Making minatures for the board game

I have been playing around with different configurations for a custom table and wanted to note some things I’ve landed on that I really like. A main one thing is having the map mounted so that it can slide around as needed on top of a bigger playing area. My table is 65” x 95” in total with a 5.5” arm rest around the outside and the middle is a recessed neoprene surface. I have the OOB Global map mounted on 1/2” rigid foam with a 1/2” aluminum frame around it. This allows the map to slide up close to whoever’s turn it is, but then be in the middle so both players can roll dice In front of them without disturbing the map and in easy view of the other player. (Plus we like lots of room to roll the bones). This ability to adjust the surface along with a standing height, makes it comfortable for long uses because you can move around more and don’t feel as tied down.
Things I’ve learned and changed from original design - I originally used too big of a frame for the map and mounted it on too high of a foam block (you can see these pictures at the bottom) - it made it hard to see the other player’s dice and the big frame took up too much real estate. My global map is mounted on much thinner foam (the framing is bad, you can see if you look closely) but I also used much thinner aluminum angle for the frame. This gives just enough grip when needing to move the map around (I use furniture slides on the bottom, which glide very nicely on the neoprene) but doesn’t make the whole thing too bulky. Having it an inch or so off the surface keeps the dice off, but isn’t so heigh that you can’t see the other player’s dice rolls. When playing other versions (such as Zombies) the board is much smaller, but it can easily swap in and out on the same table since it can move around where ever it is needed or be pushed aside.
I originally made it normal table height, but found long reaches while sitting were harder and it just felt cramped. Standing height with a bar stool is a great way to have the best of both worlds.
The 5.5” rim around the table itself gives you a nice arm rest that doesn’t interfere with the gaming surface. I’m playing with how to best add some cushion to this part - open to suggestions. Sometimes I just lay a piece of leftover neoprene on it.
Dice bounce nice on the neoprene and stay off the floor. It also feels nice and has enough give to allow things to slide but be picked up easily. Wouldn’t definitely go with neoprene again as a surface covering.
I made the drawers open to the inside of the table so you can stay hunched over the action while accessing and stowing stuff away. 50/50 on whether I would keep this if I were to do it again. If I were doing it again, I might try to build customer drawers form scratch using actual drawer glides, but that was beyond my ability when I first did this, so I just used clear plexiglass boxes with aluminum pulls mounted on them. It’s nice having them clear, and I was happy with how the pulls came out, but without glides they can be a little fussy sliding in and out of their slots.
I originally designed the table so that I could put a cover surface back on top when not in use, but find I don’t really ever do that, so if I were to do it again, I might not mess with that part (I never even finished staining those as you can see in the pictures).
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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.

@Quirky-Turtle At least you have an ocean as an excuse. Here it just a truck ride north…

Thanks for watching!

@AlphaKappa:

I’d be interested.  I’m pretty handy with the Adobe suite.  Want to post a sketch of what you envision?

Thanks, I’ll send something on the weekend.

I’m not aware of such a blank outline map existing.  Your best option might be to cover the game map with several taped-together sheets of clear acetate (the kind used for purposes like overheard projection) and trace the borders with a felt pen to produce a blank outline.  You’d then have various options for transfering this outline to the wood surface.  A low-tech method would be to cover the wood surface with sheets of carbon paper (if you can still find any, since it’s gone out of style), place your acetate outline over the carbon paper, then trace over the borders with a hard pencil.  Alternately, you could scan or digitally photograph your acetate outline and use that as the printing file you mentioned.

It does fit, u place the two pices on top of eachother (they are only 40 mm high, the man board is 50 mm outside = 42 mm inside). The space is 600x800x84 when folded, the two pices on top of eachother are 500x600x80. That leaves a 300x600x80 space and my plan there is to make box of wood or paper to store units, dices etc!  :-D

@sgtwiltan:

It’s really too bad you didn’t make the side piece so that it would fit into the inner portion of the main board where the map is.
You could even make a simple cover to keep the pieces inside from falling out all over the place. It’s a great idea you have there though.

this first pic is what i had been using, i manually printed things out in one page sections via “print selection” command and pieced them all together, and laminated them with clear packing tape. Ultimately it proved to be a little larger than the default gameboard like I wanted, but still sloppy looking and with some bumps here and there which complicated unit placement due to tipping or sliding:

it was larger enough than the default board that things in europe didn’t seem so crowded anymore, but shoddy looking still, and that can wear on the nerves.

So I finally said enough is enough, and took the map pdf file on a jump drive down to minuteman press in London Kentucky and had them blow it up and laminate it….it costed $118 IPCs U.S. Dollars.

Its 2 foot by 3 foot, and gives us plenty of room for stacks. I got tired of kenny’s fat fingers knocking over my german stacks and scattering them across europe…he says my money was wasted because “those damn germans were going across europe anyway I just helped you out is all”.

but here it is: