Clutter

[Dave Fielder]

I was just looking at the Warfare images that Leon kindy put on the forum for us. I notice some fantastic games with great figures, scenery and lots of effort to get it all together.

However, I also notice a whole load of clutter, such as coffee cups, hats, pens, dice scattered all over many of these tables. Does anyone have any views over this? Why I game at the local club I like to have an admin area off table to put all the clutter such as rules, drinks, dice when not in use etc.

Should I get my vacuum out and come round your house to clear away all those 10mm figures that are getting in the way of the coffee cups and biscuits?

Thoughts?

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Dice, tape measures, counters and wine gums, a must for every table, figures optional! 

[Luddite]

Clutter is different from rubbish.

Chip wrappers, cups, discarded doughnuts, etc. = unacceptable.  Rage ensues

Dice, counters, tape measures, rulebooks, etc. = unwanted but unavoidable (we tidy these up at the end of every turn as much as possible).

At display games - niether are acceptable...

[Techno]

Should I get my vacuum out and come round your house to clear away all those 10mm figures that are getting in the way of the coffee cups and biscuits?
Thoughts?

What about 'work desks' ?....Let alone gaming tables !
You can come round and help me sort out the chaotic mess that I work in anytime Dave !
Cheers - Phil.

[Steve J]

Die, tape measures perfectly acceptable IMHO, but then I game at home with limited space. Drinks cups etc a complete no-no. I did notice in one game a whole load of based, but unpainted, figures on a demo game !

[Dave Fielder]

Unpainted figures on a demo game!

We have methods of dealing with that at the Commando Training Centre; please send guilty person in a sealed envelope and we will correct the attitude.

[Nosher]

Drives me up the wall

All that should be on the table is figures scenery, game markers and dice that have just been rolled.

All other tut - including rules and fast play sheets should be on another table alongside the game area.

There has been more than one posting on this site with a fecking animal on the table...

[Rob]

My pet hate is dice for casualties, cardboard chits for troop states, or even rings on figures. All of this can be done more attractivly by using other means such as casualty figures, modeled explosions, medics tending wounded, broken wagons guns etc.

I would like to see the "nice to have" figures that appear in each range after the basics are complete include a wider variety of figures that can be used to show troop/unit state.

The basic for all ranges is to have at least one casualty figure but some ideas of what the others could be:
* a figure hobilling and using a musket as a crutch
* a mounted officer with his horse collapsing under him
* Officer on foot holding an arm as if wounded
* a figure on foot with a wounded comrade over the shoulder firemans lift style
* same as the last but with arm over shoulder and round waist

etc, etc,

Cheers Rob 

[OldenBUA]

... or even rings on figures ...

Well, depending on size and location on the figure, these could be interpreted as halos?   

[Albie Bach]

Display games should be photo ready. If someone wants to take a photo of your game you should be able to pick up the dice/tape etc you’ve just used and click.
Then it will always look good for visitors, who are what it’s all about.

At the club we do try to avoid clutter, and I’ve just checked my photos and I see one picture with a dice box on the edge of the table. Not bad. 
Cheers, Colin

[mollinary]

If only we could agree what they would consist of, it would be great to have a standard pack of markers for each range.  To start us off - what about a marker for casualty (foot, horse, guns) , a marker for disorder, a marker for  low on ammunition (bit of a Fire and Fury flavour creeping in here?!),  a charge marker, a morale marker?   What do folks think?

Mollinary

[Leon]

To start us off - what about a marker for casualty (foot, horse, guns) , a marker for disorder, a marker for  low on ammunition (bit of a Fire and Fury flavour creeping in here?!),  a charge marker, a morale marker?

Now that's a slippery slope!  Five figures, plus moulding, so there's over £100 per set, and we'd need one for every range?!  Even at £1 for 5 figures, we're going to have to sell 100's of sets of them!

[mollinary]

Ah, Leon, but everyone would need at least one set, and probably multiples. If you have an army of, say 25 units, how many markers do you need? I don't know, but what do people think?  I have hundreds of causality markers. I would probably want, say 30 markers for disorder, or charge, for each army.  Not trying to twist your arm, but looking for what the forum thinks.   We are talking replacements for "unsightly" non military hardware on our battlefields, after all!

Mollinary

[Rob]

If only we could agree what they would consist of, it would be great to have a standard pack of markers for each range.  To start us off - what about a marker for casualty (foot, horse, guns) , a marker for disorder, a marker for  low on ammunition (bit of a Fire and Fury flavour creeping in here?!),  a charge marker, a morale marker?   What do folks think?

Mollinary

And of course different rules demand varying markers. I think the answer is to make a basic casualty pack per range and possibly some extra generic miscellaneous items which may go across several ranges. 

Casualties are easy(ish)
â€" Foot; like the WW2 dead markers, no hat lying down. These can be quite generic if you make the uniform suitable dishevelled, so that for most ranges one figure and a different colour paint job for each army should suffice.
â€" Horse; like the generic dead horse in the Napoleonic range would be OK for all armies.
â€" Artillery; take any gun out of a current range, and with a knife destroy half of a wheel, hey presto a dismounted gun. Or simply a standard casualty on the same base as a spare gun wheel.

â€" Disorder; In my 15mm Friekorps 7YW Prussians from many years ago they used to supply a small number of figures mixed in with standard figures in the same pose e.g. march-attack, but without a hat and another without a hat and a bandage around the head. These were good for mixing in with units and also could be used as markers. Perhaps something similar in 10mm could fit as a disorder marker? I particularly like the idea of an officer on a horse going down.

â€" Low ammunition could be denoted by a pile of cannon balls; this would be useful to make artillery bases more interesting and could be used in many ranges.

â€" Officers pointing or other “heroic” stance could act as your charge markers like the French 1809 chasseur-a-cheval officer. Oficers are already used in some rules to denote the level of command such as a single for brigade double for division etc.

â€" Morale states could be denoted by multiple casualty bases, broken wagons etc. It would be nice to have to get the wounded hobbling figures for this but I understand we wont get everything. 

So overall not much in the way of extra figures are required. 

Cheers Rob 

[OldenBUA]

... looking for what the forum thinks ...

This is what the forum thought earlier. Some people like figures for markers, but (so far) it's a minority. Add to this the problem that different rule sets require different markers, so maybe the one set won't even be enough!

Then again, a lot of the items mentioned are already available. Pointing officers, stacks of cannonballs, etc etc. Some are still hidden away in various ranges however.

http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,3609.0.html