I can't make it base out of anything too heavy (like masonite) because stacking the building for storage might crush them.  Hmmm.

I dunno.  Since I can use the buildings as-is, I can hold off on deciding.  Christy has expressed an interest in getting some 5150 games going, so I'll know better what we need once I get some more stuff built.