A few weeks back, I was doing some outer-space gaming and realized my printed planets looked a bit lame. Bruce suggested I get some styrofoam balls, cut them in half, and paint them up.
For a $5 project, I think it turned out pretty good. The scale is a bit wonky and all but that is the nature of space (it is big) and my gaming table (it is small). I have bunch more balls to paint up so I may experiment with painting in a "night" side on the planets. I also needed some asteroids/small moons.
So I took some small balls and applied spray paint to melt them (outdoors, obvs). The resulting crater effect painted up well enough.
I wonder if a bunch of pea gravel laid on the mat in a drift would be more pleasing. Bruce suggested putting a piece of black felt underneath to denote the asteroid field's area.
Up next: Ideally some Crimean cavalry.
1 comment:
You don;t have to cut the styrofoam in half. For my space games, I've also cut them roughly at 2/3. It gives a planet that is then more spherical (2/3rds of a sphere ;-)), and another that just sticks out above the surface. It can bring some "height" on the table.
Another idea I've done: stick a wire in one of the planets, than add a little sphere at the other end, thus creating a "moon" that is floating over its planet (and the tabletop).
Asteroids: for some reason, I also found they work better when put on flight stand. Makes them easier to move around if you want to have a moving asteroid field.
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