Home Forums Terrain and Scenery Building a Picoscale Gaming Table

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  • #142494
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    This is my newest idea for 3-6mm gaming (after many, many others). This is the back of a small blackboard. I painted it with iron paint and then acrylics and varnish. All the terrain, unit bases, and major features are magnetized. For things like rivers, this means attaching magnetized rubber backing to old x-rays, cutting them in river shapes, then cutting and glueing paper over the edges for banks. These will be painted and flocked.

    The whole thing can be jostled or even tipped up to about 60 degrees with nothing sliding around or falling off.

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #142500
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    A potentially useful home gadget I found is this:

    https://www.bitsandpieces.com/product/puzzle-spinner-surface-square-34?p=0939377&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIq7nL44ml6wIVA-iGCh0Z2gOZEAQYCiABEgI2EPD_BwE
    One could make something similar and probably somewhat less expensively with a cork board and a lazy susan gimbal on the bottom. Top could be magnetized as you show or felted.

    #142504
    Avatar photoJim Jackaman
    Participant
    #142509
    Avatar photoDuncan Allen
    Participant

    That looks good and is quite clever

    #142510
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    That looks like a great idea, Mat! Don’t know if I will have space to spin a rectangular board, though. I want to make a square board for 15mm skirmishes, however, so that idea will come in handy!

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #142524
    Avatar photoDeleted User
    Member

    I’ve tried a lot of magnetic surfaces for myself and the easiest one was a magnetic whiteboard.
    I’ve also used iron oxide powder (magnetite), mix with paint and base the boards, they were the most flexible.
    Your method seems to work quite well, since you use metal minis.

    #142545
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    The paint I am using is a premixed combination of iron filings and resin. I am worried about it rusting, eventually, but so far no problem in two years time in a tropical environment, so I am cautiously optimistic.

    I am not sure I understand what difference metal minis makes. This same technique could be used for plastics, too, although why anyone would want to… I suppose that if you were playing skirmishes with old Airfix-style 20mm plastics, it might be useful to keep everyone upright during the occasional jostle.

    This works primarily because the terrain is low profile (a rubber sheet with a paper covering, essentially), flexible, reasonably sticky and, crucially, easy on, easy off (which my earlier PVA mat and pin set up was not). It’s one drawback is that, at pico scale, it doesn’t allow for flocking — although I am not sure that is a problem as I am increasingly convinced that more than a touch of flocking draws attention away from the minis unless you have the PREFECT color and grain of flock.

    The technique could be used with flocked boards for 28mm (although, again, why?) because the increased base size and weight would overcome the flocking.

     

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #142546
    Avatar photoDeleted User
    Member

    What I meant was metal minis are heavier and usually need stronger magnets or closer contact to keep them on slopes.

    #142549
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    Do the minis stay attached if you hang it on the wall?  (I saw the 60* comment, but wonder still)  A friend is running a fantasy campaign using an online platform for us, but also has a 3’x3′ painted sheet metal map on his wall that he is using with magnetic paper playing pieces and he is wanting a more 3d look…

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #142551
    Avatar photoTony Hughes
    Participant

    You don’t need to have the surfaces too far distant before the magnetic attraction becomes negligible. I doubt that flocked surfaces would work with any type of magnetic sheet backing, though it might work with the very strong  single magnets.

    I have a couple of boards covered in vinyl sheet impregnated with soft iron and they happily hold magnetised bases of 2-15mm figures while being turned vertically. These both have a paint coat over the vinyl sheet but I wouldn’t risk flocking them. The only issue is that the surfaces of the magnetic sheet on the bases and the iron filled sheet on the board are quite smooth so a knock can make heavier bases slide a bit when stored vertically so I have to be careful moving them. The painted surface helps a bit in that respect.

     

     

     

    #142556
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    What I meant was metal minis are heavier and usually need stronger magnets or closer contact to keep them on slopes.

    Ahn. Well, not in this case. The weight difference in 3mm really wouldn’t make much difference, any road. It’s jostling more than anything else I need to worry about and the difference between metal and plastic figures in that case wouldn’t make much difference: it’s going to be the attraction of the magnetized sheet that’s important and will overwhelm any other factor in this scale.

    This method WOULD hold the figures in a vertical wall mount, but I wouldn’t want to jostle it. It wouldn’t hold some of the metal Brigade buildings, however.

    Even in 28mm, a flocked board would stop figures from jostling. I have already tested this. And my goal here is just to reduce or eliminate the effects of jostling.That it does just fine. I’d probably want to mount a big rare earth magnet in a 38mm figure’s base, however, and I’d definitely use a sheet or two of stainless steel foil as the board surface in that case.

    With stainless steel foil and strong rare earth magnet basing, you could easily make a set for 3mm that would hang on the wall and stay stuck. You’d need to make thick unit bases, like Mat does, however, and I am going for the thinnest bases I can.

    The REAL benefit here, however, is holding the terrain in place. The unit stands are stable enough that only a heavy jostle would significantly shift them (my cats routinely walk across my armies without moving them about). But the terrain, in order to work visually, needs to be thin and light. Magnetization keeps it firmly in place, even with partial flocking, as I did on my earlier modular board tests.

     

     

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

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