Making a table for X Wing

 
So I recently had a friend over to play a game of X Wing. Normally when either my wife or I have some hobby time planned, we plan it so the other is available to look after our daughter. And failing that, we can usually arrange a babysitter but today I had no option but to game at home while I looked after my little girl. No problems. This would mean I wouldn't be able to play in the shed where my gaming table is set up, but would instead have to play in the house on the dining room table. Luckily, as you might remember I had a star mat on which to play!

Slight problem though. My dining room table is only 33" wide, and an X Wing board is 36" wide. So the mat was hanging off the edge.

Oh well, not to worry. I head off down to Bunnings to get a sheet of plywood to lay over the table, so that I can sit the star mat on it. But when I get to Bunnings, they don't actually sell 36" wide plywood. 36" comes to like, 910mm and the closest they have is 897mm. I know, weird size, right? Anyway, what difference is 13mm going to make? I buy the wood and take it home.

But now, the wood isn't flat. It's slightly warped and rocks on the table.

Sigh.

Ok, not a problem. I head back down to Bunnings and get some 18mm by 30mm pine batten to attach underneath the plywood as a frame to straighten it and give it some rigidity. I get a bit... perfectionist with this. I'm not a very good woodworker so I tend to do things the long way around and make a lot of mistakes. I attached the pine to the bottom of the plywood by gluing and screwing it. I pre-drilled the holes, measuring to get the in the right place, and countersunk the heads by drilling a larger hole where the screw heads would go.

Once I'd come this far I decided to go the whole hog and glue the star mat to the plywood (you might recall, I received two of them, so I had a spare) and glue down some felt on the ends to make it look all pretty.

The plan was to glue the star mat in the middle of the table. Since the plywood I bought was 1200mm long, this would leave me about 140mm on each end to glue some felt onto, just enough room to put some ship cards, upgrades, dice and damage cards etc. So I would glue the star mat in the middle, glue some navy blue felt on each end, then secure the edges with some 10mm by 20mm pine batten.

So I went back to Bunnings to get the pine, some more screws (I needed smaller ones because screws that were too large would split the timber) and some spray adhesive to stick the star mat and the felt to the table. Then I went to Spotlight to get the felt, and some black ribbon to glue down as a border between the star mat and the felt. As a bonus, the extra 20mm width on the table from the pine batten would make up the difference from the plywood being that bit short to start with.

I got a bit carried away with it all and forgot to take some photos of the early stages, but you can see here I've glued the star mat and the felt down, and am in the process of gluing the last piece of felt down. What I did was mark out 140mm from one end, then place some masking tape there. Then I placed the felt (which I had cut to size and ironed first, to get the wrinkles out) against the edge of the masking tape, then used MORE masking tape to tape the felt in place. Then I could fold the felt up, leaving the underside of it and the table underneath it exposed. I covered the rest of the table surface in newspaper to avoid getting glue on it, and I hit the table and felt with the spray adhesive. This stuff was great. It says 'safe for indoor use' but I would NOT use it indoors. Even spraying it outdoors I could feel it sticking onto my arm hairs and just getting all over the place. Outdoors only for this one.

The spray adhesive I used

Once I had sprayed both surfaces, I let the glue go tacky as per the instructions on the can, then folded the felt down gently and pulled it to remove any wrinkles. Jobs a good 'un. I forgot to apply any glue to the edges, so I used some PVA applied with an old paintbrush to glue down the edges.

Then I repeated the process for the star mat, but this time I used the edge of the felt as my guide for where to place it (thus making sure all of the table was covered) and I remembered to glue the edges of the table as well.

I really should have used a manual stapler to fix the star mat in place after I glued it down, but I felt like the glue was holding it in place well enough. It wasn't. Now that the table is finished, there is a slight 'bulging' effect along the edges of the star mat, it's not perfect but it's still acceptable.

