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.
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.
You did it, as you suggested that you would, and it worked! Looks great, clear and obvious. Of course he's number one, but not that 1!
ReplyDeleteSee you besok besok,
James
That's right, James - he's that other 1.
DeleteYour eclipse of the pips eclipses the lunar eclipse.
ReplyDeleteNo pips at all.
DeleteIt's part of the compromise one needs to do to somehow label units during games. I play in some games where a printed lable does the same as your dice. They are also a bit distracting as well. This is a good choice as these don't interfere much with the figures themselves.
ReplyDeleteIt shows your concern in presentation that you went so far as to bleach the color off. Nice job
I've always tried (with occasional success) to minimise the need for information sheets - I'm a beggar for leaving the things lying about, making a mess and yet somehow losing them at the same time. A veteran wargamer of my acquaintance told me once that there should never be a problem working out the details for a particular unit - any fool can count the remaining figures, and any wargamer worth his salt [direct quote] should be able to recognise the uniforms and thus identify all he needed to know about the unit without "silly bits of paper". I was going to do the Old School Name Drop Shuffle there, and mention that the wise man was Peter Gouldesbrough, but I've decided not to tell you that.
DeleteDecorum; a game played by gentlemen - need I say more? Leather elbow patches on the sports jacket.
I have checked my Featherstone and Young journals and while "Creeping Elegance" is not specifically mentioned I can understand a certain trepidation in closed off circles.
ReplyDeleteI did however heck the "WRG Locked Chest" (I keep them chained in there after picking up the idea from watching a Harry Potter film (when the kids were younger) where particularly powerful spell books are chained to protect the innocent).
All I can say is that even Ms Rowling would not be able to adequately describe the out spewing of hyperbole.
Just saying, good idea, but watch out for wargamers who smoke pipes turning up at your door...
The security cameras will get them. True wargamers are easily recognised by their bounce-sticks, of course, which are not paraphernalia at all, but merely part of a gentleman's attire.
DeleteThat all looks rather neat to me. I've gone for the same sized dice on my ancients units. For a different reason. They aren't 'alf fiddly though.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, fiddly. I gave up on trying to track unit variables using them, since my fingers turned to thumbs, and my thumbs to elephants' feet.
DeleteJust to ensure my dice marking solution is as fiddly as possible, I have the dice frames mounted separately on steel paper, which then get mounted on magnets on the bases. I'd actually assumed your dice were tracking strength points, not formation affiliation. What a good idea, I may have to borrow that.
ReplyDeleteI have tried occasionally to record strength points in minidice, which is a logical thing to do, but if they record something which changes during the game I lose too much time during the game crawling around under the table, looking for the beggars.
DeleteWhat's wrong with 5mm cube beads? You're only going to use one face and the holes won't show much on the sides around the 'tray'. OTOH you could make a virtue out of the problem and stick a wire for a flag in there?
ReplyDeleteBut as you've gone for painting your dice, why not fill the depression with a bit of modelling putty?
Hi Rob - 5mm cube beads are only available as dice-with-holes, which have no advantage over the 5mm dice I'm starting with. I haven't painted the dice, I've simply stripped off the paint pips with a mild solvent and then polished them up, and I've convinced myself that the result looks good enough without attempting to fill the depression. I may, of course, be unnecessarily optimistic. I think ultimately my post was not very interesting, so if I had anything to say here it is that I had a slight problem and I've now fixed it. In the circumstances, I appreciate your offering me an alternative solution, but I think I'm happy with what I've done and don't really want to start again. Your suggestion is sound, of course, but the patient has already recovered.
DeleteOf course you are correct - or almost so. There is a German company that does 5mm wooden cubes in various colours. However, they won't ship to the UK unless you order a large amount or are VAT registered. All due to import VAT and who has to pay it - Brexit, the gift that keeps on giving.......
ReplyDeletehttps://spielematerial.de/en/products/wooden-cubes-5-mm?variant=52233769451784
Neil
Neil - well played, sir - my old friends Spielematerial of Mönchengladbach - I did check out their website (which I find increasingly bamboozling as the years pass) - I didn't find the 5mm cubes but there they are. These are good people to deal with, though as you say it looks as if you now have to be European. I have a small set of 8mm cubes I bought years ago (when I was European) and the quality is excellent. Thanks for this - I think I'm happy with my fudged acrylic ones.
DeleteInteresting post - and comments - about this problem. I like the chained chest that Matt has. In the end it comes down to another wargamer compromise about which each will have their own opinion. As Jack Reacher would say 'Good enough is good enough. Perfect is a pain in the arse. (Am I allowed to write that on your blog? Perhaps you will asteriskise me).
ReplyDeleteHi Jim - Always interesting to get others' ideas - helpful too. Disappointing that the 5mm wooden cubes are manufactured in Germany, but only available here in silly amounts (I guess a lot of the customers are Kindergartens). I'm not sure how Jack Reacher's philosophy lines up with the possibility that there is such a thing as a perfect compromise, but I agree anyway. Digression: in the 1930s the Gibson guitar company of Kalamazoo, who were at war with the Epiphone guitar company of New York, ran an advert in the US music papers and magazines which featured the big marketing slogan, "For when only a Gibson is good enough". Never outfaced, the Epiphone people produced a rival advert campaign of their own, which stated, "Epiphone, for when 'good enough' isn't good enough".
DeleteMy brain hurts.