(08-17-2013, 04:41 PM)Shad Wrote: First, for the love of all that is hexagonal and holy, post some freaking photos of your projects dude!!! 
I will. Unfortunately the Axis & Allies project is just a bunch of sample pieces I bought to make final selections from and other bits and odds -- a sort of three-dimensional list. I really need to do the board graphics before I chow down on the pieces. More on that down below. HOTW will be done much more quickly since I'm doing it "game style" -- the map graphics are more like a high-quality comic book and the pieces are single colors (for example, one Epoch is using Roman Legionaries that will be spray-painted in the faction colors like black, orange, blue, green, etc.). Axis & Allies is going to get done in a "situation map" style -- photo-realistic world map, hand-painted soldiers and armor, aircraft on flight stands, ships on wave-textured bases, etc.
(08-17-2013, 04:41 PM)Shad Wrote: I went with magnetic sheets because otherwise you need something holding the map sheets to the backing, and that will inevitably get in the way of gameplay.
I also went with magnetic sheets because the idea itself was really cool and I was skeptical they would work.
Printing and using something else to hold in place would be far cheaper, as the supply costs I listed at the end of my thread demonstrated. (still not as cool though! )
First I hasten to add that I wasn't criticizing or nit-picking, just curious. I got the idea looking at your photos of the large vertically-mounted sheet metal the maps were on. I was thinking that if I took a piece of sheet metal and ground off the sharp edges, I'd have a portable magnetic board. I could "hang" it on a wall, or I could lay it flat or stand it in a corner when it wasn't needed. Tyvek is so light and thin (it's the plastic paper they wrap houses in) that the magnetic counters would hold it down fine unless a) they were all moved at the same time or b) there weren't at least one or two on a large corner part of the map. For that matter, I could make some "holder" counters to use when needed. I'll have to play around with this (after I get decent at PG, though!)
(08-17-2013, 04:41 PM)Shad Wrote: I've had good luck sourcing helpers for boardgame graphics design on BoardGameGeek. They have some forums for game dev and DIY. I paid a guy a large sum of geekgold to editing a bunch of Europa maps for me years ago! He did a great job. If you offered a bit of real money you'd get even better results! 
Interesting! Can you recommend anyone? The Axis & Allies map will take some work -- for what I have in mind, you can't just draw space boundaries on a world map. I can't finalize piece selection and design until I have the map in hand. (City size in HOTW couldn't be determined without seeing how big the smallest space is in relation to the other spaces). On the AA map, things need to be resized due to the needs of the game (UK, for example, needs to be much larger in proportion to Europe than in the real world, while South America can be much smaller).
I'll also eventually need sources to scan and print PG counters and maps too. A long relationship would be preferable because my funds are not infinite and I have an iron-clad rule that I won't "pimp" a game unless I own a copy. So I'll need a fairly-long time to get that project rolling.
