A platoon of game tokens

Last evening I was able to prepare some miniatures and markers to finally try some large-scale 5150: Star Army battles. I wanted to do something like this since Okum Arts released the Retro Space line. I even printed some space patrol and aliens in 15mm. However, I'd get stuck thinking, "ok, now I have to make some defensive structures, and bunkers, and vehicles..." and never finished the project.

So this time I went back to the "paper miniatures as game tokens" mentality and built a much simpler set. I made T-frames with Okum Arts minis and recolored sci-fi vehicles from Junior General. I also made some small bunker markers and very simple 3D "defensive modules." Here's the result:

Instead of going for 15mm, I decided to test "centimeters as inches," that is, measuring one centimeter as if it was one inch. It makes for easy adaptation of game rules designed for 28mm scale and gives even higher savings in space. The board on the picture is the equivalent of a 3'x3' board but takes a little over a 1'x1' area. This will be nice for me to play larger battles because, as it can be seen, a 3'x3' board feels crowded with a full platoon on each side.

Here's a closer look at the game tokens. Besides using Okum Arts nice retro illustrations, each soldier in a squad is numbered on the back, and the squad leader and assistant squad leader have specific markers on them.

Although they don't look anything special, it took me just about three hours to make the templates in Inkscape, print and build everything -- enough to "just play the game" and see how it feels like. I hope to have a battle report with these pieces soon.

In other news, I made some very small changes to the site's fonts and colors to improve readability. I also changed the background to another stock picture from Blogger, although I might switch back to the blank white background.