The one thing I do not like about Mage Wars is the player board and the cubes used to display status. The cubes are too fiddly and are too easily accidentally moved. On top of that I prefer actually "paying" mana instead of moving a cube.
SO, I decided to use old domino tiles and engrave them with Roman numerals. on the whole I needed 24 domino tiles, 12 per player (I,I,I,V,X,X to display the channeling value (1-28) and I,I,I,V,X,X,X,X to display maximum live (1-48)). I sanded the the red (live points) ones to get a more rough surface (better drybrushing effects), but left the purple ones unchanged, so the natural white can gleam where there is no purple color. The numerals were inked.
I used glas beeds for the mana value (large one 5 mana, small one 1 mana) and red colored stones to display the hits taken (large one 5 hits, small one 1 hit). The beads and the stones also look much better on the cards that are on the board than the damage and mana markers supplied in the game.
