WSS: Getting Rid of Troublesome Spots

 I have a Zoom wargame set up for Wednesday, of which I am sure you will hear more if you visit around the end of the week. Naturally, since I always fret a bit about running out of time (or broadband), the table is set up already - just have to lose some chairs and shift the table into the centre of the room. I've sorted out the paperwork (such as it is), so I'm all set to get cracking.

Just a little tidying up; a few odds and ends, and a brief return to the niggly-but-not-serious issue of minidice, and the neat deployment thereof. I have a number of friends who consider that things like counters and minidice, not being on the official Featherstone or Peter Young merch list, are best treated by allowing the vacuum cleaner to inhale them. I'm sure they are right; anyway, even if they're not, it gives them a useful opportunity to let off steam in the padded room.

I shall explain this non-serious issue, so that you may understand - this is getting into the First World problem of Creeping Elegance in the wargaming infrastructure department. My WSS armies have minidice (that's 5mm acrylic jobs, in little frames) attached to the unit stands. In my rules, they are useful in a number of ways:

* since the armies, not to mention individual allied units, were often dressed in surprising (or the same) colours, the body colour of the minidice confirms which army (or nation, if that is not the same) this lot belongs to. It varies a bit by scenario, but the main colours in use are red (British), blue (French - slightly anachronistic, but the main significance is that it is not red), sky blue (Bavarian) and white (a general Grand Alliance colour - thus Austrian, Dutch, Hessian...).

* the number displayed on the minidice is important for army organisation and - importantly - activation, since it shows which brigade they belong to. Keeping your brigades organised is a good idea in my games, since if you get brigades intermixed then you may have plugged some gaps with reserves, but they may not be able to do anything at the same time as their friends (etc). Trust me - it is a hassle when it happens.

 

The minidice system - here you see some of the 4th Brigade of the French army - battalions, attached artillery and the brigade commander, all numbered up

That's all fine then. Army commanders are important chaps, of course. A few of them gallop around accompanied by their national flag, which is certainly a clue, but it makes sense (to me, anyway) to have them fitted with a colour-coded minidice too - if the CinC has a brigade all his own (guard, whatever) then that brigade will have a number all to itself, and the CinC will have a minidice with his army colour, bearing the number of his brigade. More usually in my games the Commander does not have such an attachment, but it is still potentially useful to have him colour-coded (these Marshals are very casual about what uniform they turn out in). As a sort of default, I have used 6 as a conventional non-number to indicate that this chap is of this army, but doesn't have a brigade alignment. It isn't right, though, is it? It isn't elegant, for one thing. Apart from the potential inconvenience of one side having 6 actual brigades, anything which requires some explanation isn't right by definition.

Righto. The problem is defined - my early plan was to get a few 5mm acrylic cubes which looked like dice, but didn't have dice spots. What could be simpler? Well, in fact it isn't simple at all. You can buy 5mm dice in many, many colours, you can even buy them with a hole bored through the No.1, to make bracelets and necklaces (I don't mean "you can buy them" of course, I mean "one could buy them"). You can even buy excellent blank dice in all sorts of colours, but nothing smaller than 10mm - in fact hardly anything at all smaller than the ubiquitous 16mm. So you can buy 5mm beads (not cubes) by the truckload, or 5mm dice with holes in, but you can't get unmarked 5mm cubes. I can only assume that this is all based on the assumption that they are a choking hazard for small children, and it is well known that children would never try to ingest a bead or an actual minidice.

Hmmm. I spent longer than you might think trawling the Internet looking for them - eventually I was going to just give up.   

At this point I must thank anyone whom I dragged into consideration of this little problem. I got some thoughtful advice, some very decent suggestions, and I'm grateful - you know who you are.

What I did was take some of the minidice, in appropriate colours and in quantities of one of each, and soaked them in Clean Spirit for about 3 days. Scrub them with the old toothbrush (no, not that one) and wash them and we're ready to go. 

 

New tweak - the French army commander has his new spot-free minidice. If you look very carefully you will see that the ghost of the "1" is still just visible, but if you notice it then you are being awkward - it's streets better than a very obvious "6" staring up at you, anyway!