DIY Hex Space-Mat: the Rematch

Two and a half years ago, I tried to make my own space-themed hex mat with 2 inch hexes.  As this previous post describes, the attempt was abandoned after the methods I chose produced poor results after long hours of tedious work.

DIY hex space-mat and scratchbuilt spaceship

Recently I purchased a copy of the legendary Starfire and decided I would like to play this game with miniatures.  I also am hopefully zeroing in on a final set of homebrew rules I will be happy with and I grudgingly realized hexes just make space games flow faster.  So I needed a hex mat.  Again.

I decided just to buy a mat, but I wanted 1 inch hexes to maximize the 4 ft x 4 ft playing surface I have set up in the rec room.  I soon discovered my primary choice of vendor didn't offer hexes that small, and the most popular vendor that did has a reputation for slow mat production.  So once again, DIY seemed to be the only option.

I used my black vinyl space mat as the base.  The vinyl takes acrylic paint really well, so I just painted over all the old mistakes with black craft paint.

The poor results during my last attempt were due to general sloppiness.  I decided to do it right this time.  I clamped down all four corners using 3 inch C-clamps, ensuring the mat was taut.

The next improvement was to make a proper hex template.  I bought a polystyrene "For Sale" sign at the local dollar store (pack of two signs for $0.75!) to use as the template.  The sign is very thin but rigid enough, about the same thickness as bristol board.  I drew up the hex pattern in Powerpoint and printed it directly on the white backside of the sign with an inkjet printer.  Next I took an awl and punched small holes at the hex intersections.  Finally, I took a power drill with a small bit and made nice round holes at each point (as shown in the picture).

Hex-mat template: 7.5 x 12 inches

Now I'm in the process of using the template to make the mat.  I tape the template down at the corners and simply load the tip of a 1/2 inch brush with blue craft paint.  I lightly dab the bristles straight down on the holes and in about 1 to 2 minutes I've finished that section.  Moving and re-taping the template along with cleaning the brush and mixing more paint extends the time between cycles to about 10  minutes.  Since the template is only 7.5 inches by 12 inches, it's taking a while.  I'm approximately halfway done.

The picture below shows the results and I'm very pleased.  Some clean-up of individual dots will be required, but the mat will definitely suffice for my purposes and is dirt cheap.  Despite the tediousness of painting the pattern, the use of the clamps and a plastic template is keeping the likelihood of induced error to a minimum.  Eight more square feet to go!

A bit of touch-up required

Monster Sculpt WIP: Learn From My Mistakes

Started over: much happier with how this is going

So I started a sculpt of an 80mm tall monster quite some time ago.  I meant to track the work-in-progress here on the blog, but I ran into some problems.  However, this is a good thing.

One thing I've noticed with most tutorials out there on the internet is that nothing ever seems to go wrong: the tutorials show the project proceeding flawlessly from start to finish.  Of course we all know that is never the case and I think maybe more is gleaned from mistakes than from successes.  Therefore I present a few "don't do this" tips for sculpting a giant monster.

To recap, I was attempting to sculpt a giant monster and I wanted to use super-sculpey for my medium.

Mistake #1: In an effort to be "thrifty", I used multiple strands of very thin (32 gauge) copper wire as the armature.  For a sculpt this size, I needed much stiffer wire I soon realized, as every time I tried to manipulate any portion of the armature the entire thing twisted in unpredictable ways.  In an effort to stiffen up the armature, I decided to coat it with standard Milliput.  This helped initially but would prove to be an issue later...

Mistake #2: I let the Milliput set first.  I knew that polymer clay doesn't stick well to wire armatures, so I knew I'd need an undercoat of a different material.  I didn't think to use the Milliput as the bonding agent, applying the Super-Sculpey to the tacky Milliput.  Instead, I let the epoxy set, and then I used a layer of Sobo glue to bind the Super-Sculpey to the armature.  When the Sobo glue set I made...

Mistake #3: baking the armature.  I was attempting to make a solid "dollie" and I thought the initial layer of polymer clay over the glue and epoxy would make it solid.  Unfortunately, as I tried to apply subsequent layers of clay a few problems developed.  First, the fresh clay wouldn't stick to the baked clay without extreme pressure.  Second, this amount of pressure resulted in the armature cracking at the joints, and whole pieces of baked Super-Sculpey just falling off.  I tried to salvage my work, but as you can see in the picture below, the whole effort was just a mess.

