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Saw a thing on Reddit, decided to give it a try. I present the result:



Materials:

$4 tri-fold foamboard from Wal-Mart
Various cans of gloss spray paint
Glossy Magazine

Basically just watched some tutorials from the guys that do the spray-paint space scenes on YouTube and went to work. The Tri-Fold board is 4ft x 3ft so I marked off the 3ft with a strip of tape. That gives you a 3ftx3ft playing area and you can use the edges for cards.

Biggest expense was the spray paint, but once you got those you can crank out boards super-cheap. Great if you want to make a few for a club.

More details:

Looks pretty awesome. Plans for any others? Perhaps some deep space ones?

I'll probably play around with some more next week (the garage was a killer with the heat we are having, especially with wearing a respirator mask). But it will be easy to make more. You burn through black paint, but those cans are cheap.

Will take some pictures with ships on them once it dries.

Look forward to seeing more - not too many space boards around, and that one is a good indication of things to come

The ones I liked were all around $40 or so. This one was still $30 in materials (mostly for paint), but once you have them it's just $5 a board.

The mats you can buy would be easier to store, but this folds up to a 2x3, which helps.

I had the idea of using a painters tarp but all the paint just flakes off as the material flexes. Hard boards seem a better idea. Did you paint on the side with the (what I would imagine to be) tape joins, or are they on the reverse?

The side with the joint, so when folded the paint is on the inside.

The fact that the board is 3 feet wide out of the package pretty much sealed the deal!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Almost dry, except for the spots that had pretty thick paint. Those are the areas I will need to practice on for the next board. I probably just used much more paint than what I really needed which ended up resulting in some weird textures in those areas.

The gas-planed ended up with some striping:



And not-earth has the same texture extending into space as well:



I don't know how much different that would be with less paint (although I think it would help some), but then I also worry about the technique not working if I end up using less paint. I'm also thinking about going over the board with a matte-coat to help seal the paint, which would cut down on glare and might hide them.

Here is a shot with some ships and the room for the cards:



I just used the masking tape that I had, but for the next boards I will probably buy a thinner roll. But even with the thick white stripe there is still plenty of room for ship cards.

I also like the deep space nebula effect much better on this corner with the faint yellow/orange/red than the more obvious purple/blue on the other side (had the can much closer with those two colors).

I want to give a deep space board a try with maybe a nice close nebula on one side and some faint colors on the other.

But if you are looking into a cheap way to make boards, especially if you are going to make a few for a club or an event, I recommend this technique. It turned out pretty well and is really easy to do and looks good with some ships on it!

Shake them Han!

So, possible silly question:

I was thinking of painting the black spaces for cards with different color sections.

Thought being that I have been considering using different color bases to help differentiate between ships instead of the small number tokens. So instead of TIE 1 and TIE 2 I would have green TIE and red TIE. Which would make it a lot easier to easily see which ship is which. But then I would also have to mark the cards (most likely with sleeves, which I would have to find in each color) to match.

So I was thinking of painting the black section with squares of matching colors. Have red/blue/green/yellow sections on the board for cards, and then red/blue/green/yellow bases to match. I think it would make it pretty easy to match cards to ships.

But what do you guys think?

That sounds pretty cool to me; I don't play the game so could not suggest if that were reasonable game-wise though

 d-usa wrote:
So, possible silly question:

I was thinking of painting the black spaces for cards with different color sections.

Thought being that I have been considering using different color bases to help differentiate between ships instead of the small number tokens. So instead of TIE 1 and TIE 2 I would have green TIE and red TIE. Which would make it a lot easier to easily see which ship is which. But then I would also have to mark the cards (most likely with sleeves, which I would have to find in each color) to match.

So I was thinking of painting the black section with squares of matching colors. Have red/blue/green/yellow sections on the board for cards, and then red/blue/green/yellow bases to match. I think it would make it pretty easy to match cards to ships.

But what do you guys think?

I think it wlould look amazing! If you're going to commit to different colored bases then it would help organization greatly.

And the board looks fantastic by the way!

Thanks.

The plan is to bring it to the Tabletop Gaming Club this week to see if people like it. I could whip up a few of them to keep at the club.

Got some tape to mark the squares and picking up paints in the morning.

One other thought for marking the ships themselves:

Instead of painted bases, what do you guys think about just coloring the little base-markers. I got a ton of those, they would be easy to store with the board for other players, and they would not be as "in your face" on the board as fully painted bases. But they should still be able to clearly mark the ships to match them to the spots for the cards.

 d-usa wrote:
Got some tape to mark the squares and picking up paints in the morning.

One other thought for marking the ships themselves:

Instead of painted bases, what do you guys think about just coloring the little base-markers. I got a ton of those, they would be easy to store with the board for other players, and they would not be as "in your face" on the board as fully painted bases. But they should still be able to clearly mark the ships to match them to the spots for the cards.

Sounds like a solid idea! And easy to overcome if you decide you don't like it. You could always paint the base later if the markers don't feel right.

Step by step guide to how you came up with this?

So here is my first try at color-coding the board:



Lessons learned:

1) Buy better tape!
2) Some of those colors are not covering well at all, even after 4 coats. Would most likely be helped by not having that section black. Which brings me to...
3) If I do this on other boards I would just mark all the sections off with tape from the very beginning. Do the space section with everything else marked off, then do the colored squares on the white board itself, and just have white sections between the squares themselves and the squares and the space section.

Overall I think I like it though.

 BigRedStandingBy wrote:
Step by step guide to how you came up with this?

Fairly simple, I will throw one up tomorrow.

It looks great. You could get away with a single color chip on the flight base I think.
If you prime the section white first, it might have gone smoother. But it sounds like
you have it licked!

Well, the section was white before I primed it black...