MegaHex!!!... The Project.

I know I have talked about MegaHex the interior terrian project before in this blog, today a little more depth. First off the megahexes are an invention of Steve Jackson way back when he was working for Howard Thompson of Metagaming on The Fantasy Trip (TFT). Well, preusing my collection of OLD gaming stuff I picked my copy of TFT and was mining it for ideas to inflict on my Playtest Victim, Space Monkey Slappy*. 

Well "Lo and Behold" I crashed into the idea of mapping the Labyrinth using megahexes. "What a neat Idea to Steal" says me, going one to think these would be great as 3d tiles.

Well, the first problem is what to make them out of followed quickly by what size. I pondered purchasing purchasing a bunch of 20mm hex bases, well a clicks around the usuale suspects for sources of bases and I find that idea breaks my bank quickly, in price, material and effort. So I decide maybe a bigger base as my core will mean fewer tiles, pricing is still ugly, thus a trip to the bits box to see if there is a solution I can build from scrap. I had discarded wood bases (MDF) earlier as too pricey as well as any sort of custom cut plastic, so the bits box yielded up seven 1 inch hex slotta bases, and the 1 inch hex didn't feel quite roomy enough, but I also found a selection of Hobby Products 34mm hex bases for their DemonWorld game, these where pretty much a size I could live with. Also while rummaging around under the desk I found my tub of Polymer Clay. With these two things in hand, I figured while I didn't have enough bases to make tiles, but I had enough to make templates. Added to the metric butt-load of Polymer Clay I now had a PLAN....

The templates are made from said DemonWorld bases and scrap styrene (see the second picture), nothing fancy, but more than enough to cut appropriate sized blanks out of.  

A quick side-note here on Polymer Clay, I haven stated a specific brand as I tend to purchase whatever is on sale when a project comes up and throw the the leftovers in a bag for use when I need to bulk out a armature. This bag is what I am using to make my blanks (see the 3rd picture). 

After I have cut a blank I cure it so I have a stiff substrat to work on for detailing. As you can kinda see from the top picture I hame playing with a number of methods for the core surface texturing and detailing. The most time consuming is individually tiling each hex, fun, but it takes lots of time. Currently I make a large thin sheet of uncured clay and tile and texture on top, then cut out a completes hex from that to tile the blank. The raised portions are made out of crumpled Aluminum Foil covered with clay then "glued" into place with a couple of drops of Liquid Sculpy. 

A collection of tiles on the work table

The Base Template

A Blank

A finished tile with multi-colored fungi

The basic modification to the Savage Worlds rule-set are that all movement and ranges given in inches are cut in half and counted out in hexes. A small 'area effect" template is one hex, a medium is a Mega-Hex and a Large is a Mega-Hex plus one Hex.

I am also considering writing a set of combat rules compatible with Classic/Mongoose Traveller rules stealing heavily from AHL/Striker rules.

(* Space Moneky Slappy is my PITA 16 year-old-just-graduated-from-High-School-wallet-draining Son, how often says "Dad, I'm Bored, let's Game".)

Boats in the Yard

First off, the Genetics Experiment graduated from High School a year early last week, my house has been occupied with relatives who we don't see too often. Mostly due to Large oceans separating us (which is in general a GOOD thing). In the pile of received boxes I received the following additions for the boat yard here in the Walled Garden. 

Thanks Dan. 

So it looks to be a Nautical Summer. Dan, if you where here instead of Hell... I mean... Texas, I would force you to play with me in the shop finishing these out....

Looking over these sparks my mind the terrain needed to support, thinking floating docks, residential barges, a floating market, etc. etc... Which suits a segment of the game world in my head which I like to call the Delta, which is a Post Apocalyptic pastiche of of large river deltas, mangrove swamps, levee protected lowlands world wide. 

Also on the table is more Mega-hexes for more of that deep down in the rubble and sewers, dungeon crawling goodness. This time with vehicles. The modeling limitations is a maximum vehicle size of three meters long by two and half meters wide and tall think the size of GZG's Mule  

If y'all remember I converted some of these a while back into Mini-APCs, this time I will be building from the ground up mostly (this really depends how long it takes to find stuff that got moved in my last spate of house-guests, Mom is getting old and she puts stuff away reflexively, even if it is in my office). But the good news is all the kipple that was occupying my Paint table has been put up in new or traditional homes, so the traditional drag of clean, work or build that normally gets in the way of painting isn't there.