One of the things that annoys me most when playing a game is the amount of gaming material that progressively enters the carefully laid out battlefield. Dices, casualty rings, rulebooks, cans of beer, you name it. Mostly in a horrendous colour to make sure it will get notified and providing a perfect view of the losses of a unit.
In order to prevent this our houserules state that you are not allowed to place any rulebook, glass of wine or other objects that not belong there on the table. This works pretty well and provides an excellent starting point for the next step to clean up the table from unnecessary clutter: painted casualty markers.Luckily I had already painted two for my Prussians who are giving battle next Saturday, but they were unbased as I could not decide on how to do this. I did not want to paint numbers on it and thought of painting small stripes on the sides of the bases. But in a recent discussion with one of the group we realized the solution did not have to be complicated at all. Why not use tufts? we do it anyway.
All the Prussians are four on a base so I put one, two and three tufts at the different sides. The side pointing at the unit tells us how many casualties the unit has. Easy but effective I guess. Another advantage is that you can even create some generic markers without a casualty figure that you can use for any period. Just paint a base and put some tufts on. Good as starting point if you don't want to paint a marker for every unit and it will always beat a pink die or yellow casualty cap.
So, more things on the to-do list and in the meantime it still will be dice. Any koopclub volunteer to make 20 or so generic ones ;-) ?
Minis from Calpe Miniatures
That's a damn good idea, very good.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is, I hadnt thought of that before.
ReplyDeleteNow I need to make some Viking casualty bases with 1, 2 and 3 enemy heads on each side :-)
very clever and aesthetically pleasing as well!
ReplyDeleteNice markers, I like them. We play Mud & Blood with 2 different sets of casualty figures: one representing 1 individual shock the other representing 5 shocks.
ReplyDeleteNice idea and really nice markers!
ReplyDeleteVery clever idea Mike. Now that I have sets of Black Powder and Hail Caesar rules this is an excellent way of keeping track of the casualties!
ReplyDeleteGood stuff.
ReplyDeleteThey look super and nice idea as well. Great looking blog header!!
ReplyDeleteChristopher
I like the idea - much more esthetically pleasing than marking numbers on the corners of the bases (which is what I was doing). Nice painting and basing on yer dead'uns too!
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Doc
Another less time consuming idea might be to use smaller bases with one, two or three tufts. Or use litter like boxes, muskets, wagon wheels (for artillery) etc.
ReplyDeleteMarc can of course use the type of stones you find in stone walls :-)
Great blog and wonderful markers - I really have been missing out.
ReplyDeleteFrank
http://adventuresinlead.blogspot.com/
Great casualty markers and great painting! Dice and other tokens are always an eye sore in a game
ReplyDeleteexcellent idea. I already have bought Gallic and Iberian dead for my antic games, but i didn't know how to base them. Now i do.
ReplyDeleteAmazing work my friend !! I like this. Very nice painting
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliments. Need to schedule a marker making day as I forgot we also need shock markers. And enemy heads for the upcoming viking project of course haha. Just picked up some stones from the garden Suchet, so Marc is in the clear
ReplyDeleteMike, what an awesome idea. They look really excellent. With your permission, I'm going to steal that idea and try something along those lines!!
ReplyDelete