Failed first attempt

So I did some research and found this great post on another blog.  Following this advice, I threw away the sculpt and started over, applying my lessons learned.  I used a clothes hanger for the armature wire, which proved much sturdier.  The next thing I did was apply "Greenstuff" Kneadatite to the wire and then quickly added the Super-Sculpey over that before the epoxy set.

Twenty-four hours later the Kneadatite had set and the unbaked clay was firmly attached.  By leaving the clay unbaked it was a breeze to add more layers of clay and shape them.  The sculpt is a long way from done, but this second attempt is showing way more promise, as can be seen in the first picture of this post.

I've always hated working with Greenstuff.  This new technique I was introduced to gives me hope I can make some 28mm figures using polymer clay instead!

(Giant) Monster Sculpt WIP

I finally got a weekend free of take-home work.  So, instead of finishing the spaceship miniature I've been working on, I decided to make an addition to my long list of unfinished projects.

The pictures below show a monster sculpt I'm attempting.  I've tried to sculpt 15mm miniatures before, but never finished them.  I hope this monster sculpt will be different.

I know this is heresy but I've never been all that interested in Japanese giant monster cinema.  Sure, I loved Ultraman when I was a kid, but I never knew what it was called at the time, nor have I seen any giant monster flicks since.

After being inspired by some great blogs out there however, I realized that the giant monster genre is perhaps the most absolutely perfect one for wargaming.  Why?  Well, the miniatures are so much larger, so the details should be much easier to sculpt and paint.  And even better, terrain is vastly simpler to make.  It takes me a few good solid weekends with a lot of leisure time (a rare occurrence) to make a single building for 15mm games.  But I bet I could make a whole city block for a giant monster game in one evening.  Oh, and the game board can be much smaller (a meter square at largest).

The figure is a twisted copper wire armature covered in bits of Milliput Standard.  I put way too much putty on the legs and then left it in the putty oven too long, making the Milliput too hard to cut down.  Oh well; I guess the monster will just have very muscular legs.

Once I add the beast's left hand, I will start the actual sculpting.  I'm going to use a mix of Super-Sculpey and Super-Sculpey Firm.  It should be a big project and I don't know when I'll have another free weekend, so expect this one to drag out...

The last shot is my scribbled concept art.  This is what I hope the thing will look close to (or hopefully better than) when it's done.

The first shot shows the monster armature next to an unfinished prototype building.  As the putty cured on the monster I came up with a super cheap way to make this building.  Up close it looks rough but at a distance I think it represents a building well, especially when on a table full of similar structures.

The monster is about 50mm in its pose; it would be about 80mm if standing up straight.

Monster armature next to small building

50mm tall, not counting eyestalks

Concept

Solo Table-Top Space War Playtest

It's been a while since I've posted anything, what with work taking up all my time.  I have a week break in the syllabus coming up however and with the decreasing workload I've found time to playtest my latest miniature spaceship solo game effort: Able Spaceman.  I've been playing a few turns intermittently since last night and I think it's pretty fun.

If my last game, Greater Space Battles, could be described as a "Beer & Pretzels" game due to its simplicity, then Able Spaceman would be a "Beer" game, or "Pretzels" game because it's even simpler.

The new game's not exactly Checkers, but in order to keep things simple there's little variation between ships.  No matter what race or faction the player uses, ships pretty much are identical with the only variation being three size classes.

The game requires d10s only and uses an energy allocation mechanic where the solo player must distribute energy between moving, charging weapons, activating sensors to acquire targets, and maintaining defenses to avoid destruction.

The damage system is simple with ships having three states: space worthy, battle scarred, or crippled.  One hit (no matter the source) changes the ship state by one level.  When a crippled ship is hit again it is destroyed.  The states are more than just fancy names for how many times a ship has been struck.  Each  hit changes the way the dice are rolled for energy allocation, resulting in a decreasing likelihood of a useful amount of energy points.

Like all my solo games, there's no artificial intelligence engine for running the opposing side.  Instead, the solo player is expected to run both sides fairly.  In order to keep it interesting and unpredictable, the rules call for a lot of dice rolling.   A lot.  This increases the length of a turn (20 minutes or so for a 10-ship fight), but I find it the only way of keeping it exciting.

Since there's energy allocation the solo player needs a way to track the power distribution.  As I said though, this is a super-simple game, so I made the paperwork equally simple.  The picture below shows the game chits, fresh off the printer.  I printed them on photo paper on my cheap ink-jet and they turned out great.  I covered them with clear packing tape, folded the two sides back to back with glue between, then cut off the excess.  That created a nice little 1 inch square with a place to show weapon charging on one side and speed/power reserves on the other.  The second picture shows some chits during the play test.  With the plastic covering, I can write "permanent" notes with an alcohol pen, and then use a grease pencil to record things that change every turn (speed for example).

