Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - First attempt at making Car Wars Miniatures and a 3D playing field.

MIB 9966 · 08-02-2016, 10:55 AM

While not exactly what you are doing (since you're planning on using 1" scale), I can tell you what I did in the (distant) past with 3x scale.

At 3X scale, you can use most Hot Wheels/Matchbox sized cars. I used a 1.5"x3" rectangular piece of comic backer board and glued the cars to that base to replicate the 1"x0.5" counter.

Making other 1.5"x3" rectangles (or 1.5"x1.5" squares) for the hazards and dropped weapons helps too. Some people used painted cotton to replicate the smoke and paint, for example, and used small plastic mines and plastic toy jacks for the mines and caltrops.

The 5th Edition Car Wars books contain a scaled up turning key that you can use, and I manually drew and cut out a scaled up key back then onto the full sized board.

Numbering the cardboard base and matching it to people's car sheets helped, but we did have to keep going over what actual weapons each car had since I didn't have small weapons to glue onto the cars.

As for terrain, it depends on the scenario you want to use. With arenas, I used the simple "edge of the table is the outer wall" rule and some standup fences from some Fischer Price farm set, I think to represent internal walls to keep it reasonably simple.

08-02-2016, 10:55 AM	#3
MIB 9966 Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Long Island, NY	Re: First attempt at making Car Wars Miniatures and a 3D playing field. While not exactly what you are doing (since you're planning on using 1" scale), I can tell you what I did in the (distant) past with 3x scale. At 3X scale, you can use most Hot Wheels/Matchbox sized cars. I used a 1.5"x3" rectangular piece of comic backer board and glued the cars to that base to replicate the 1"x0.5" counter. Making other 1.5"x3" rectangles (or 1.5"x1.5" squares) for the hazards and dropped weapons helps too. Some people used painted cotton to replicate the smoke and paint, for example, and used small plastic mines and plastic toy jacks for the mines and caltrops. The 5th Edition Car Wars books contain a scaled up turning key that you can use, and I manually drew and cut out a scaled up key back then onto the full sized board. Numbering the cardboard base and matching it to people's car sheets helped, but we did have to keep going over what actual weapons each car had since I didn't have small weapons to glue onto the cars. As for terrain, it depends on the scenario you want to use. With arenas, I used the simple "edge of the table is the outer wall" rule and some standup fences from some Fischer Price farm set, I think to represent internal walls to keep it reasonably simple.