Lost Patrol

There's an old Games Workshop 2-player game called Lost Patrol, that sees a group of Space Marine Scouts battling their way through a jungle death world.

The Scouts' mission is to reach the dropship before the alien 'lurkers' eliminate them.  As the scout team explores further, the jungle divides into many sections, and some Scouts might even get lost.   It was notoriously difficult to win when playing the Scouts and by all accounts, it wasn't even that much fun.


The one novel feature was the board, which is created with tiles as the scouts travel through the dense jungle.  I've always thought it has the makings of a good jungle crawler-type game so I'd been keeping my eyes peeled for a copy at a reasonable price.  Wait I did, but nothing eventuated - well nothing at a reasonable price that is.

Cutting mat + new blade made for an easy job.

Being somewhat crafty, I instead decided to make my own.  A quick search of 'net turned up a pdf of the game's tiles and whilst I considered cutting my own using cardboard or acrylic, instead, I turned to the Knights of Dice and had them whip me up a bunch in MDF.  It took me about an hour of cutting, gluing (I used PVA*) and trimming to create 36 tiles - they're regular hexagons with 40mm edges and just a fraction less than 80mm edge-to-edge.

* NB if you're thinking of doing the same, remember to keep the glue as think and even as possible, else the paper will warp. I used a straight-edge to scrape the glue off and spread the glue around the tile.

So now I've got an interesting 2d 'board' on which to play some games.  My mate Brendan gifted me some Space Marine Scouts a while back and now I'm tempted to hunt some more down and paint up a set/box much like I did for Space Hulk - I only need 2 or 3 more.  Apparently, the official first and second edition rules are pants, so I'll look into the many fan-published variations.   Who knows, maybe I can come up with my own rules as well?

Those Marines are on slightly larger bases than the majority of my figures -
I tend to mount my minis on 25mm bases.

The exercise has gotten me thinking. If I was to scale up the titles, they could make for some decent terrain plates e.g., 6-inch sides would translate to a 12"x10.3" hex making for quite a versatile size for 28mm wargaming - 9 hexes would provide for a number of different configurations,  Mmm...