Maps and Minis

[cheshire]

I know that there is a bit of a divide in the forum as to whether minis and markers are useful tools, but this is a question for those of you who use minis to represent positions in combat. When you put your minis down, do you use combat mats, maps, dry erase boards, chalk boards, or other means of showing environments and other relevant objects?

I remember one campaign where I wished I would have a had a scale map of the groups ship, and I've sued some Game Mastery tile packs for my D6 Fantasy Game. There are some other maps sold by mapsofmastery.com and I didn't knwo if anyone utilized them?
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[DougRed4]

I mostly use a tan vinyl map (with 1" squares on one side and hexes on the other) that my group all went in for years ago. It's easy to draw out buildings, roads, etc. with wet erase pens. Then (as many of you have probably seen) I use counters with face images (or images for things like creatures, droids or vehicles). I get them off CCG cards (that I cut out with a 1" stamp) or printed onto cardstock.

Occasionally I use tiles (like the SW ones WotC made), but that's pretty rare (as the only ones I've got right now are Imperial facilities and some D&D ones with underground dungeons).
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[garhkal]

Hex maps, with dry erase markers as needed.
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[Zarn]

Varies.

I've got a truckload (well, at least a couple of briefcases' worth) of SW miniatures, and I've bought some X-Wing minis as well. (Don't know whether the game is worth anything - but at least I've got the minis!) And I've got a few of the Revell Easy Kits too, for stuff I might need mini-scale ships for.

Haven't actually used them much yet - I tend to let the players choose a mini for their character, and then just use the entire table as a surface, with some random boxes and bottles as stand-ins for proper terrain. It's mostly just to get some relative perspective on it at any rate.

I've been pondering whether to go all-in with a top-down projector or something similar, but to be honest - I have the means, I have the skills (I think), but I don't really have the inclination - to be honest, after 25 years I'm not playing much roleplaying games face-to-face any more, and setting up an entire room for an occasional pasttime is probably not a good use of resources.

[vong]

I use a Dry Erase board placed on the table, with bbq skewer that have range markers inked on them. This lets us free form draw terrain and not worry about range / "What square am I standing in" and just move minis around. When we need to know a distance we pull out the skewer and bingo bango good to go

I dream of setting up a play surface of some kind ( I really like the smart ones that can even measure distance, pop up abilities of characters, everything)

I have a few briefcases full of D&D style mins, with a selection of about 30 droids + various yuuzhan vong, clone troopers and Jedi. Oh yea and about 6 wookies
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[griff]

I played DnD using casttle lego mini figs as markers. This was before SWD6 and way before Star Wars legos. I though it would be fun to us the SW mini figs for game markers, or even a D6 Lego Star Wars the role-playing.
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"EXECUTE ORDER 67. Wait a minute, that doesn't sound like order 67..... No, wait. Yes, yes it does. EXECUTE ORDER 68" Palpatine's last moments - robot chicken.

[Yubacore]

[DougRed4]

Welcome to the Rancor Pit, Yubacore!
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green