Pocket-Tactics (apparently the hyphen is important) is awesome on so many levels. First of all it’s a strategy game reminiscent of Star Control 1’s full game, always a turn on for me. Secondly, it’s an open source game. That’s like putting peanut butter in my chocolate. Finally you get to paint the pieces yourself. That last one is not as exciting for me but I understand it’s a draw for some people.
Painting printed parts isn’t that hard. I tend to use acrylics because I have a rainbow of them available. Just brush it on, let dry and hit it with a sealant. For my pocket-tactics set I used spray on Shellack to expedite this, plus I had it lying around from a halloween project a few years back.
I still don’t know how it plays because I need to get 6 alternate colored die, but I like the rules.
A few tips for printing your own:
- The tiles can be printed at your normal layer height (0.2 for me) but contain some small detail that, for me, didn’t print well. I may experiment with an alternative (open source FTW).
- Push the layer details on your pieces a little bit. 0.1mm or 0.15mm layer heights. Also, slow down a little when you print them to be sure the detail gets in there. It takes a little longer but this is not something you want to skimp on. (I know because I did.)
- Acrylic paints brushed on, dried, and thne apply a sealant. The creator of the game uses a dry brush technique which is okay if you want to be all day at it. You can also go crazy and paint all sorts of details if you’ve done model painting before. I’d love to see that actually.