The felt taped in place, ready to be glued down

The felt folded back, ready for the spray adhesive to be applied

Next step was to affix the pine battens. I used a mitre saw to cut the ends at 45 degrees so it would look nice, but I was a bit clumsy and some pieces were a touch short, and some were a bit rough. Never mind, a bit of paint and some filler will cover a multitude of sins. I measured and predrilled all the holes for affixing the battens, and then clamped them in place while I was screwing them. I also glued them before I screwed them. But the holes at the ends, probably the most important ones because they're the ones that pull the corners into each other, I didn't drill those holes deep enough and when I went to screw them in, the pine split. But I didn't have any spare pine so I had to take the screw out, re-drill the hole and then put the screw back in gently, just putting some pressure on it before stopping. Close enough.


The rest of the battens went on more smoothly because I learned from the first one and went back and drilled all the holes a bit deeper. I then filled all the holes with rapid set filler and I plan to paint the whole thing with a gloss black.

The table in use!

Until next time, happy gaming!

Gaming Mats

My local games shop has a table that is painted in black paint, given a star scape with a toothbrush and some paint, and then a clear coat finish to protect it. It's great to play on but it means only two people can play space games at a time. Since we're running an X Wing round robin league at the moment (with yours truly in third place at the moment!) we really needed a second playing area.

So I started looking at play mats. Now, if you're at all interested in space play mats, you're probably already aware that there is a huge selection, in a variety of types from a range of manufacturers. You've got felt mats, vinyl mats, cloth mats, neoprene gaming mats, DIY solutions, etc. I ended up deciding to make my own from a banner printing website. And once again, the choices available are myriad. I went with bannerbuzz, mostly because they had an Australian website (which I hoped would save me on shipping) and because the other website I was going to use didn't have an option for a 3'x3' banner.

I didn't want a felt mat because I don't like the texture and because I'm a clumsy bloke who would sooner or later spill something on it. I really liked the idea of a neoprene mat (and will probably try one for my next mat) but couldn't find one with a design I liked for a reasonable price. So in the end I went with a printed vinyl banner from bannerbuzz.

And here it is. I ordered mine to be 3.1' square, and lucky I did because it's only just 36" along one edge, and slightly longer (37") along the other. I ordered a light GSM (for those not in the know, GSM means Grams per Square Metre. The higher the number, the thicker the fabric) as a trial run. For an image, I jumped onto google and just searched for 'stars' and set the filter to the second largest image size. A large image size is important for a project like this because a small image stretched over three feet will look blurry, and not very nice. A larger image can always be shrunk, but a small image cannot be stretched. So if you're going to give this a go, use the largest image you can find. There are literally thousands of suitable images, some including planets and nebulae and all sorts of cool space imagery, but I really wanted a plain star scape.

I opted for no hem, no image protection (which I think is some kind of protective spray they put over the finished product) and no eyelets or anything like that. The final price came to about $55 which was more than I really wanted to spend, but I was also kind of curious to see how it would turn out and I liked the idea of having a unique mat as well, so I soldiered on.

Their staff were very good. The first image I sent had a thin blue line that was difficult to see on the computer screen but would have stood out on the table top. They noticed it when putting together a proof for my order and I resubmitted a new image. But I accidentally sent a small version of a larger image. Again, they noticed this and asked me to submit a new image. Third time was the charm and I finally got my image to them. I have to say, this was a bit of work since the uploader on their website didn't work and the file was too large to email so I had to upload it to google drive and then had to chase them by email a bit before they got back to me and confirmed that yes, they had received the image.

I got the mat about a week later. When it arrived, the return address was in India so I guess that's where their production facility was. Either way, shipping was only $7.95 so I wasn't too concerned.

When I opened the box, I got a nice surprise because they had sent me two mats, rather than one! Happy days! I considered contacting the company to see what they wanted to do about the error, but decided against it since they would have no use for it, I wouldn't want to pay for postage to return it, and it could get some poor schmo in trouble for accidentally sending two instead of one. Plus I'd be lying if I didn't say getting two for one was pretty cool.

The mat in use.

The mat itself is pretty good. Some people complain about ships and tokens slipping on the vinyl surface, but this is only a minor problem IMO. I've played a few games on this mat now and accidentally nudging ships hasn't been a significant problem. It is a bit shiny, but not so much that it glares. It rolls up easily enough, although I store it flat to prevent it from curling. However, due to the light weight material it does tend to fold rather than bend when you pick it up, and I quickly noticed some cracking and fraying on the edges where it was folding. So I picked up some 50mm fabric tape from Bunnings and taped over the edges, as you can see in the pictures. This protects the edges and serves the dual purpose of adding some weight to the mat to prevent it from curling up. Only took ten minutes to tape them up and I used the tiles on my kitchen floor as alignment marks so I get the tape on evenly. Well, mostly evenly.