Chits are drawn randomly to determine initiative

Ship names can be wiped off with rubbing alcohol

The rules are written down, but just in quick brain-storm fashion, without any production values.  I want to make it nice before putting it on my downloads page, but if anyone is really interested, let me know in the comments and I'll make it available.

EDIT-

Thanks to SCN stalwart bluebirds40 for showing interest in my silly homebrew.  Consequently I've posted the draft of the rules on my downloads page.  It seems I've already had 30 or so hits on the rules, so for those who've downloaded, here are some disclaimers.

I wrote the rules a few playtests ago, so although the rules mention using polymer clay discs for chits, I now just use the paper ones pictured above.  Also the rules mention markers for charging heavy beam weapons.  That's unnecessary with the chit format above; simply record the energy allocated to each firing arc on the chit.

Finally, based on my playtest yesterday, here's a tip to get the most fun out of the rules.  Despite what the draft says, set your starting speeds for heavy, medium, and light ships at 5 inches, 10 inches, and 15 inches respectively.  Keep your ships at speeds appropriate for their sizes: heavy ships should trundle inexorably toward the enemy, launching missile salvos and heavy beam blasts continuously.  Light ships should swoop in full throttle, attempting to get at the vulnerable sterns of the bigger ships.

Have fun and let me know if you like the rules!

Solitaire Space Battle Homebrew in the Works

Lots of props make for a smoother/faster game

I can't stop making up rules.  It's a sickness.  But I think this time I have it figured out...

Last year I put a ton of effort into a game called War In Space and posted it here on the Downloads page of this blog.  The problem with that set of rules was that I didn't really playtest it thoroughly enough, and it turned out to be too clunky and not very fun.

Soon afterward I made a new set of rules, Greater Space Battles, which has given me a lot of fun games.  I stayed up until 2 or 3AM  a few nights finishing a game and I haven't done that since high school.  Greater Space Battles finally let me recapture some of that magic of my gaming youth when I had a good group of gaming buddies and everything was fresh.  As great a time as I've had with the second rule-set, something has always been nagging at me to revisit War In Space.

War In Space suffered from a lot of problems, but I've always been happy with the core energy allocation rule mechanic of throwing three dice, with the type dependent on the ship size.  Looking closer at my first set of rules, I realized that the biggest problem was the screwed up turn sequence.  So I ditched that and made a new little game, combining aspects from my first and second rule-sets.  I playtested a few turns today and it worked great.

The key to a non-clunky and fun play experience was a lot of pre-production work.  Each ship has a detailed base with information on it, as well as a separate washer that has more ship information mounted on both sides.  This eliminates the need for any paper, and these washer-tokens can be drawn randomly from a dish to determine initiative, essential for a solitaire game.  They're also plastic coated so that changes during the game can be marked in permanent marker (won't rub off with hand-moisture), and cleaned after the game with isopropyl alcohol.

The big improvement over my other systems is how I track energy points.  Now, instead of pennies or tokens, I use little cubes which prove a lot faster as I generally just need to flip one side instead of go grab more tokens off the stack.  As the picture above shows, these are really little cubes, only 3/16" per side.  Actually, that was a good lesson-learned from the playtest: the tiny cubes proved unobtrusive but fiddly; it took a little bit of time manipulating them because they were so hard to grab.  I made new ones tonight that are bigger but still tiny compared to normal d6s, which overwhelm and crowd out the ship miniatures.

So the key is props.  The little cubes for energy tracking, the Box O' Death dice rolling tool, the information tokens in their initiative dish, and an alcohol pen all make for a smooth game.  Today I finished two turns of a 2 v 2 ship battle in under 20 minutes: in my experience pretty fast for a solitaire game where I have to continually move around the table.

Unlike last time, I'm going to playtest at least two or three games before I write up and post the rules.  This blog goes into a year-long deep hyperspace sleep in December, so I hope I have it done by then.  

Homemade Molding/Casting Agitator

A long time has passed since my last post, my time having been filled with major work and life events.  Pretty soon I'll be starting a year-long school and will have to cease gaming and put this blog on hiatus.  So before then I'm trying to cram in as much scratchbuilding as possible.

