More space battle mats!

[Dave]

I've been making lots of game mats lately. Head over to davesgames.net to check them out. Here are some teasers.

[Dave]

And some looks at a new mat currently in development:

[Dave]

New mat (this is Space Battle Mat #7):

[BradleyG]

Now that you have given us all these beautiful space mats, how about some space ship to use them with?

[Dave]

I designed these mats to use with the X-Wing and Attack Wing miniatures games, so I haven't given any thought to creating paper space ships to go with them. What sort of ships did you have in mind? Are you looking or 3D ships, or 2D flat tokens? Or "blueprint" style interior ship maps? Let me know what you're looking for and maybe I'll get inspired to create something.

[BradleyG]

Hmm,
"blueprint?", no those are maps them selves. "2D flat?", na that's so 1990's. "3D ships?", definitely 3D ships.
WWG gave it a good try, but those grapes have died on the vine, but still the models where ok.
I like the paper craft models made from the game Homeworld.

Think of your old airplane game and move it into the future.

Brad

[enpeze]

I dont know. I would go with 2D ship minis. 3D are difficult to store and overly fragile. Best would be a kind of Battleship Gothic tabletop with your mats and big 2D ships. (and some smaller for fighter flights)

[Dave]

Yeah, Solid State War was a lesson in what not to do. It works pretty well using the small-scale 2D pieces, which were an afterthought. It takes a lot of effort to design 3D models, and it's just a ton of work on top of what is already a very time-intensive activity of designing and playtesting game rules. Ultimately it was the 3D models that killed the game.

Right now I think the X-Wing Miniatures Game is pretty much the best game around if you want to play with teeny tiny spaceship models. I can't compete with that.

If I ever revived Solid State War, I'd set it up as a strictly 2D board game -- but ironically, I think I'd get criticized for using an "X-Wing-like" maneuver system, although Solid State War was released a year before X-Wing.

3D starships in 28mm scale are a possibility. I don't need to create games to support those kinds of models, since there are already plenty of games where it'd be nice to have a ship sitting on the battlefield (spaceport tarmac), or something like that. But when it comes to Solid State-scale 3D spaceship models (roughly 3mm-tall-people scale), I don't think there'd be much of an interest in them, unfortunately.

[enpeze]

I think there are excellent space games games out there with hexes (like Starmada or the upcoming Talon) but there are not many interesting (and simple to use) games on the capital ship level without hexes. (Xwing is fine but a different level) Solid State War is not known to me. Do you have a link? thanks.

[aleks]

Paizo still hold Solid State War, along with some very old Worldworksgames (at high prices).

paizo.com/store/byCompany/d/daveGraffamModels/solidState