Decision Points

I could have played this game by now, I've had lots of hobby time, but... well, the long search to decide what the heck I want to be doing for the next while has pretty much run its course in every scale and period so I decided to just get on with getting the troops organized based etc before I played. That led to some minor adjustments to the game plan.

Faraway infantry in obsolete service dress take post in a farmyard and prepare for the onslaught of a horde of Oberhilsians. 

The first item was settling on the period for the rules and my games. Various ideas had led me to momentarily forget that after a lengthy study of the options, I had decided to select c1905 for my fictional campaign. This was after drab uniforms were introduced but before they were universal. More importantly it was after the revolutionary introduction of Quick Fire artillery with shields. I don't have a source for Boer War artillery, all I have are 5 Crescent WW1 field guns and a couple of scratch built heavy guns.

Luckily this is also the period for which Little Wars was written and will allow me to include all the key features I want most from the Boer War,  Mexican Revolution, WWI and various late Colonial Frontier campaigns. Unlike many previous efforts, I am not planning to do these rules as multi-period though they will be easy to adapt. Initially though I will only cover what I need to cover.

The second item was remembering that I had been through various organizational options and most of the exisiting troops were originally organized into 4 figure companies with plans to group the infantry into battalions of 4 companies. Rather than doing the work to change that, I just started putting them back the way they originally were.  Thats just about done now.

A heavy howitzer prepares to join in the bombardment of Faraway positions.
After all that basing and organizing, I realized that I didn't have enough Faraway units of the right period to attack but did have enough to defend while Oberhilse had enough to attack. So I switched armies as well as the war being represented. 

The last issue revolves around the move back to a smaller number of bigger squares. One 4 man infantry company looks a bit lost in a square all by itself but I don't want to double the number of figures per company and this in each wargame army. It works well enough for a skirmish with a handful of units but for bigger games I should also have the ability to mass troops in a small area. This means reviving one of the  past versions of a stacking rule. Its not so much difficult as time consuming making the rule clear, easy to use and having the right effect.  Just a matter of spending the time.