The Final Frontier

In my excitement over Star Fleet Battles and Federation Commander, I began looking for a hex mat to play with miniatures on. Both games feature cardboard counters with paper/cardboard maps to play on, but those are boring. I'd heard quite a bit about Hotz Mats, but I was reluctant to order from them as they've had some timeliness and communication issues in the past, even as recently as a few weeks ago. These are well-documented on The Miniatures Page, but it always appeared that people who ordered from Hotz Mats got their product eventually even if it took a few months. So I decided to order one and see what happened. I placed the order on 06 APR and on 07 APR I got an e-mail confirming the order and explaining that the mats are custom-made to order and some designs (like the space mats) could take a while due to the extra steps (airbrushing the nebulas and whatnot). The e-mail told me to expect a five-week wait, and the threads on The Miniatures Page warned me to expect a several-month wait. The mat arrived today, for a turnaround time of 18 days from order to delivery.

I am quite pleased with the product. I ordered a 72" x 45" Deep Space Mat with 1" hexes. I've taken a few photos of it below. The package felt pretty light at first, but upon opening it I found that the mat feels quite sturdy and should hold up to wear pretty well. In real life the hexes aren't nearly as intrusive as they look in the photo; I think the flash made them several times brighter than they are in person.

I am rather pleased with it. I think the last thing left is to get my Klingon ship painted up and try the game out.

Federation Cruiser Pictures

I've taken a couple pictures of the Federation Cruiser, and here they are. Up close you can see the flaws and unsteady lines painted on the ship, but looking at the ship on my desk from standing height it looks pretty good. The Future Acrylic Floor Finish seems to be what I'm looking for, the big test will be to see whether it does well as an initial coat on the Klingon ship. I attached the Klingon ship to it's flight base again today, so hopefully it stays. The peg for the flight stand broke off when I had to strip the paint from the ship after the first painting, so I had to drill a new hole and rework the nub so that it would fit. I'm hoping I did well enough to keep it fairly stable. The decals may or may not be in the proper spots, so don't flip out if you are a hardcore Trekkie. I am also probably missing details.

I printed the decal guide from the Star Fleet Universe page for the D-6/D-7 ships. It seems fairly straightforward and matches up pretty well with the decal sheet I have in hand. The reason I had so much trouble with the Heavy Cruiser is that there is not a decal guide up on the site for that ship and I had to cobble it together from various images around the web. It appears that some of the decals are not necessary, as a major portion of them are intended to represent details that are sculpted on the model and can be painted, specifically weapon ports. But the windows and pinstripes and insignia/lettering is all very useful to have in decal form.

I am very likely not to get any hobby stuff done this week as it's fairly stuffed with homework and I get to play army all of next weekend. It will be nice when the wife and kid get back from their vacation to Georgia, as I may not survive much longer on fast food and microwave burritos. My Easter feast this year left something to be desired.

I had several things I wanted to post about, but they have all totally slipped my mind. I suppose that if I get around to remembering them I will type something up.