Friday, April 24, 2015

Collating Data

Its almost time for a new summary and plan of action post, but I'm not quite ready. I have been thinking about it and rereading old blog posts (and not just my own) to remind myself of this and that. I am pleased to find that a January 2011 post  still pretty much sums up my intent and goals even if the desired length of games has shortened.

http://gameofmonth.blogspot.ca/2011/01/strength-through-diversity-year-ahead.html

For those not interested in plans it does contain a couple of pictures of 15mm and 54mm armies that were already gone by then.

One of the things that was contemplated over this last week was my surprising reaction to enjoying the 40mm Toy Soldier and 20mm ACW games. Eventually I decided it had to do with 2 main things, the illusion that a miniature game provides and an outbreak of Old School Nostalgia. Of course two of the things most likely to trigger nostalgia in me are Airfix ACW and shiny Victorian toy soldiers. This is same nostalgia that drove me to quickly write up the Rattle of Dice variant of Hearts of Tin a couple of years ago. Since I don't wish to destroy the Square Brigadier I am going to remove the offending projects from the Square Brigadier bucket and roll back the latest change deigned to allowed for bigger units and longer games. The WW1 game will stay as will the 20mm 1900 Colonial one, the Quebec game and possibly the RCW game. The goal will be easily stored games that are quick to set up, play, and pack up with the 1/72nd version being easily portable.

That will leave the 1885 Atlantica figures along the 1812 and in between collections trucking along allowing me to paint as many toy soldiers as I want and play simple, low sophistication games with the 1885 game in particular aiming more for that Victorian myth feel than gritty reality. Looking at the Rattle of Dice rules reminded me that they were basically a rewording of the core mechanisms of the original Hearts of Tin so that is the route I will take, a reworded Hearts of Tin written in terms of figures not "companies" or "stands".

I'm also going to give up the effort to convert to generic measurement units and call an inch an inch. I, and others, can convert easily enough to suit what ever scales or grids they wish to use. I will maintain a Common Denominator of 3 inch increments for all measurements to allow for easy conversion.  Since I still have trouble reading tape measures these days and don't want to try and mesh 16 x 40 mm figure units with a grid, I will be experimenting further with measuring batons painted with range/movement bands but no increments, a device similar to those recommended in several early sets of wargames.

Well, I need to get back to neglected chores, more on the weekend, hopefully including toys on the table. A summary of expected hobby doings, periods, rules and so on should follow next week.

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