Monday, March 30, 2020

Commands and Colors Game Board

While I have my kids at home, we have been allotting an hour and a half each day as game time. When I was a teacher, I frequently used games as a learning tool. 

My kindergartener has been practicing her reading skills with Glenn Drover's "Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates," and my third grader is practicing arithmetic and probabilities with "Yahtzee." Since my 6th grader already plays Avalon Hill's "Advanced Squad Leader" without any trouble, he helps me administer the lessons to his younger sisters.

This week we will move on to some miniatures gaming by teaching Commands and Colors Ancients, probably my favorite board game ever.  The kids and I took some plywood from our salvage pile, stained it, and glued a fabric hexgrid (available from Spoonflower) with spray adhesive. Mike McFadden, a friend of the blog, had created the graphic and arranged for Spoonflower to make it available.

Once the adhesive had dried, we applied several coats of clear lacquer to seal the fabric and place and provide a durable gaming surface. I special ordered some 80mm hexes from Litko and applied the terrain overlays using the same method.

We got some strange bubbling under the fabric as the lacquer cured. Should I do this again, I would either use a stronger initial adhesive or find some way to apply pressure while the lacquer cures. For now, though, this is certainly a good enough board for my kids to learn the game,





This also gives me a reason to break out the 15mm ancients collection. This is Alexander's army, and you can see that the 80mm hexes work perfectly with DBx style basing.

10 comments:

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    1. I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out. I wish I could fix that bubble issue. I tried puncturing them with a hobby knife and soaking them with white glue and water, but that did not solve the problem completely.

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  2. I never considered adhering the fabric to a solid base, I keep my "board" folded up in a box. Your results look good!

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    1. I figured that with little kids playing, the sturdier the playing surface, the better. Did you affix your terrain tiles to anything, or leave them as fabric cutouts?

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    2. Just left loose. I keep the "board" and tiles in a little box I pick up at a craft store. I use 1/72 Hat plastics - Romans spray painted gray, Romans brown.

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    3. We may use those plastic figures too. I have a few hundred of them ... somewhere. I'll have to go through my gaming storage.

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  3. Great looking board and figures, look forward to the game reports!

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  4. I like the fabric idea. If i did something like this, I might just tile the surface with cut hexagons.

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    1. That's a good idea. I will think about doing that next time.

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