She Who Must Be Obeyed

So, my Significant Other has deigned to take a look at my workbench, cluttered as it is with the plastic 'Silent Death' fighters from EM-4, mounted on 1" flight stands.

"What are those?" she declares haughtily. I launch into an explanation of the use of these fighters as alien aircraft for the Land Dreadnoughts project, only to be cut short.

"I know that  - what are those things?" "Erm, oh, you mean the flight stands?"

"Yeah, what are those black things - I thought they were flying saucers or something stuck underneath...."

I bluster in reply, "Well, these are black plastic, but you can get see-thru ones...."

"Why go to all the trouble of making that green surface, and then plonk those on them? Don't people think they look weird?"

"Well, we, er, kind of ignore them when playing, you know, they're something to get hold of instead of touching the mini..."

"You should cover them up - you know, with that green stuff that always seems to get everywhere!"

I splutter, "Well, I....", but with that she has turned on her heel, and gone, interview over.

After sighing long and deep, I turned to look at the stands. In a way, she had a point - they were kind of obvious - but how to disguise them? 

Flocking directly onto them probably wouldn't take too well, and would get rubbed off in play, mmm, other work forgotten, the wheels started to go round. "Cover them up", she'd said - I'd often used a medium grade sand paper as a basing material, how about a cone of that to act as a cover?

You could even dye or paint it to represent different surfaces, earth, grass, desert, whatever; some double-sided sticky tape along one edge, and you have a removable, re-usable cover, at least on the face of it.

Of course, as an imperfect being, of questionable ancestry regarding mathematics and geometry, I had not realised that the wider you have the circumference of base of the cone, enough to cover the plastic hexagon, the taller it is in height, or something like that, so the efficient cover rather turned into something clunky and horrible.

I was about to turn back to the drawing board when I heard a dismissive sniff behind me:

"What are you making now.....tents?"

I didn't have the heart to admit my failure to the harshest critic in the world, so grinned cheesily in reply.

Whatever their input or influence, this is a salute to those Significant Others who inspire and indulge our hobby, treat us to helpful suggestions, or little surprises that have to be gently put right........"No love, the Giant Bunny is not appropriate for the Russo-Japanese War...."

Long may they be our guides!  :-).