I scratchbuilt a ship before from (mainly) high density styrofoam and a plastic box for use in pulp games (see the Whiteout game report here). Reading about people converting Playmobil ships on, I think it was the Lead Adventure Forum, put the idea in my head to try this myself. I searched the internet for some examples and found these pages covering the conversion of the Playmobil Titan ship:
I kept my eye out for a second hand Titan and eventually got hold of one. Unfortunately it came without the deck plates that cover the cargo hold. Also a number of other bits were missing.
After some thinking I decided to cover the cargo hold with a removable sheet of plasticard. Some extra bits of plasticard were glued at the underside to prevent it from sliding off, but still allowing quick access to the hold. For the wheelhouse I decided to maximise the area for miniatures to be placed with a corrugated cardboard floor, leaving a small gap for the stairs down.
The aft section allows miniatures to be placed, but then the figure can't look over the sides. A bit of styrofoam fixed this (sorry for the blurry pic, but it was the only one I took of this part). The styrofoam was covered with steel plating paper left over from my submarine project.
Next issue was the doorway to the wheelhouse and the rather ugly holes with rusted screws that fix the deck to the hull (lower right corner). The hand railing is a bit of sprue.
Here also plasticard provided the answer. I covered the upper part of the entire front of the wheelhouse and middle part of the "backdoor" with plasticard. The screw-holes were covered with WHFB dwarf (or skaven) shields. Some more bits like life belts, lights, an antenna, a fire extinguisher and some signs were added.
The inside of the wheelhouse had to look the part while still allowing enough space for miniatures to be placed. With dashboard and other bits from 1/35 (truck) kits and a chair from a toy car I built a conning position in one of the corners. Other bits provided cabinets for the other walls. Transparent plastic packaging material, cut to size, were used as window-panes. I got some maps and chart images from the internet and printed these for extra detailing.
And with that the ship is ready for being assaulted by 28mm special forces and free hostages, arrest smugglers and the like.
Fantastic job with this. Very effective.
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