Reaching for the Sky

Thirty flying bases - one being used - and a couple of counters. 

I spent some time today entrenched in the man cave and actually doing something constructive which, given my recent prolonged bout of lethargy, was most welcome!

The task for today was not the one I should have been tackling but hey ho, progress is progress in whatever direction you take it, so instead of the ironclads I settled on making bases for my ‘using-board-game-counters-instead-of- models’ aerial project. It felt marvellous doing something constructive and with not one, but two added bonuses.

The first task was to assemble thirty bases comprising a 1” 3mm thick MDF square with a 3mm hole in the centre, a 2” length of 3mm thick bamboo skewer and a 7mm square dice frame. Easy enough although I needed to run a rat tailed file through the base hole to widen it ever so slightly. This was easy enough to do although it did take longer than I expected. It was at this stage that ‘miracle number 1’ (if you know you know!) occurred.

Extra bits and pieces that will go into the scratch building coffers. The small centre pieces are ideal for gun mounts whilst the ‘sprue’ can be used for gunwales etc - all really handy so nothing is wasted!

A number of the 1” bases still had the central piece in place - these are hugely useful for scratch building so I made sure I very carefully pressed these out and bagged them up. The dice frames needed cutting out and guess what? The ‘sprue’ they are attached to is also really handing for scratch building and given that I had over ordered these, it means that I have a good supply of 2mm high by 1mm thick ‘edging’ - very useful for ship gunwales etc.

The original point of this exercise was to mount the counters from Dawn Patrol (although lovely looking are printed on very thin card) on 3mm thick 1” MDF bases that could in turn be placed on a flying base to add a little visual appeal to a 2D game. Me being me meant that I was never going be satisfied with using this for a single system and so various others have now been added to the mix - including WW2.

Axis and Allies: Angels 20 is a lot of fun to play and uses 15mm aircraft mounted on a ball and socket joint to indicate left and right banking and nose up/down for climbing or diving. I was mulling over how best to represent this in my ‘brave-new-cardboard counter-and-MDF-world’ when I realised that simplicity  is the key. Take a look at the pictures below.

Climbing - heading into the bright blue yonder

Diving - heading into a green field beyond

As the MDF mounted counters are not fixed in place - thereby saving on the number of flying bases needed - they can be rotated as required so this is ‘banking left’….

….and this is ‘banking right’. (Apologies for using a WW1 counter for a WW2 rule set - it was all i had to hand!).

I had not thought about the very simple solution to the banking issue but it certainly works well enough and so as a result I now have a further game system I can add to my aerial arsenal.

Feeling pretty darned chuffed with the project and how it has pushed me on into different directions but, the looming spectre of the ironclads is never far behind….

I need to get back to what I need to get back to!