Hex Stands by Catspaw Customs

[Catsy]

Hello, everyone! As some of you may know, I've been an active part of the minifig customization community for several years, though only a lurker on EB for the most part. Most of my work has been with customizing BrickArms, but I also have an extensive "portfolio", as it were, of custom minifigs.

My main project for the better part of the last six months, though, has been to bring to market a new custom accessory: hexagonal minfig stands. And it makes something of a story, so please bear with my verbosity and skip to the pictures if this is TL;DR.

I've been playing tabletop games since I was a kid, and for most of the last 15 years I've been playing in a series of tabletop RPG (roleplaying game) campaigns with a good friend who is an outstanding GM (gamemaster). We play out combat scenes on a one-inch hex map, which helps everyone visualize the spatial relationships between characters and enables a lot of tactical complexity in combat. Most people use painted miniatures on a hex map for this, but these are expensive, fragile, take a lot of time and skill to paint so that they look good, and can only really be one particular thing without a lot of hand-waving. So some years back we made the shift to using minifigs on the hex map.

Minifigs work great for gaming--as any of you who've played BrikWars or Evil Stevie's Pirate Game can attest! One of the best parts about character creation before a campaign is when we get to root through the GM's organized collection of minifig parts and put together our "character". There's just one problem: they don't like to stand up on their own, and there aren't a lot of options for making them do that. The CMF series stands are 4x3 studs, which is far too big to fit in a 1" hex. The MFW stands are great--I have a bunch of them and have used them extensively in the past to display my custom figs--but they're round and if a character gets nudged even slightly out of place it's nearly impossible to tell what hex they were facing. You can also stand them on plates--for the last few years we've been using 2x3 plates and this works fairly well, since three studs = 24mm = 0.94", which fits perfectly in a 1" hex. But they still tip over pretty easily from side-to-side if someone bumps them, which happens a lot in a crowded battle scene.

Will Chapman of BrickArms is a good friend of mine, and once when I was over at his shop I happened to mention how we used minifigs for tabletop gaming. This led the conversation towards my desire to have a hexagonal minifig stand made especially for gaming, and Will was kind enough to prototype it for me and run some for our game. After posting pictures we quickly realized that there might actually be a real demand for such a thing beyond just my own gaming group, and Will was kind enough to offer his skills as a designer and his contacts and resources to help me get set up to bring the stands to production.

And now they are!

The stands come in two different designs: the clean and simple HX2S with two centered studs, and the HX4S which additionally has two hollow studs along one edge, intended to allow you to add status markers, health tokens, or anything else. Both styles also have two tubes on the bottom directly below the center studs, for stacking the stands or using them as a building element. The stands are 24mm from face to face--three studs, in other words--and exactly one plate thick.

After that long-winded explanation, you're probably like "TL;DR, show me the pix already". ;) So here's a gallery showing off the stands and some of the uses to which I've put them so far:

CAD view of The HX4S:

The HX2S is exactly the same but without the hollow studs on the side.

An in-game usage example:

(edit: fixed; for some reason the 640 version of the image is broken on Flickr)

Used in a Lego scene (which I need to redo now that I have them in tan! and dark tan):

Minifigs standing on most of the available colors (some of which are easier to see than others):

Used to help display BrickArms prototypes:

Paired up with some of my favorite custom minifigs:

Used for Lego microspace battles:

Demonstrating their full System compatibility as a building element:

You can see more images of them in my Hex Stands photoset.

G.I. Brick was selling these at BricksCascade a few weeks back, and they were a huge hit there. Both G.I. Brick and BrickArsenal are now carrying them on their sites in 17 colors (color-matched to the equivalent Lego or BrickArms colors), and I'm working on lining up a UK reseller as well.

I'd love to hear your feedback on these and any ideas you might have for how they could be used! I'd especially like to hear from tabletop gamers or anyone who's gotten their hands on some, but any and all comments are very welcome. Unless it's "you suck and so do your stands". In which case, well, sorry, but I like them and I'm making them anyway. :)

Cheers everyone!

