As you can see from our pictures this was a home construction project. The playing area is 9 feet long by 5 feet wide. First I purchased 3/4 inch stryrafoam sheets that are used for insulation (found at Home Depot) and cut them into 1 foot widths by 4 foot lengths, covering the table area. Then lightly with a pencil I drew the outline of each island on brown wrapping paper. (Found at Staples) Then placing the paper cutouts where I wanted them I carefully painted around the cutouts with blue paint to give us the sea effect. Then using Terrain Maker Hexes by GHQ 1/2 inch hexes I laid them down covering the outline of brown paper after determining which hexes were to beach hexes I gathered them up and went to my table top sander and shaped them into beaches. Using my shop vac I then cleaned myself off because I looked like a snow man from all the flying residue. Once this job was done I glued each hex onto the paper being carefully not to get glue on the water insulation sheets. (because of storage later on) Once the hexes dried on the paper each island began to buckle in the center so by breaking tooth picks in half and pressing them in I was able to secure the islands to the bottom sheets. Next came the painting of the Island. Using regular flat paint (from Ace Hardware) I painted the entire island . Then using darker paint I put in the roads and Airfield. (so far so good) for our shore battery emplacements. An old Air- Flex kit gave us one of our houses, as well as our destroyed plane. The infantry was an accumulation of different figure manufactures and painted with tender loving care. Some of our vehicle were kits and some were collectors series of old cars. The emplacements were collected over the years by going to shows and buying at the flea markets. Half the fun of assembling Wake was using our imagination to get different looks to the Island. The landing boats were scratch built and some were purchased. Look around your scrap piles and see what kind of pieces you can assemble if you should decide to build a Wake Island for your group. If you do drop us a line and maybe we can help you or give you some ideas you might not have thought of. Anyway good gaming. Back to Table of Contents -- Combat Simulation Vol 2 No. 3 Back to Combat Simulation List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1996 by Mike Vogell and Phoenix Military Simulations. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com