Tips for Building an Abacus

USSR Lid.png USA Lid.png UK Lid.png Weapons Development.png National Production.png Battle Board.png

I’ve made a deckbuilding game with a friend that’s set during the American Civil War where you play cards from your deck to move different types of army units around the map, but it’s pretty specific to the Civil War – I don’t think it would port well to WW2.

You might try Quartermaster General; it’s a bit lighter than A&A, but it’s a game about making very efficient use of each card in a relatively small deck to win World War 2 by moving armies around a map.

@CWO:

Just as a general suggestion: if you’re going to the trouble of carving the map out of wood, it might be a good idea to limit the actual woodwork to the most basic elements (country shapes and names), without carving into the wood the kinds of details (like IPC values) that might potentially be subject to adjustment under house rules or other types of setup changes.

Right, definitely don’t want to carve the lettering and numbers. My original plan was to do an iron on ink transfer before I poly the whole thing, but now I’ll look at options for changeable IPC Values. Thanks!

@Young:

I’ve got a few table videos, however… I’m still working out my perfect solution for the map.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i9Icyi0MgU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUH2-SRTSEE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss_jl0R-8PA

Thanks YG for the links.

When I painted my units, I had issues with Britain, I originally made 2 schemes, then decided I only wanted the tan, not green… On my painting, I used a combo of lacquer Enamel and acrylic, it was at the enamel stage, but I soaked them in paint thinner (in all preparation to consider them toast and order new units)… but they came clean, they soaked for 10 min or so, and I used my tooth brush (yes mine lol, bristle’s turned green, and yes, I still use it, the green faded away HAHA) to scrub away the paint film.

Very cool looking table. Cant wait to see you play a game on it.

This may sound like an improbable source, but another idea would be for you to go to some local dollar stores and look around.  Back when I was making myself a dice tower, I discovered that some dollar store chains sell (among all the miscellaneous stuff they have in stock) some plain unpainted rectangular wooden trays of various sizes, made of very thin wood.  Their designs could not be simpler – a bottom and four sides glued together, all made of flat wooden pieces – and they’re cheap in both price and appearance, but they’re about the right size for what you have in mind and they would probably look quite nice if you applied some dark wood stain to them.  And because they’re so inexpensive, picking up as many as you need for your table would be very affordable.  It would also be easy to customize them by, for example, subdividing the larger models into sections by cutting some balsa wood sticks (or other types of woods) to suitable sizes and gluing them inside the trays before you stain them.

Guys,

@Vance:

I rather like the cities from Risk as minors and the grey axis & allies factories as majors because the risk cities have a little building on them that looks just like the A&A factory without the smokestacks (same 3 tiered roof). � If you upgrade it to a major that little factory becomes an giant one I guess.

Here’s an pic of both the OOB (Major I.C.) and the “Risk” (Minor I.C.) side by side. These were prototypes as the end result had no doors, windows, or skylights added and the red brick style of smokestack. Personally, I love how the “Risk” city represents a Minor I.C. and I simply can’t stand the cardboard cr*p that comes with the game. Hope this helps.

“Tall Paul”

p.s.–-These were painted by “Allworkandnoclay” and they have a thread about them specifically if you’re interested.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=26834.0

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