I'm finishing the scratchbuild tank I started way back, and starting on another spaceship.  As I've discussed, I'm using water-putty to make the masters, silicone for molds and resin for the casts.  In each of these materials I have to vigorously tap the respective container to ensure air bubbles don't form.  I'm some cases, especially with the water-putty, I don't get all the bubbles out.  To remedy this I cobbled together a crude agitator, inspired by a blog post on the Ultrawerke site.

First I bought a 4x6 inch wooden picture frame for a US$1.00 at the dollar store.  I cut up the fiberboard backing to make legs to elevate the frame.  I cut the bottom out of a cardboard coffee bean  container, leaving a 30mm lip all the way around.  I suspended the coffee can platform from the frame using springs from the hardware store.  I then mounted a 1.5V motor to the side of the frame.  The motor and associated wires, switch and power source were all left over parts from a graduate course I completed last winter but could easily be purchased from Radio Shack for US$5.00 to $7.00 total.  I fixed a weight to the drive-shaft using epoxy putty and turned it on and to my amazement it worked.  It worked a little too well and the frame starting scooting across the kitchen table.  My wife suggested placing the whole contraption in a cardboard box, which worked beautifully.

I"m off to pour the top and bottom hulls of a new spaceship sculpt.  I think this agitator will go a long way towards making more crisp scratchbuilds.

Agitator

6mm City of the Future WIP update

I poured wall number four last night and finished its detailing.  The roof just finished curing so later tonight I will scribe the panel lines and attach it.  Then only basing and painting remains.

The building is shown with one of my scratchbuild 1/300 tanks for scale comparison.

Thanks for looking.

The tank is 34mm long

 

Spaceship Factory Gone Berserk

My very first foray into mold-making involved attempting to use automotive gasket-making RTV silicone as a cheap alternative to dedicated 10:1 silicone.  The logic was that since this gasket-making silicone (pictured below), also known as "red RTV", resists the heat of a car engine it would be perfect for casting with hot metal.  Unfortunately my first attempt showed me how unmanageable that silicone is to work with.

I've made quite a few silicone molds since then utilizing Alumilite's HS3 10:1 silicone, with some successes and some failures.  Regardless of the outcome the fundamental take-away each time is that mold design, with regard to air-flow, dictates success and failure.  Armed with my new knowledge, I decided to try some more experiments with the red RTV.

My attempt at making a two-part mold using this RTV failed.  Even with a mother-mold around the two rubber mold-halves the casts just didn't come out right.  Most of the time the halves didn't line up right and the metal leaked out, but the few times I got the mold to fill resulted in massive amounts of flash.

I abandoned that dream and decided to attempt a one-sided mold.  This is where this RTV shines!  I laid down a bead of rubber in a container (scrap plastic from a milk jug) and gently but firmly pressed a spaceship miniature I sculpted into the RTV silicone.  I then put it under my 34 watt lamp to accelerate the curing.  This rubber is terribly sticky and impossible to brush or spread on, but is very easy to press objects into.  Unlike window caulk silicone, this rubber comes out of the tube with very few if any air bubbles.

I pulled the spaceship miniature out of the rubber 24 hours later (versus 48 hours with the 10:1 silicone) and the mold captured every detail.  Whenever I mix up water-putty for a new spaceship design, I use 2.5 teaspoons of putty and 1 teaspoon of water.  This may sound like a miniscule amount, but out of that amount I actually only use a thimble-full of putty mix for a 60mm to 80mm long spaceship.  I therefore always have extra putty I need to get rid of that I'm loathe to waste.  I can use these one-sided molds to make casts using this extra putty and increase the size of my fleets geometrically.

The two pictures below show an example of this.  I mixed some putty for a new destroyer design twice, once for the upper hull and once for the lower.  I also mixed some putty up for a mother-mold for a separate mold experiment.  Each time I poured the excess putty in the red RTV mold pictured below.  Now I have three new ships!  Since this mold was an experiment I only made a mold of the top half of the ship, but in the future I will mold both the top and bottoms separately and then pour excess in each mold, finally joining the putty halves with a few drops of CA glue.

The advantage of this silicone is its cheapness, $5.00 or so, and availability.  If I want to go grab a tube of red RTV at 2AM, I only need to drive to Walmart.  Since I don't plan on casting in hot metal using this rubber, perhaps I'll try one of the other colored automotive RTVs from the same manufacturer.  I'm off to buy another tube; I plan on making molds of my missile counters.

Good view of mold

Better shot of ships, crappy shot of mold