Tips for Starting a Jigsaw Campaigning

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Creating tabletop campaigns is a great way to build gaming communities and encourage people to paint their armies. Campaigns can take place over a single day or even many months, adding to the excitement of capturing territory and crushing your enemies. One such method of recording games has been to create a hex based system that is used as an overview of the territory or planets being fought over. These hex-shaped tiles often depict images such as buildings, cities or terrain which helps to identify key landmarks to capture. The idea behind the system is to have a visual reference of where each army is based, so that participants can move their forces using the hex tiles, and then fight on a smaller scale using their miniatures. 

If you're interesting in starting your own jigsaw campaign, follow these tips.

Build Your Own System

You don't need to spend lots of money on hex systems in order to begin a campaign. One of the cheapest and easiest things to do is to buy wholesale wooden jigsaws. By purchasing a larger quantity of pieces from the same puzzle will allow you to build larger or smaller maps. You don't have to stick with conventional pieces either. Being made of wood means that it's very easy for tiles to be custom shaped and laser cut to suit your needs. 

Prepare Your Tiles

Preparing your tiles is simple enough, you just need to decide whether you want to reuse them for different campaigns, thus making them cleanable, or make them textured tiles specific for this campaign. If you have simple wooden tiles that are basic in shape such as a hexagonal or square you can simply spray them with regular white model spray paint and then trace some sticky laminate plastic to attach to the top. This means you'll be able to write on them with whiteboard markers and clean them off easily.

If however you'd like to make them textured in order to represent mountain ranges, forests and cities try using modelling basing paste and slips of modelling plastic. The plastic is like paper and can be cut to resemble to tops of buildings, whilst the modelling paste is brushed on and resembles mud or dirt. You can even use modelling putty to create miniature dioramas and sculpt them to mark out key areas. 

Finish Up

Regardless of the method you use it's always a good idea to varnish the tiles to prevent wear and tear. A simple gloss, satin or matte varnish will do and can be bought from all good model stores.


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