Quick and easy smoke and flame markers

[Warhorse47]

Just messing around the other night and came up with these. Take some thin plastic sheet. cut to shape, spray paint red or black and drybrush. I will do a little trimming, etc, but it looks good for game time.

[richard m schwab]

Kevin!

Quick and easy, plus they look good!

rich

[Hunter]

Great idea Kevin! I'll try that as I'm sure I have some thin plastic package blister around. Thank you!

[Bluedevil]

Brilliant...I feel stupid not having thought of this

[gully_raker]

They look great!
What guage/thickness was the plactic Card?

[Warhorse47]

Several different thicknesses. The thinner the better, I just had scraps in a small box I use for kitbashing 40k Ork stuff and fill ins, so that's what I used.

[Shiraz68]

Great work Kevin, especially as it uses the KISS principle!

[Boney10]

Here are my markers. They are black thin pipe cleaners wrapped in the "Flames of War" pack Smoke & flames

[Warhorse47]

Those are really sharp!

[Danrit]

Nice. Similar to what I use. I have some children's craft pipe cleaners that go from thick to thin along their length, I just cut them in the appropriate place. They come in grey, white and black too.

[Warhorse47]

Okay guys, let's see what else we can come up with to get ideas from one another!

[Albert Ross]

Here's mine from craft peel & stick foam sheet (already posted on another thread). The stuff comes in day-glo orange so just a couple of streaks of yellow paint and you're done.

K*I*S*S!

[Warhorse47]

Hey, that is a great idea!

[Flying Officer Kyte]

Looks as if you have cracked it, for those who can't afford the comercial ones. They look really smart. What is the cost of the materials?
Rob.

[Albert Ross]

Looks as if you have cracked it, for those who can't afford the comercial ones. They look really smart. What is the cost of the materials?
Rob.

(Saluting smartly!) The foam came in a big pack of mixed colors from Wal Mart and my nemesis said it cost $6.75. There are a couple of sheets of each color, and I used gray to make smoke markers as it looked better than the black; I am going to use some of the other sheets as a backing for the bombing target and objective cards I'm printing off from the files section here. My game mat is a sheet of styrofoam insulation board spray painted in mottled green and brown so a foam backed card won't slide around so much as a paper or card counter.

[Flying Officer Kyte]

Thanks for the info Stuart. Have you any pictures of your game board? It sounds very interesting, and may solve a lot of the problems voiced about cards slipping about too easily on some games mats.
Rob.

[Albert Ross]

Well, not a very good picture, partly because this was an experimental version and the lighting conditions were not ideal; while it works very well in game play, I think I need to use lighter colors as the information on the flight stands is hard to read against the dark background. These two photos were taken when I took the game over to a friend's place,. They had never seen it before, but he and his wife had no trouble picking it up right away and we fought two close run air battles.

I thought about cutting trench lines in with a dremel tool, but that wouldn't work as this stuff has a clear plastic membrane over it which is why the paint doesn't eat into the foam surface. I might try to paint some on though

[Flying Officer Kyte]

Thanks for the prompt reply Stuart. It looks O.K. to me, but then I have this thing about dark green as you can see from some of my pictures of games.
Rob.

[Albert Ross]

Thanks! I just thought of another possibility with that peel & stick foam......instead of painting trench lines, roads or rivers directly on the board, I can cut the shapes and place them on according to scenario. I think I will leave the backing paper on those though in case the sticky side tears the paint off.