Edited June 15, 2012 by Catsy

[Scubacarrot]

These look really cool, I might want some for just setting up minifigures, I'm not a big fan of the 3x4 CMF plate, so this would be a really cool solution. Something I'm wondering: Can they be placed on a baseplate, like next to each other, in a way of a hexed base game? Or is the only option for that to have them loose next to each other?

[Catsy]

Something I'm wondering: Can they be placed on a baseplate, like next to each other, in a way of a hexed base game? Or is the only option for that to have them loose next to each other?

They can't be placed directly on a baseplate--that would require stud notches cut into them like Lego wedge plates have. I considered that possibility but it would look absolutely terrible--the notches would obliterate two points of the hexagon and possibly break up the four angled sides as well. And it would still constrain the stand to the four cardinal directions of the Lego grid, which would defeat the purpose of using a hexagon rather than simply a Lego plate. :)

With that said, you can use a 1x2 plate (or a pair of jumper tiles, or any combination that effectively adds up to the same thing--in the below picture I based the stand on a 2x3 plate) surrounded by some tiles to achieve that effect, like so:

And of course as one of the above pictures shows, they will fit flush against a 2-wide plate and otherwise comport with System.

I tried various arrangements of jumper tiles and regular plates to try creating a hexagonal grid that would accomodate these out of pure Lego, but there's just no way do it--the geometry of a grid of squares versus a grid of hexagons is completely incompatible.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Catsy

[CMP]

These are nice. Not a table top gamer myself, but I find myself creating custom minifigures all the time and displaying them on plates. These are a much more elegant solution, they remind me of the KKII minifig stands.

[Scubacarrot]

Thanks for the quick answer!

The fact that you cannot create a grid that will stick together is a bit of a letdown for me - To be able to properly use them for gaming you would either need Hex-paper like you showed in that picture, or be extremely careful... I'm thinking if you make rows of them, it would be slightly more stable, would it not be?

Still, I might grab some anyway, since I'm a sucker for hexed based stuff. These are very cool things, enough to get a nerd like me excited .

EDIT: Where is that portal gun from? shut up and take my money.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Scubacarrot

[Catsy]

The fact that you cannot create a grid that will stick together is a bit of a letdown for me - To be able to properly use them for gaming you would either need Hex-paper like you showed in that picture, or be extremely careful...

That's correct--the original gaming purpose for which they were intended was to be used on a hex map, so they'll work best on that. However, for playing something like BrikWars--or even something like brick-built Warhammer/40k--you could just as easily use them on any open, flat playing surface, like a floor, your kitchen table or any kind of wargaming terrain.

I'm thinking if you make rows of them, it would be slightly more stable, would it not be?

Absolutely. I need to take a picture of it, but I have one of the new LOTR Ringwraths mounted on his horse, affixed to a 2S on the front legs and a 4S via the hollow studs on the back legs. They line up perfectly and work a treat!

EDIT: Where is that portal gun from? shut up and take my money.

Thanks! I made it; that's one of my custom pieces (as is the Chell fig holding it). It's created from a few modified BrickArms, some cut-up white Lego motorcycles helmets, and some miscellaneous styrene/acrylic bits.

[the enigma that is badger]

I've had the wonderful opportunity to test out these stands during their development, and they're truly awesome work. All the fits are perfect (just the right amount of clutch power), and there's just something visually-striking about a fig mounted on one that really adds to the presentation. Add that to the number of interesting ways you could potentially incorporate them into MOCs, and I think the HX2S and HX4S Stands are truly definite fun, useful, innovative custom items.

[AhabDarab]

After having these in my hand, at World War Brick, I can say they are as good as everyone else says. Quality of workmanship, sturdiness, and function all receive great scores in my book.

Thanks for making them.

Ahab out . . .