advertisement
17 February 2026
Greetings, fellow Tinkerers! Another Train Tuesday, leaving the station to take you on another droid journey, is just what we need today!
This time, we’re introducing a couple of early Construct prototypes that were the first successful tests of their kind to walk on their own while performing meaningful labor tasks. Up until this point, 3M had created a few overly large, stationary units like the abandoned droid that The Forgotten Rails had poorly disposed of in The High Forest.
As longtime 3DRPGers know, Star Wars has been a huge influence on our love for TTRPG and DnD. Since Star Wars is stuffed with every different kind of kick arse droid under the sun, we continuously use the beloved franchise to inspire us and add Constructs of all different shapes and sizes to our own DnD campaign!
Case in point: the infamous droid walk scene in Episode IV, where Luke and Uncle Owen need to pick up a few new helping hands. There were so many oddball robot designs, several of them oversized and bulky in the most beautiful ways. We wanted a similiar droid range in our DnD world.
DM Ben often likens the evolution of Constructs in our campaign to that of the cell phone. Early tech was bulky and awkward, but inventors were relentlessly iterating, releasing newer models over and over again. Now, he’s old enough to remember the very first brick phone model from 1973 (which cost $4,000 and weighed 2.5 pounds), but any gamer can certainly agree that their first cell phone, when compared to the one in their pocket now, is miles apart in both form and function.
That’s the kind of technology progression DM Ben wants to convey to his players. There are countless Construct versions out in the wild, especially because we love 3D printing these kinds of miniatures. 😉
Enter Crimson Steel Mechworks and their eccentric Egg Bots. Originally part of a free holiday promo in 2024 and actually positioned as Xmas tree ornaments, we immediately saw their Construct potential for our DnD campaign. These also instantly reminded us of the bulky Gonk Power Droids from Star Wars…an action figure childhood favorite of ours.
No eyes, no problem meant DM Ben was cool with coloring these bulky buddies this past weekend. We’ve had some recent success with Army Painter Fanatic Rough Iron on some terrain ruins, so he thought he would use that same paint color on these bots to achieve that old, weathered look.
That ASP Enchanted Steel/FAN Rough Iron combo is so good, as it will sorta look like a shade of darker purple and really worn! Honestly, our pic doesn’t do it justice here.
For the hoses, DM Ben asked Google about different color options, and yellow was a solid pick because it contrasts nicely with the other metal shades on the model. We also used clear bases for simplicity sake.
We might circle back and add some subtle FAN Oil Stans and Rust details to these guys to better illustrate how much past their prime these older units are, especially when compared to the highly effective current models The Forgotten Rails is rushing out.
This is a better pic to show how our core metal color looks compared to other traditional metals, like FAN Gun Metal (for the hand). Also, see how big and awkward these Constructs are? While the tech leap was huge, they proved to be way too slow and ineffective. Their time in the wild was very short-lived. We have a few more versions of this model, and DM Ben plans to drop them on Gameboards just as some nostalgic eye candy (before maybe turning a few into one-shot NPCs).
Lastly, DM Ben was on a miscellaneous scatter terrain kick this past weekend, and he finished this crate of recently-mined Corederite. This STL is too generic to reasonably source, but the bigger message is that DM Ben wants to ensure he can start mixing this kind of Hovertrain scatter into more gameboards.
Until next time!
advertisement
sponsored
