Making Game Miniature Movement Easy

 Board Games  No Responses »
Jan 132012
 

Those of you who follow BattlePlay on twitter know that one game we return to often is BattleLore. Richard Borg’s Command and Colors is a great system for combat abstraction; players get the feel of large scale battles without the complexity of typical war game simulations. Two of the costs of entry to wargaming has always been the time involved in game setup and piece logistics. By piece logistics I am referring to the time invested in moving pieces about the board, straightening them when they become misaligned, and the general activities around keeping the gaming battlefield organized. These piece logistics are inherent in both counter and miniature wargaming.

BattleLore utilizes miniatures to represent troop units; four miniatures for infantry units and three larger miniatures for mounted units. During our games, whenever units are moved about the board, it is a certainty that the individual miniatures become misaligned, often ending up in other hexes and other orientations from the desired. At times I’ve noticed players becoming visibly frustrated while the unit they are moving becomes a pile of figures lying in and around the target hex. Well, I decided something had to be done about this. The money and time invested in BattleLore made it more imperative to improve the enjoyment of the game while reducing the annoyance of piece logistics.

Enter the magnetic base. After evaluating several prototypes I came upon a combination of inexpensive and easily accessible magnets for use as both the unit bases and the figure bases. ProMAG brand magnetic business card sized magnets with adhesive backs make an excellent source for a unit base. They can easily be cut to size for either the four figure infantry bases or the three figure mounted bases. Leave the adhesive strip intact for a smooth gliding bottom. The top you can paint to match whatever board color you will be using the base on or whatever color strikes your fancy. For the BattleLore boards I used FolkArt Grass Green daubed on using a foam brush.

For the figure bases I used the ProMAG 0.5” strip magnets again cut to size. squarers for the infantry bases and a bit longer of a rectangle for the mounted units. The magnets on the unit bases will snap to the unit base with enough strength to keep the figure on the base but not enough such that removing the unit to record losses is difficult. I find that slight pressure on one figure will slide the entire unit around the board easily. I bought the magnets I needed for a base game of BattleLore and a few expansions from Blick Art Supply for a reasonable cost.

This system could be used for any miniature game that suffers from burdensome piece logistics. Give it a try and let us know in the comments what new applications you find. Given the creativity of board gamers I expect to see improvements and configurations I haven’t thought of!

There is no stopping storage of this magnitude!

 Board Games, Game Commentary  No Responses »
Dec 082011
 

Playing and owning boardgames is a wonderful hobby many of us share. Countless hours are spent on the logistics of this hobby: rules reading, setup, break down, and organization. For those of us with large, multi-piece board games organization can be a challenging task. The industry and our own invention has given us many techniques from the old SPI plastic counter trays, to zip-lock baggies. I remember back in the ancient days using styrofoam cups covered with tinfoil to keep counters organized.

Things become even more difficult when we want to take our favorite games on the road and play them at a gaming store or friends house, al the while keeping track of where the components are, having the ones you want handy at easy reach without everything becoming a complete pile of mess.

BattleLore from Fantasy Flight Games is a prime example of a board game that can go horribly wrong when it comes to transport and play away from home. The base game with a few expansion thrown in can grow to over 300 figures; along with the accompanying unit banners and game cards, the transport of the materials for a serious game session can be daunting.

Over at Board Game Geek you can peruse through the picture gallery for BattleLore and see what other players are doing for storage and transport. These ideas are not just for BattleLore, but they give you the capability to apply these solutions to any large scale board game.


After a bit of research and thought, we decided to go with the fishing tackle box as our form factor. For this we selected the Plano 7771 model. First and foremost it was selected due to its size. The 7771 is a ginormous (size here) with five primary storage
areas. Under the see-through top lid is a compartmented section with removable separators. To the right of this is a large compartment beneath a hinged lid. The top lid opens to reveal a tray for storage of flat items (rulebooks) and includes a small storage box. The central drop down transparent door holds four separate tackle boxes, all compartmented with adjustable dividers. To the right of the drop down door is another lidded storage compartment.

Being able to place the BattleLore mounted map board into the lidded tray was a must. The board almost fit within the try except two small plastic ribs prevented the map from sliding down into the case. Thankfully, the plastic construction was easily modified to remove the two ribs; an xacto knife and a little scoring along the edges and the ribs were easily and cleanly removed from the box. After this simple modification the map slid easily into place. These two cuts to remove the superfluous ribs were the only modification we needed to make to the 7771.

