Tabletop Punk: Wargaming with zero budget

 When I was a teenager, being into Warhammer was really money consuming. I was never good at painting minis but I did want to build an army, and play – and thus spent several years worth of pocket money to make my Dark Elf army. Later I played BrikWars with friends, which was much more fulfilling. But all of that is in the past because it's 2023 and you no longer need money to play a tabletop strategy game. In this series of posts I will do a play-by-play on me making the recommended starting 300-point-fleets for One Page Rules: Grimdark Future FTL.

There will be three types of build to make here:

The Scrap Fleet

The Scrap Fleet made from found objects. Inspired by Ana Polanšćak and this post of hers. If you can turn a nerf gun into a spaceship, anything is possible! This is also for you if you actually enjoy painting models.

The Papercraft Fleet

The Papercraft Fleet. Papercrafting is kind of difficult at this small scale but we'll see what we can do. My son wants a Star Wars Fleet so I'll start with Star Destroyers. Leave it to some Japanese dude to make these things on the sub-3-centimeter-scale...

The Cardboard Fleet

The Cardboard Fleet. Similar to papercrafting but less 3D: I Intend to just print out dop-down-views of ships several times and then layer them on top of one another in order to give them at least some depth.

Of course, the most simple thing would be paper standies. This would also be my recommendation to anyone who wants to make an infantry-based tabletop army at zero budget. But I like to craft things so these three fleets will be my way. Also, my son wants to craft his own Scrap Fleet. I may also have to mix methods – I am as of yet unsure how to make tie fighter squadrons for that star destroyer without using beads. There is no way I can papercraft a spherical thing at that scale.

The basic rule is that I won't buy anything for any of these fleets. Only things found in my workshop/around the house/in the garbage are allowed. I can still use our printer and I can also use paints I already have. It's also possible that my friend Justin will paint some of my ships because it's something he likes doing and he is a thousand times better than me.

Anyhow: Be inspired. I doesn't cost money to get into the game. At least not necessarily.

Here's some rules. Here's some templates. Now go out there and build fleets!