Thursday, April 30, 2020

WIP: Hex mat for Melee/Wizard

The packaging from a recent purchase of furniture for the home office left me with a huge sheet of thin styrofoam (some two feet by four feet) that just begged to be used for gaming terrain. I decided I needed a large playing surface for use with games of Melee and Wizard. I've played before on Heroscape tiles, which look good but take some time to set up and break down. So I decided to use those tiles to imprint a hexagonal pattern onto the sheet.
 After that, I coated the styrofoam in a mixture of white glue and water for protection before spraying it black. I didn't coat the sheet thoroughly enough, because the aerosol ended up dissolving some of the foam. It made a nice texture that looked nice with some drybrushed gray, so no big deal--but I did add another coat of water-glue mix after that. 
While I want this terrain piece to be versatile, I also want to use it for battles based on the arena maps from the original Melee and Wizard. Toward that goal, I replicated those patterns on my game board, which is just big enough to fit the maps from both games. Then, because the colors were so bright, I gave everything a dark wash to blend the hexes back together. You can see the Wizard arena on the left, and the Melee map to the right. Entry hexes are dark green and hard to make out in this picture; I plan to drybrush them with a lighter shade to make them stand out more. I will get more pics once it's done.
It's not much in the way of gaming projects, but I'm happy to be getting something done while on lockdown. I hope everyone is staying healthy, and we can all get together to start rolling dice and pushing around minis again someday.

4 comments:

  1. That's pretty cool man! I think storage may be a concern. Are you thinking about mounting it to a back board?

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  2. Thanks, Ski. No back board, but I did glue some thin wooden strips I had from another project to the underside to stiffen it a little. The styrofoam is only about 10mm thick and I was worried that moving it around might create a breeze that could cause it to break.

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  3. It came out very well, I think!

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  4. Looks great! I've been trying to figure out a quick way to seal styrofoam for wargames terrain, so I don't have to do the multiple PVA coats. Just like you noted, that's a pain and time consuming. I still haven't succeeded but I may try a spray gun loaded with a cheap craft paint/floor polish mix.

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