Monday, June 27, 2011

Prototypes of 28mm Napoleonic Unit / Casualty Markers


Like a lot of gamers, I like to keep the tabletop clean of dice, measuring tapes, rule sheets, pets, soft drinks, etc., but I know that concessions have to be made for marking unit status and displaying other game mechanics. Nonetheless, I really don't like casualty caps, especially anything plastic, as they seem to break the aesthetic of the painted miniatures and scenery. I've always liked the look of casualty figures, but in several rule sets a unit can take numerous 'hits' so it can seem that there is a cloud of casualties following along, and if they get too close to one another confusion can occur in determining to whose casualties belong to what unit.

So I'm playing around with how to compress as much unit information into as small a space as possible. Here are a few unit status markers that I've mocked up that combines a small vignette, a 'fin' for mounting a unit ID card, plus a few slots to fit small (7-8mm) six-sided dice to track hits. 

Here is a shot of the base showing the ID fin and the slots for the D6.
These were built on 50mm steel bases with bits of plasticard to build-up the slots and fins.

These two castings are from Offensive Miniatures. I quite like the wounded drummer boy.
The slots work reasonably well to keep the dice all in one spot and prevents accidental mix-ups when units are compressed together in a scrum. For a game such as 'Black Powder' the dice can be of different colours to track Disorders, 'standard' hits and Shaken status. We've also come up with a simple protocol to move the stand from the back of the unit to the front to keep track of which stuff has been activated - pretty straight forward stuff really.

Foundry Rifle officer with Perry plastic British casualty.
I've noticed that Litko has a new casualty base featured in Jim's Lab that has a numeric dial which looks quite promising. If I could get them to prototype one that incorporates a couple dials in it then it naturally would be able to track two different sets of information and I could get rid of the dice - something to ponder...

Victrix plastic British officer along with a Offensive Miniatures drummer casualty.
Victrix plastic French officer with a Perry infantry casualty.

14 comments:

  1. Brilliant! I need some of these but with Vikings on them :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. They look excellent. I will steal this idea for sure:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. They look fantastic, what a great idea!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good grief they're bloody nice, very well done sir.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great idea and you have done a very nice job of them too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very nice, I especially like the dice idea.

    John

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks guys, I appreciate the encouragement!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great idea! Very, very nicely done markers as well!

    Christopher

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes very good idea, for both Black Powder and Hail Caesar to be sure.

    ReplyDelete
  10. these look great awesome paint work i really like them a lot
    Cheers
    Kent

    ReplyDelete
  11. Genius.

    I will have to rip this brilliant idea.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I hope this idea isn't copyrighted because I want to use it. Brilliant idea.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks again guys! I've seen great variants of these by Sidney:

    http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.ca/2012/03/british-stretcher-bearers-and.html

    and John:

    http://fuentesdeonoro.blogspot.ca/2012/05/rir-9.html

    Its nice to know that the idea has become useful to others. (Though I'd be surprised if I was the first to do it.)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)