The back of the mat with the tape visible. You can see the second mat underneath.

Here you can see a closeup of the tape. From the star side, it's almost invisible.

In the end it's probably not a purchase I would make again. I love the mat and the image is printed very well in a high resolution, but I think for my next mat (a 3'x6' for Star Wars: Armada) I will be getting a Gripmat. The price is reasonable, it advertises a neat 'grippy' surface, it has neat printing and it looks like it will be easier to store and transport.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Aetherworks Acrylic Tokens Review

Today I received a parcel!

I had very quickly decided that the cardboard icons and templates provided with the X Wing core set would not suffice. I mean, I'm certain they're more than adequate and have the added benefit of being free, but they just don't have the pazazz I'm looking for. So I jumped on the net and looked around through the various manufacturers of acrylic tokens and templates. The frontrunners were Corsec Engineering, Applied Perspective or Aetherworks. In the end, I went for the Aetherworks ones because they're an Australian manufacturer and I liked their Target Lock tokens the best. So I ordered a bunch of stuff.

Aetherworks tokens

I decided to do a comparison between the FFG tokens and the Aetherworks ones to see how they match up.

Aetherworks Maneuver Templates

Here you can see the Maneuver templates. Well, the ones that made it in frame anyway. I'm still learning this whole 'photography' thing. As you can see, they are identical to the card ones. No surprises there, maneuver templates that didn't match the official ones wouldn't be much use.

Aetherworks Asteroid Templates

Here are their Asteroid Templates. To be honest, these feel a bit phoned in. They're a match for the FFG ones in terms of outline and size, but the images are just little geometric shapes etched into the acrylic. I think I'll just end up using the card ones.

Aetherworks Tokens

Here you can see the rest of the tokens. I'm very happy with these. The Target Locks in particular are nice, and just a touch smaller than the FFG ones (smaller is better IMO since a lot of these can end up on the table at once) and I probably would have preferred that the Ion and Stress tokens were red instead of being a bit orange, but I can live with that.

Overall a good product at a good price that I'm very happy with. Not pictured are the range rulers I also got, one in each size (range 1, 1-2 and range 1-3). I highly recommend these to anyone interested in 3rd party tokens and templates.

KR Multicase review

So for my first proper post I want to talk about storage. Specifically I want to talk about storage and carrying cases for X Wing.

KR Multicase

This is a standard black aluminium case from KR Multicase. They are a mob operating out of the UK but with distribution centres in the USA as well. They also have stockists in Australia but I ordered directly from their website.

The case fits a lot of X Wing stuff. I mean, I don't have as much as some people but this fits it all comfortably.

Plano fishing tackle box

This is a Plano fishing tackle box model 3705.You can probably get it from BCF or Aussie Disposals or any sort of camping/fishing store. As you can see it has removable inserts to build your own compartments and comfortably fits all the tokens and dice I would need for a game of X Wing. It fits all the movement templates except the 5 straight, which can sit inside the KR case.

Inside the KR case

The KR cases are designed so that you can fit multiple foam trays inside them. There are many cases on the market that share this design philosophy, and some of them are probably cheaper but I really like the look of the KR cases and I have no self control, so these are the ones I went with.

These trays are designed to hold X Wing fighters. As you can see, the base fits into a slot and the ship is held in place. This tray fits 8 ships, and is modular (you can remove some pieces) to accommodate taller ships (you can see I've done this for the B Wing on the top row). Now, the other fighter tray from KR is advertised to hold ten of any fighters, but in actual fact the TIE fighters are too tall to fit in them. If you plan on putting your TIEs in KR cases you'll need the one pictured, that only holds 8 fighters. No big deal but a bit annoying if you ordered the other tray to put your eyeballs in and they didn't fit. 

Now, that Plano case I mentioned before happens to be just the right size to fit inside a KR tray...

