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.