Thursday 17 October 2013

Off table battery markers

Those who know me will tell you that I have an aversion to war gaming paperwork. Writing things up on a blog is one thing, having to look things up on a roster sheet during a game is quite another. It is why I make so many markers and counters. 

Recently my mind turned to off board artillery markers. Up until very recently I've been using 15mm stuff that has been placed, on- table, on pieces of red card to mark its off board status. It works well enough except for three things. Firstly, most heavy artillery is not available in 15mm (and why should it be as it will seldom, if ever, get used on-table). Secondly it has a large footprint and takes up too much room. Thirdly, even if it were available, it would take an excessive amount of time and money for its gaming value - cost benefit.


I was thinking of using pictures mounted on thickish card and so forth, then I suddenly remembered previous forays into WW2 in 10mm and 1:300 scale. A light went on.


Immediately thereafter ordered the guns I needed - some of which are pictured above alongside my 15mm stuff. Their range is not universal, but it has a good deal of the more common heavy stuff. It is also very cheap - £0.40 a gun and crew - and Andy Kirk is a pleasure to deal with.

I decided to paint and base them purely as markers - which took out lots of work - and I think they fit the bill perfectly. It will not be a new idea, but I think it is a good one and worth repeating. A very small corner of the field will be forever off-table.

5 comments:

Jonathan Freitag said...

Clever idea and the execution is brilliant!

Jonathan Freitag said...

Clever idea and the execution is brilliant!

Sun of York said...

Great idea. I need something like that to show limbered artillery in Napoleonics.

Milo Burgh said...

Nice idea.

Are you using one model per gun or one model per battery?

JAMES ROACH said...

I'm using 1 'marker' per battery. I mark table losses with 'loss markers' and these can be used on counter markers too. Battery markers are generally placed on a pice of card at the table edge.Normally, in our games, the actual position of the artillery in relation to table orientation is unimportant - its just a range thing.