Plano inside a KR tray

This means that I can fit the case with tokens etc inside the KR case, minimising the amount of stuff I need to carry. My plan for the future is to buy another KR case (half depth this time, looks like a slimline briefcase) and use it to carry the tokens and dice and cards, along with the dials and ship bases for both factions. Then I can get ANOTHER KR case so I can use one to house my Rebels and one for my Imperial ships. By this point I will have spent significantly more on KR cases than on the models inside them.

I regret nothing.

The 10 fighter tray

This is the tray I mentioned above that holds ten fighters. It easily fits the Interceptors, X Wings, and A Wings that make up the rest of my collection. Worthy of note is the fact that the Y Wing is slightly too long for the trays, so when it's store conventionally it's nose sticks out a bit. This isn't a huge problem since the foam trays are soft enough that they absorb the difference, but I was worried that over time repeatedly opening and closing the trays the paint on the nose of the Y Wing would wear off, so I removed it from it's base and stored it separately in another compartment. Again, hardly a deal breaker but something buyers should be aware of.

The dials and bases

This is the slimline tray that houses the movement dials and ship bases. Even with my limited collection it's a bit crowded, but I have another one sitting in the cupboard ready for my second KR case. I think one tray should easily handle an entire faction. I don't plan on buying the more esoteric ships like TIE Phantoms or K Wings so my collection should be relatively limited.

But Charlie (oh, that's me. I'm Charlie. Hi.) what about the cards?

Ah, I'm glad you asked dear reader.

Cards in their sleeves

I picked up some Ultrapro card sheets and sleeves from the news agents. For overseas readers, an news agents in Australia is a shop that sells newspapers and magazines and assorted stationery. The binder is just some $1.50 binder I picked up while I was there. I want to get a dedicated card holding 'folio' but haven't seen one I liked yet.

Upgrade cards in side-loading sleeves

I also sourced some side loading Ultrapro card sleeves from eBay. These were a bit more expensive but when you've already dropped more cash than I'm comfortable admitting on cases for your models, what's a few extra dollars? The cards slide around a little bit in these sleeves since they are standard sized pockets but half sized cards, but it's not unacceptable.

On a related note, when I ordered my half depth case from KR they accidentally sent me a half WIDTH case. Not the same. Due to the structure of the case it would be more difficult to carry and not really suitable for the purpose I intended. When I contacted KR to solve the problem, they sent me out a new case (yet to arrive at the time of writing) and told me to keep the old one as well. Extremely generous of them, I thought!

And finally, I apologize for the low quality of the pictures, I'm working off a very cheap camera at the moment. I plan to upgrade at some point in the future when I'm not spending every spare dollar on small plastic space ships.

Hello there!

Well. I've always been told that if you're unable to find the content you want, then you should create it. So, here it is. I've spent more hours than I care to admit trawling the internet for blogs, forums, pictures, reviews, information and communities to share my wargaming passion with, but sometimes I come up short. I find bits and pieces of information that I want spread all over the place, and I find myself making longer and longer posts on various forums expressing my views and generally taking up space and wasting time. So I've decided, in an attempt to condense all that waffle and information, to create my own blog.

This is my first post so it will serve as an introduction, both for myself and the blog in general. I'm a wargaming enthusiast from rural Australia. I am in my thirties, married with a family, and generally just your average Joe Wargamer trying to fit my games of toy soldiers around work, family commitments and other bothersome interferences. I am a bit of a wandering wargaming floozy, flitting from one game to another as the mood takes me. My current passion is X Wing by Fantasy Flight Games. For those not in the know, X Wing is a dogfighting game set during the Star Wars galactic civil war. Which is to say, during the original trilogy. It's a very tight, balanced game that has only a handful of rules and the miniatures come pre-painted, which is awesome if you've got a tremendous painting backlog like I do.

My intention for this blog is to share the wargaming, painting and modelling knowledge I have so others can use it (and not incidentally, so I can keep it all in one place). Expect reviews on products, hints and tips for modelling and painting, ways to pimp out your games, and hopefully most of my articles will contain an Australian point of view. Which means that products recommended and stores mention should be available for Australian readers to find, which isn't always the case!

That's it for now. Expect updates sporadically when I can be bothered, and pictures when I can find my camera.