Battle Mat

I found these sheets of felt at Hobby Lobby for $.99. They are about as stiff as cardstock paper and measure 18 inches by 12 inches. Now the question of the hour: hexagons or squares?

There are some pretty strong opinions and a lot of math thrown around when this discussed in the various forums I stalk. With most people (at least from what I read) in favor of hexagon spaces.

I was pretty dead set on hex spaces. Then I realized drawing a square grid was super easy... and I'm partial to laziness. Since this battle mat was going to cost me less than $10 (9 sheets times $.99, and I already owned a sharpie) I decided to go with the square grid for my first outing. If I hate it I can always flip it over and create a hexagon grid on the other side.

The bases for the WoW Minis are rather large, so I originally made the spaces 2" x 2". I didn’t feel that would maximize my space so I cut it down to 1.5" x 1.5"

My next post will be about my guard tower and barricades! Game on!

Building Cheapscape Part 1

Cheapscape is my Heroscape knockoff. Again, I am not going for originality. I want to build a fun, accessible and CHEAP game to enjoy with my friends and family. I found that Heroscape had a somewhat deep and but non-intimidating system that my friends could enjoy.

Step 1: Rules.

Simple, Hasbro has a PDF file online for Heroscape rules. Here they are if you want to get your own copy.

Step 2. Miniatures

Minis are crazy expensive! Not only that, but for most games you need to build and paint them. As much fun as that sounds, it is breaking my highet priority: BE CHEAP!

So originally I scoured through dollar stores and found some cool figures, army men, cowboys and indians. The few character I really liked (Batman, Superman, etc...) were $1 each. That isn't terrible but I knew I could find something cheaper.

Several google searches later and I hit the jack pot with the following search:

warcraft inspired miniatures

With the wild success of the World of Warcraft MMORPG, Blizzard (with the help of Upperdeck) decided to enter the tabletop gaming market with it's WoW Miniature skirmish game in 2008-ish. It had good balanced gameplay (from what I read), a universe and lore that millions of people were familiar with already and some really good mini's. No assembly required, already painted.

Then all of a sudden nobody cared. I don't know exactly what happened but they were in and out of the tabletop mini wargame business pretty quick.

2016 and I find this nifty site here! ccgcatle.com is selling these things dirt cheap!!!! I find his ebay store and order a box of 100 + miniatures for $29.99.
I receive a total of 161 minis. 52 different characters and the other 109 are duplicates.

                                                  It was Christmas!!

                                          Rodeo Bill vs Superman ($1)

A lot of progress has been made. I will be talking about my plans for battle grids and terrain in upcoming posts. God bless and have fun!

The Beginning

It all starts with Battle Masters. My dad bought this game for me when I was a kid. I did not really care for it too much - but then I started playing! The giant vinyl mat would take up a huge chunk of living room and I would beg my friends and reluctant siblings to go to war with me. It was the only table top wargame I ever played but I still have great memories of it.

My wife flew out of town for a few days so I got to thinking what I would do since she was gone. I thought I would really want to play a table top wargame. I don't know why I thought about it because it has been almost 20 years since I played the most entry level of all wargames, but I decided that I would get into wargaming!

Bro, it's expensive.

I watched a Youtube video that said a decent Warhammer 40k army would cost $500. Yeah, wasn't going to happen.

As I researched more games to venture into I came across Heroscape. It looked like something I could sucker my grown friends, siblings, neices and nephews into playing. However, it is no longer produced and the price point was still a little high for me to buy a starter set.

And then it hit me. I can make my own minitaure wargame!

So now my journey has begun, the first step in an epic quest to create a homebrew wargame spending as little money as possible: CheapScape - the Heroscape Knock Off of the Century!

Feel free to check in and see my progress. I am not trying to re-invent the wheel. I fully intend to coy rules, minis, ideas and techniques from Milton Bradley, Hasbro, Gameworks and other enthusiants I find on the internet.