The four large removable tackle boxes provide an excellent way to store miniatures or other game components or tokens. The size of the pieces can be adjusted for by repositioning the separators to allow for more room. In the example of the BattleLore miniatures, greater space was allowed for the larger mounted units. Obviously, some units will be too big for these compartments. The BattleLore dragons are an example of this. For larger units the solution is to use one of the two large compartments to the right of the drop door or top lid.

Another very positive aspect of the Plano system is the removable tackle boxes. If needed, additional boxes can be purchased that can be used for armies (goblins/dwarves) or other figures and when they are required for a particular gaming session you slide out the boxes containing the figures you don’t need and slide in those that are. It’s a modular storage system!

Overall, the Plano 7771 worked very well for transport of our massive BattleLore collection. Transport of exactly what we need to play, plus all the extra doodads that do along with board gaming such as extra dice, pens, tools etc. can be carried with eas in one organized box.

The Plano 7771 will set you back around $65 US. Considering the use and reuse of this box, its an investment that pays off for the avid gamer on the move.

Wargame Madness

 Board Games  1 Response »
Oct 302011
 

Sometimes people get crazy ideas. This happens to all of us. Something strikes us and we decide, against all sanity to the contrary, that it needs doing or we need a particular something. In gaming for example, a console gamer seeing an unfamiliar video game with an interesting box and back text says to himself “Let’s give it a try, looks pretty cool!” Once it’s home and the playing commences the sinking feelings begin at the first sign of bad graphics or poor game play. No later than five minutes into it he realizes the reason why he hadn’t heard of this particular title before. Buying game that without any inkling of what was in that box is bonafide insanity.

If I consider the above description to define a gamers disease, then there is a pox upon me. And a nasty one at that.

Way back in 1979 board and roleplaying games were taking off big. The hobby game industry was exploding and many wanted in on the action. One of these was a printing company that woke up one morning and decided who better to get in on making board games than a printing company? Yaquinto printing went out and hired a couple of experienced game designers and set out to create the next generation of board games. One of these games in their initial run was The Beastlord.

If I recall correctly we saw the description for Beastlord in a gaming magazine or an insert in one of the other Yaquinto titles. It sounded really impressive: fight as Elves, Human, or monsters in a struggle to control a fertile valley. Build your civilization up and vie for dominance. It had tons of counters representing everything from archers to livestock. It even had strategic and tactical maps! This could be the fantasy wargame we had been looking for for so long. (Which really wasn’t that long but he when you’re a kid six months feels like an eternity.)

We scrimped together enough to order a copy and waited patiently (back then you waited patiently for everything.) We bided our time anticipating its arrival with visions of sacked cities and burning fields. When it arrived we descended on it like the plague of locusts (surely they must be simulated in the game as well!), punching counters and reading rules, gazing at the map and pondering strategies.

So right about now in my tale of game desires gone wrong, you are expecting the horrible realization to dawn on us that Beastlord wasn’t what we expected. The truth is we never really settled on whether the game met our expectations or not. The beastlord himself never really got the opportunity to do much pillaging. Nowhere was a field burning, not even a stalk of wheat. Each time we set out to play the game we were interrupted and never finished a complete game. According to the back of the box play time ranged between one and three hours. For the games we started we felt that this was perhaps overly optimisitc. When you added setup time to this it really required a block of several contiguous hours and for reasons multifarious, we never seemed to get that block.

Then one evening the question of completing a game was settled for us. As the box lay on the gaming table for a night long session (we were fond of playing until the sun came up, and at that youthful age we could do it too), disaster struck. An accidental nudge and the box went catapulting onto the floor. The six-hundred die cut counters, cozily arranged in their nice compartments, flew forth and turned into a multi-colored pile. We stood in shock. With silent reverence, my friend used the box top to scrape the counters into the box, replaced the book and maps, and closed it. As it turned out, forever. We never resorted the counters, and over time our Beastlord copy was lost to us but not forgotten.

Fast Forward to present day. That old friend (who you will be hearing more about), is returning to South Florida, and here is where the insanity begins. Naturally we’ve been plotting and planning which board games to put in queue for play. Old favorites like GDW’s Double Star, and SPI’s The Conquerors were discussed, and then with the gleam of insanity in overzealous eyes we shout a chorus of “The Beastlord!”

It was fairly easy to find a copy of the game and not only that an unpunched mint copy as well. And on the cheap which I am sure underscores the games popularity. At some point this fall or winter we will be sitting down to a session of The Beastlord and this time we mean to finish it. If we accomplish this feat (given our sordid history with this game you never know for certain), I will provide BattlePlay’s readers with a full review of the game in all of its pillaging and field burning glory. Hopefully, after all of this, it actually turns out to be worth it.

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