Tuesday 6 April 2010

Snowballs in the dust... (B-10)

Now having spent 3 months producing a set of rather realistic-appearing terrain, my mate Ian and I have just spent an evening fixing little white balls all over it....   

The reason for this madness, is that we need to mark out the hexes that are (nigh-on) essential for Command and Colors. Each hex is around 13cm across the flats and will hold one unit (there are c.120 units in the game).  I decided that the minimum we could get away with, in terms of indicatiing the hexes, is a map pin marking the apices. 

To position the map pins, we made a template from a thin sheet of clear plastic, marked the apices out, and cut a 10mm cross at each one.  We then pushed the pins through the plastic into the foam, carefully removed the plastic sheet, and whacked each pin with a hammer, which anchored them in the MDF beneath the foam.  The really nice thing about the map pins is that they can be removed without damageing the boards in the event that we want to use them for non-hex games, at a later stage.

You can just make the plastic sheet out by the glare, below:


Below is the board with the plastic removed, and some punic troops drawn up in line.


Whilst the pins are slightly obtrusive, they are, unfortunately, a necessary evil. There will be around 750 map pins across the entire table.  I'd like to than Ian for his help with the 4 boards we finished!

7 comments:

AJ (Allan) Wright said...

You could always color them a slightly obvious earth tone or green.

BigRedBat said...

Yes, Allan, I might. Alternatively I may try black pins; I'll see how the white ones do, first.

Grégory Privat said...

Watching the pictures, my first thought was black pins. Then I watched again and thought ground color pins. And then I read that.

Shou should paint them, fast, just one layer of the ground base color.

Grégory Privat said...

humm and a very thin rope between the pins ?black one used for sewing (is it the right verb ?)

BigRedBat said...

Hi Greg, we tried putting a thread between the pins. It worked very well, but we decided that it would keep getting caught on the bases of the minis, and then the pins would get pulled out; chaos.

I may put some paint on the heads of the pins... if not for the Berkeley game, then for Salute.

Grégory Privat said...

If it s done for Salute, fine !

I won t be wandering at Berkeley saying "Ze Zama gaimeu ? Ies ite looks nisse... Aye Cnow, Aye worked won ite" so it s not that important.

BigRedBat said...

I said Berkeley; meant Bletchley! Different wargames event...

I'm going to spray some pins, now.