First off - I'm a huge X-Wing fan but also (as of recently) father of two so I got very limited time.

I meant to get some playmat for X-Wing (and later for Diskwars) but never got around to ordering one. Didn't care at all for those nebula designs either! Not starwarsey at all...

So I decided to make one (or three) myself, but hopefully without spending too much time!

1. Get a couple of 90x90 unfinished (raw and smooth) HDF boards (8mm thick board costs about €5 along with the cutting service). These are very thick and quite smooth - perfect if you want to cover a smaller table without worrying that you'd flip the board every time you touch it. If you want to have the board mobile try making it into two pieces of thinner HDF, but be sure to place it on top of large enough table when you play.

2. Raw HDF doesn't need smoothing, so just wipe it with a dry cotton rag, to remove any wood dust it may have stuck to it.

3. Painting seemed like the most tricky part as I've got very little experience painting stuff. And here I want two 90x90 boards painted evenly without brush strokes or other textures. Tried some paints on a spare piece of HDF but I wasn't happy with the texture and the slight gloss I got even from the mat paint. Luckily I found out that simple spray paint (again €5 for a huge old can, not even hobby supply brand) works great on raw HDF! With just two passes I got a rather smooth color, no reflections at all and kept the original texture of the HDF board!!

4. What's left is to add some stars without spending an afternoon making small dots with a thin brush. I'll let you know how that goes.

Finally I plan to do the same on the back of one of the boards (or both) but in green - for Diskwars! And then partially spray over it with another shade of green or make some brush strokes over it to add some variety and make it feel a tad more natural.

I just thought I'd share that here for no particular reason.

I'll post some photos later when I'm satisfied with the finished product!

It's quite fun actually... once you get over the goofiness of flipping disks. I love that it's so compact and fast to set up without too many fiddly bits.

Metric hurts my brain.

I made a board, but I'm not happy with the results. Its too heavy, the paint came out bad, and I just didn't do a great job overall. Might make a new one this summer when I get extra money.

I use a 3x3 sheet of 1/4" masonite, primed & painted black with a roller, then I added stars by flicking white paint on it with a tooth brush. The roller method gave the board a nice grippy texture that along, with the non-slip squares I added to the ship bases, helps prevent accidental movement of ships. The only problem is that the maneuver templates are now camouflaged with the board, so you can have trouble finding them if you don't put them off to the side after use.

I just bought a couple of square pieces of black felt, and will soon be attempting the stars myself.

One tip I found was on this website , which tells you how to spray paint a space scene. Because I'm paining on felt, I won't be trying planets or anything, but on HDF it should work quite well.

As for stars, instead of painstakingly doing each star, it avises to lay the surface on the ground (facing upward), and then spraying the white (or whatever colog) upward, pressing the nozzle just enough for some paint to come out. I guess that allows the paint to congeal into small droplets. I plan on trying the technique on some black plastic trashbags first. Also, I want to try a misty line as a distant arm of the galaxy.

All of this will probably look better on your HDF than on my felt. I'm just limited in terms of what I can stuff into my backpack when I ride my bike to the FLGS.

Easy stars: Using a medium sized brush, dip it in white and run your fingers through the bristles so that the brush flicks the paint onto the board. Messy but effective.

Similarly,whipping the brush forward will unevenly cover your board in white dots.

Tried this with my students at school .. looked amazing.

I was just working on my felt mat, after some trial runs on trash bags. Lesson learned: paint looks very different on felt than it does on plastic. (Duh!)

Anyways, I was getting my stars my spraying white onto a ziplock bag and then flicking it at the felt. The effect was very small stars (they were big on the plastic).

Okay, here are some images that I took of today's creation. The first is in natural sunlight, so it shows the colors better, while the second two are with some TIEs in the picture, and some of the the stars have been brightened.

(Click the thumbnails for larger images.)

So, this is just black felt, some spray paint, and a bit of white-out to brighten the stars.

I'm thinking about getting a project board like what you would use for science fairs. I think if I score or even cut it slightly it will fold significantly smaller. I am trying to decide between a cardboard or foam one. I think one of the better things about this board idea is that I can buy one that is already black.