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Hey guys,

I've not started playing this game yet (have just bought a starter pack and the rulebook) but I've started thinking about making a board for it. Now my first thought was just to get a pot of blue paint, and then job done! But, I want to try and make a good job of it, so a couple of questions if I may, would be great if anyone who knows a lot about the game could give me some advice!

1 - What is the ideal playing size for the game? Is it 4x4 or 6x4 (for a standard sized game?)

2 - What kind of role does terrain playing in LoS blocking and manouvering? Might it be an idea to make some small islands, rocky outcrops etc and I make these, how much coverage of them over the board would be preferable? Are there any cool terrain pieces in the rules, such as island fortresses etc? Or do these things not really add anything to the experience?

3 - I've since seen the land based units! I've read that all 3 elements of the game at this scale (so sea, land, air) are interchangeable, and can be used against each other.
Practically (and by this, I mean do people think its a fun thing to do) would it be worthwhile making some large areas of land that I can slide on top of the board to introduce the land element to the game? I have to say, the main appeal of the game is the sea and air stuff, I'm not that bothered about the fighting on land. Would I be missing out on much by just having the sea/air elements to play with?

And help and knowledgeable advice would be greatly appreciated!

1: 4x4 is the most typical table size I've seen, but 6x4 is also quite common.

2: Terrain is very important in both manouvering and LoS, remember that unlike 40k/etc your turns are closer to how boats work IRL, so if you are trying to go around an island you have to plan your moves really carefully, and a lot of units need LoS to fire anything at all.

3: I would suggest making several 2ft wide 'strips' (so a 6x4 would be 3 strips, 4x4 would be 2 strips), make 2 'sea' strips and 2 'land' strips and then you will have a ridiculous number of potential combinations (4x4 sea, 4x4 land, 6x4 mostly sea, 6x4 mostly land).

For a ocean table, I usually recommend a blue table cloth, then painted some slightly different shade of blue sponged over it. This will form the base.

Then you can make island scatter terrain or coasts the same way you make hills for other games.

Also its good to have terrain pieces of distinctly different height - this is important for LoS purposes.

Small terrain can be seen over by Large models (battleships and carriers and whatnot), whereas Medium terrain can only be seen over by Massive models, for instance.

A good rule of thumb is to base the height of the terrain piece (or island or whatever) on a sample miniature. So make your 'small' island no taller than the hull of a frigate, and your 'large' island no taller than the hull of a battleship, or whatever.

Also - good for terrain to have flat tops or at least places where the square flying bases can be positioned.

How would acrylic sheet over a blue-white mottled layer of wood look?

Guys thanks so much for the comments, exactly what I was after and extremely useful!

I think I will most likely just make a 4x4 board, lightly textured and then painted a sea-blue colour. Then make a couple of separate, smaller islands, rocky outcrops and things like that which can be moved around on the surface as required.

I might also try and make an island fortress thing, of the kind found in the Laputa the Flying Island animation

Thanks again!

http://www.hamburger-tactica.de/newsblog/?p=813

Make one of these