18 October 2010

Review - Paper Make It! Space Base

Paper Make It! recently advertised their Space Base on TMP. I'm usually not one for paper terrain, but this was something different - a set of rooms and corridors, in the vein of Space Hulk, Doom: The Boardgame, and Space Crusade. It looked fantastic from the pics on the website, and had one thing that set it apart from most other downloadable corridors: it is available in both 28mm and 15mm versions.

I'd been curious for some time now about PMI's other products (notably
Shuffler), so I decided to order the 15mm Space Base as a demo piece. If nothing else, this would give me a ready-to-use rooms and corridors set for my growing 15mm sci-fi collection. The PDF pages looked great on screen, but how would that translate to the printer? Let me show you!

And this isn't really maximizing the full potential of this product. I printed these on recycled cardstock using a color laser printer. If this was printed on a inkjet using a higher quality paper or photo stock, these would look absolutely fantastic (and probably be more durable). The PDF prints eight pages with a very wide assortment of halls, junctions, and rooms. By only printing the main set once (no repeats yet), you get more setup variety than in any of the similar board games.

To make these sections a bit more durable, I used spray adhesive to mount them onto black presentation board from Hobby Lobby. This made them just as durable as any of the "professional" board games. Here's a shot of the mounted components and a comparison of the Space Base against Space Hulk (3rd Edition) and Doom.


The only thing that might be "missing" from this set is a way to interlock the tiles. I thought this would be a problem, but I haven't encountered much slippage on the table yet. I've already played a half dozen games with these rooms using the FUBAR First-Person Shooter variant (currently available in the Forge Of War Yahoo group) and I think they work brilliantly.

So if you've been looking for a great set of rooms and corridors to simulate your favorite alien-infested ships or demon-infested complexes, grab a set of these! A little time with the printer, a few hours with some glue and a knife, and you'll be very impressed with the results.

Chris

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review.

    How do you cut the presentation board? I find foam board better as it cuts easier and just wonder if you have a secret to share?

    Andrew
    Main blog: www.blog.kings-sleep.me.uk

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  2. Andrew,

    I just used a good pair of scissors and a utility knife... the inside corners were the only tough parts. I thought about using foamboard... I'll try that when these wear out and I reprint them.

    Chris

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