One of the reasons I struggle to choose a gaming period, scale, or even finish an army is that there are too many options! This week it's the fault of the incredibly prolific Peter Dennis, who is busy working on a series of 10mm figures and buildings.
The appeal of small (heh) armies is that I am limited in my solo games to a very small table. So far the armies available are French and Russian, a war which doesn't appeal much to me. This despite a family legend that our surname comes from a Bordeaux draftee who was left behind in Russia and married a nice Jewish girl. I'm an Anglophile, and my intro to historical gaming started with the Seven Years War, so I'm waiting on the Brits, Prussians and Austrians.
That won't stop me from using what's available so far, though...
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| Semi-flat buildings and "cross-trees" on a chessboard of two-inch squares. If I use these for demos at work, I'll have to cut the buildings down, as the one at the back. |
These are designed specifically for Absolute Emperor, one of Osprey's "blue book" series of games. It's a game of massive battles in which a handful of bases represents an entire division. I'm more interested in smaller-scale, along the lines of Keith Flint's own Osprey rulesets Shadow of the Eagles and Honours of War. Or Junior General's generic but simple horse-and-musket rules.
When it comes to the figures, Peter recommends using something called "impact glue" to stick them to bases - edge on. I've had no success with that, so am trying the method used to assemble the "flat" buildings. This is to insert a tab of ground-colored paper before gluing the front-back sides together.
For those who haven't seen Paperboys assembled:
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| Paste a 20x30mm card to a 30x40mm paper. |
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| Cut the corners off the paper. |
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| Fold over and paste the paper to the card. |
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| Stick the figure strips to the card. |
I'm undecided about base size. Because I have such a small table, 30mm wide is about the maximum - but five or six bases mean only about eight regiments can fit in line. Three bases a regiment worked when I had casualty figures - which there are in this paper series... Of course I can use a gridded field with one base representing each unit, too.
Like I said, I struggle to choose.
I like the look of the buildings and woods on the chess board. It would be a good way of making gaming understandable to non gamers with a mental entry point via Chess.
ReplyDeleteThat's the plan! We are not at this point running chess again, though some of our players are bringing in their own sets. So the interest is there.
DeleteI agree the chessboard is a good introduction to the Wargame as "chess with a thousand pieces" as Featherstone called it". Chessboards don't need to be black and white https://wargamehermit.blogspot.com/2017/07/chessboard-wargaming-full-circle.html
ReplyDeleteMost of our sets are green and white. I have described wargaming in the past as "Chess, but with guns," which seems to get the point across!
DeleteYeah, you got some nice options but a lot of unique parameters to deal with. You’re probably just gonna have to pull the trigger on one of them and let it play out.
ReplyDeleteOf course changes will be needed later on. 😀
Fair point! The teens at work are really into Dungeons and Dragons at the moment, so I may bring in my old Warhammer stuff and concentrate on that for a bit.
DeleteJennifer, part of the enjoyment of the hobby is wrestling with tough choices to set upon a solution that works for you. The discovery process is just as important as the final result.
ReplyDeleteWhile you're absolutely right, I spend what sometimes seems like an interminable period on the discovery process. This is not necessarily bad, of course - I've always been more of a reader than a player!
DeleteFar from being a negative, your wide and varied interests make for fascinating posts on a range of topics.
ReplyDeleteRegards, James
I'm pleased you think so, and I'll continue to discuss all manner of topics, but I hope to at least lean towards a few for the next few months!
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