Messin' Around with the Craft Punch for Oathmark Movement Tray Enhancements

I just set these in after cutting them as a test. Once the trays are primed, painted and terrained, I'll center, and glue these down properly. Read below for the whole story:

I like the Renedra movement trays, but I've gotten kinda fussy looking at the gaping holes that appear as models are removed. Also they don't make trays that are three ranks deep - just two and four. I came up with this for two reasons: first - to close off the last rank without wasting time making plugs for the last rank for my 15 man units (which I will of course do anyway in all likelihood.) Second, I want to make sure every slot is serviceable and also looked passable instead of the common black or dark brown hole people leave behind. And these will be flat and won't interfere with the circular edge of slottas where I use them.

These were from Hobby Lobby - cheap!

 

This whole thing is kinda self explanatory - the punch I got was the 3/4" even though the slots are 25mm (an inch) across. Both less than five bucks each - cheap as experiments go. 

I'm sure, with practice, I can get more cut out per sheet - I got almost 75 per page so not too bad.

As mentioned, I bought a 1" punch and they create discs, like my 1" washers (pictured) that are ever so slightly too big. They don't sit perfectly at the bottom but creep up around the edges, forming a bowl/basin. That would simply pop figures up above the ground I fear.

Here is a standard slotta base - the bottom is 25mm/1" but it bevels up to exactly 3/4" at the top - nice, if I use these for plugs later - I will probably use wood disks though for that purpose.

Then I thought it'd be neat to mark the dead in some way. Originally I was looking for Skull and Crossbones decals/stickers but they all seemed to be 1" - and thus slightly too big.

These were cut hastily for this blog entry, but you can get a sense of what I have in mind. Some are to scale, others not - I think I prefer the sepia tinted at-scale ones better than the stylized big ones, to get a sense of they were submerged in earth recently. I suppose any bones motif would be cool here too. My intention for these four-deeps is to do some with just the last rank in the moss, and for 20 man units, all skulls in every slot.

I printed up a sheet with the image repeating, to do up some more. I'll print them on color safe, sticky backed/decal paper for the finals and pop them in over a dark earth color to match.

 Are you fine with just dark holes left behind in your trays? Let me know in the comments what you think - any other neat ideas? I see many don't even bother painting their movement trays - not my style as long time readers here will already know. 

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