Action Tokens

Recently my current area of attention is ancients, more specifically "Clash of Spears".

   In Clash of Spears you have to track how many actions a unit has taken in a turn. The Kickstarter did come with a tokens, which look pretty good, but recently I have been trying to reduce what I call "ugly token clutter" wherein your unit is followed by a bunch of coloured markers, counters and/or tokens. While they do convey what they need to, they detract from the visual appeal.

   In an effort to alleviate some of the ugliness I have started to make my markers blend in a bit more. My first serious attempt was with the Action Markers for Clash of Spears, but they can serve in other games as well. My dice pods were more an attempt to stop players accidentally picking up dice, that were marking pins.

Here are my prototypes in use, they are next to the dice pods that track fatigue.

  They were pretty simple to make, here is how I did it.

Materials:
Circular bases (I went with 30mm wooden ones)
Metal washers
Acrylic Caulking, Brown (saves a step, no painting required)
Aquarium Gravel
5 minute epoxy
Flocking

First start by gluing metal washers to the bottom of your wooden bases, I used 5 minute epoxy as I wanted them to stay glued on. You could skip this, but I find thicker bases are easier to pick up and with the washers being smaller that the bases you can push down on one edge and the base tilts up for even easier pick up.

 When the glue is set, cover the upper side, of the base, in caulking, then press 1, 2 or 3 pieces of Aquarium gravel into the still fresh caulking.

Let then cure overnight and then paint the stones a light grey.

This picture illustrates why you should paint any dark stones a light colour, they are difficult to see at a glance.

 When the painted stones are dry, flock the bases however you wish.

That is all there is to making them.

Here are some pictures showing the material and tools I found useful.

Caulking gun.

artists' spatula for spreading the caulking and a magnetic tipped pointer.

Pointer so you can hold the base easily.

Aquarium gravel.