Representing 3d movement with miniatures

[Oryan77]

Does anyone have good methods for using miniatures on a battlemat when playing underwater or when flying?

I know I can use grid paper or a whiteboard for movement, but I have all of these great minis and I'd like to still use them

The clear dice boxes that dice come in work good. But we only have 1 of those. I asked a FLGs if they have any spare ones but they said they always throw them away

Is there anything else like that that I can get for cheap? Stackable clear cubes wide enough for medium sized minis would be great.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

We place dice next to the mini to represent how far in the air the character is. If we're only talking about 30 varience or so, we place a d6 next to the mini to show they are two or three 5' sqaures up (or down) from whatever is counted as 0.

If there is a tower involved or open skies where 70 or 80 feet might be marked, we use percentile dice to show the 65' or 70' that a character is at. This also works to show how far a character has climbed on a tower staircase or similar situations that don't involve flying.

 

[sjmiller]

A friend of mine has recently patented, and is in the process of producing, an elevation indicator. It is a device you can place your figure on and indicate the height it is above the ground. The indicator can show a height of, I think 1,000 feet. It could be more, I would have to look at my prototype copy. I will have to ask how soon they will be available and how much. It's a great idea, and I am surprised nobody has done them before.

 

[Oryan77]

We place dice next to the mini to represent how far in the air the character is. If we're only talking about 30 varience or so, we place a d6 next to the mini to show they are two or three 5' sqaures up (or down) from whatever is counted as 0.

This is what we do now, but it makes it harder when I want to put a mini directly above or below another mini.

 

[Thunderfoot]

We use the dice box method - Another method I've seen is using several of those little pizza box circles (the kind you get when pizza is delivered so it doesn't stick to the lid) glued together at various "heights" - pretty neat idea if you want to go through the trouble.

 

[Treebore]

Do you own Heroscape? If not, start buying it. Its a fun game in its own right and I use the pieces to build 3d stuff for my games, as well as stack them to show height (each piece represents 5 feet, in Heroscape itself). When underwater I use the water pieces stacked up next to the character to show how deep they are. Works pretty good.

 

[Jack of Shadows]

Does anyone have good methods for using miniatures on a battlemat when playing underwater or when flying?

I know I can use grid paper or a whiteboard for movement, but I have all of these great minis and I'd like to still use them

The clear dice boxes that dice come in work good. But we only have 1 of those. I asked a FLGs if they have any spare ones but they said they always throw them away

Is there anything else like that that I can get for cheap? Stackable clear cubes wide enough for medium sized minis would be great.

There's a chain of stores called Storage Solutions here in Toronto. They have all sorts of transparent storage boxes like the dice boxes and in a wider range of sizes. I would check out any of the "storage boutiques" in your area as I suspect they'll carry the same stuff.

Jack

 

[Theron]

We don't order take-out pizza anymore, but it used to be that Pizza Hut put these little three legged stands inside the take-out box on top of the pizza to keep the lid from getting squashed. They came in two varieties. One style looked like a little three-legged stool. On the other, the legs each had a 90-degree angle and met at a central axis. Either one was the perfect size to put a mini on and tall enough to put one under as well. We used them extensively for superhero gaming and still have a bunch in our minis box.

 

[blargney the second]

I made stacking Lego pedestals with sliding pins. I've got two 20', two 10', and two 5' segments that can make any height up to 70'. There are stable platforms for anything Huge or smaller.

 

[Mark]

I'm sure I've seen stands used in miniature plane aerial combat games that had some sort of adjustable counter on the base that was used to keep track of altitude. You could take something like the base from a larger wizkids clix miniature and add a telescoping presentation pointer to it (just for fun). The base would need some weight to it, of course.