u/MasterV3ga

One-shotting a Butcher Bird with a homing Arrow IV after it jumped behind my frontline might be the most satisfying moment I've had in a game of Battletech.

Hi again. I took a bit longer than I wanted to for this rather small update, but I think it's cool enough to share.

You can find my previous post regarding this project here, though it isn't necessary reading for this post.

This is the next version of my papercraft IFV. I added optional missile launcher boxes to the kit and organized the kit for easier cutting. The coolest difference, though, is the detachable/rotatable turret. There's a 6x2mm magnet in the turret and the chassis, allowing the player to turn the turret to indicate turret facing, run the mini as a turretless wheeled vehicle, or illustrate that the vehicle crew have joined their faction's space program.

All assets in the photos, except for the mech designs of course (and technically my friend painted the Rifleman), were made as part of my terrain-via-recycling project. You can probably tell that the buildings and vastly underscale sea vans are made from insulation foam, and admittedly aren't recycled material.

Photo Guide:

1-7. Model turn-around, showcasing the details and the turret's rotational capacity up close.

8. The IFV after a turret ring hit, if it were designed by the USSR. :P (turret and chassis separated.)

9-11. Panorama stage one, using three of the base 2 model, including an unpainted (white) one.

12-14. Panorama stage two. Alas, poor unpainted IFV. We hardly knew you.

15. This is a printable page if anyone else is interested in building these things. It prints enough for 12 copies of the unit and should be printed at 300dpi if you want your units to be the same scale as mine. I print mine on cardstock. Layer numbers indicate how many layers of paperboard I used for each component in the box beneath the label. I used a scroll saw for anything more than 2 layers, and even most of the 2-layer pieces (the saw has a habit if ruining the turret barrel). The squares are meant to be quickly cut out and pasted onto the right thickness of laminated paperboard.

These are packed pretty tightly because I've gotten more competent with my scroll saw and box cutter. If you want to be cautious, or you don't have a better tool than a box cutter for the thicker pieces, I recommend using a precision cutting knife to cut out the cardstock shapes and then glue them to the paperboard with as much space as you need.

If you don't have a scroll saw or other tool that's a good fit for cutting 4x+ thick paperboard at a time, it might be easier to instead past 4x or 6x pieces on 2x laminated paperboard, cut them out, and then stack/glue them to their appropriate thickness. Alternatively, ignore my numbers and go for for a flatter tank if you prefer that.

Also: if you want your vehicle to have tracks, you can just cut out the wheels as a rectangle with rounded ends rather than carving the wheels out. Paint and score marks with a precision knife or boxcutter can probably cover the rest.

Note: Scroll saws aren't terribly expensive, at least in my area. Mine set me back about $100, but has allowed me to create and own far more terrain than I could have afforded to get with that money. If someone knows of a better tool for a job like this, I'd love to hear about it.

As mentioned in my prior thread, the paperboard is from things like cereal boxes, cracker boxes, and 12 or 24-pack soda can boxes. The terrain is made from cardboard and soooooo much easier to make than these units are. I intend to make a post specifically about those once I have more designs that don't rely on purchased assets (again, though, I made all of the papercraft objects, designs, and past-on decals in the images above.)

Thanks for everyone who encouraged me after my first post about cardboard terrain a year or two ago. You and my friends inspired me to put way too much effort into a silly tactical game and have a great time doing so.

EDIT: I forgot to talk about getting the magnets into the turret and chassis. I used an old drill press to put a hole in the center of the middle turret piece before I cut it out of the board. I inserted the magnet for gluing the top and bottom sections of the turret together. For the chassis, I cut out one of the upper chassis pieces (the mostly rectangular things with a circle near the base), glued it onto the next layer down (the ones just to the mostly rectangular objects in the middle), and used the drill press to bore a hole through the middle of the circle. I cut out a new piece of card stock to go over the magnet and hole a the top. After that, I simply glued the chassis together.

Definitely make sure to test the magnets before you glue anything in.

I hope you all like the designs. This has been a fun journey so far.

I made papercraft IFVs (or wheeled direct fire vehicles, or whatever) as proxies to use with my friends during our Battletech games. They are made using layered paper modeling, specifically using sections of laminated paperboard from things like cereal boxes and soda can boxes. The one in Fronc Cuirassiers' colors (black and orange) has a couple more layers in the center and turret than the one in forest camo. Future versions of these things will generally be a mix of the two, using a turret that looks a little more like the forest camo one and the thicker body of the Fronc one.

These units are glued together with regular school glue and have an outer layer of matt Mod Podge to seal them. I'm very happy with how well they take paint. I used a scroll saw to cut out the components from anything 4 layers of paperboard or more, and a box cutter/precision cutting blade to cut free anything with fewer layers.

Design was inspired by the LAV-25 and M2A4E1 Bradley.

Photo details

1. Shown with wolfhound for scale.

2-5. Unpainted next to simpler "generation 1" papercraft proxies. In this one, the unpainted Fronc version doesn't have its ERA side-plates since it was the first attempt and I thought I'd be fine with fewer details. The simpler models were an experiment my group liked, but I wanted to see how far I could push my silly recycling project.

6-7. Just the unpainted prototypes. It's easier to tell here the difference in height between the two. The ERA plate on the shorter version had to be cut down to fit.

8-13. Turn-around and overhead of the finished (probably) proxies.

14-15. Pictures of yet-to-be cut parts for four more IFVs.

Planned process improvements for next time: Going to revisit my blueprints and re-organize all parts so that parts are separated by how many layers of paperboard they are expected to be pasted on rather than grouping them by individual unit. That way, I don't need to cut them out twice, and I should be able to use my experience to set them up to accommodate the limitations of my scroll saw (and generally set things up to keep my fingers as far from the blade as possible.)

Potential improvements: Might add a cut-out pattern large enough for a rare earth magnet to fit in the chassis and the turret, allowing for the turret to spin or be replaced with a new one.

To-Do: make tracked and hover versions... Make a VTOL equivalent. :/

If people are interested, I can make another post later with the blue-prints I make for the next set of these.

Bonus: What unit would this be the best proxy of? I can't think of a lot of dedicated IFVs in Battletech, but then I only just started using infantry a week ago.