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The Hirst Art Studies | Miniatures 

In the summer of 2004 Whizkids released a new Collectible card game (ccg) called "Pirates of the Spanish Main" Now I am not a big fan of CCG's but this game really appealed to me because of the fact that it is a 3D CCG and because it is naval. I played it at Origins Game Convention late June in Columbus Ohio USA.
The picture on the left shows you the Play table they used at the convention.

A 3D CCG requires a 3D playing surface. Although the game can be played on a simple small table I like to play it on a table that represents a more realistic play field so I made my own ocean/island table.




The table itself:

I decided to make a round game table using a large MDF board of 1/2" thick and about 4 foot in diameter. To get a perfect circle out of this MDF board I simply used a piece of wood that I temporarily attached in the centre of the MDF board. Another nail just sticks through this plank to use as a scraper to carve the circle into the MDF.
Once the circle is carved in I used a pencil to make the line more clearly and cut the circle out using an electric saw.

Now the circle is cut out I give it a basic layer of paint. After this I used two colours of blue out of a spray paint can. I started to paint the table dark blue. When this was done I at randomly sprayed a light blue paint over the dark blue layer. To soften this lighter colour up and to blend it more in I spray painted the table again using the dark blue colour slightly over and around the lighter spots. I ended up with a table that represented a sea nicely

Making the Nautical lines:

The next step was to make a certain line pattern that looks like nautical markings. In fact they are there just to make the board look more interesting. I thankfully used the board at the Origins convention as an example.
Although the lines are firstly put on as decoration they might also come in handy for determine wind directions within this game so in the end they might be more then just nice looking lines.
I used a water proof marker to draw the lines. And I guess that the pictures tell you enough on how I actually did it.




Making the islands:

Before making the island I started to cut out some possible forms of islands just to see how they would look like on the table. In all I made 15 islands. Although there are too many islands I now have more diversity in setting my table up for game play.
The islands are made out of 2" thick foam board. With a foam cutter I cut the islands out. The next stage was greasing them in with wood glue and throwing fine sand over it. After a black base layer of paint I used brushes of Raw Umber, Grey, Khaki, Dark Green and White to paint the islands.
A possible next step is to put static grass on them, some bushes and even houses. I will wait doing so since I expect some extension in the rules that might concern forts of some kind. SO I keep my islands as they are now for the time being.




Shallow waters and fog:

While making the islands I imagined that I would look cool having some more diversity in the water when it comes to shallow water. In order to get this done I went to a Office store and bought some thick plastic transparent sheets that I cut up by putting an island on the plastic, draw some lines around the island, cutting it out and gluing it underneath the islands. The transparent plastic sheet gives the dark blue a lighter colour and adds to the detail without actually obstructing game play. These same plastic sheets could represents clouds of fog or coral riffs that all could be implemented into the game.










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