"Counters, Damage Indicators, Casualty Figures, etc." Topic

Hello my friends.

I have another "New Guy" question.

I'm reading Force on Force (prior to reading Tomorrow's War). It seems like I need a pile of other stuff, besides the figures, the vehicles, the terrain, and the dice.

What are some of the cheap/easy ways to represent various stages of wounds, buttoned/unbuttoned AFVs, damaged tanks/buildings, bailed-out tank crews, captured objectives, etc. et cetera?

"Just how many counters and how many kinds can a person own?" I wondered, as my wallet again groaned.

I already bought a dozen sets of poly dice to play this game. I'm guessing twist ties from bread bags could be useful as damage indicators. And I'm thinking a supply of graph paper and a notebook is going to be useful.

Beside all of the tools one could acquire to do the painting and modeling, what's the pile of incidentals to do the actual gaming look like?

The pile of incidentals for most games is equal to the spare cash you have at the end of the week. :)

Short of printing out and mounting markers for yourself, you could get small (.25" dia or so) colored plastic gems from a craft store, with each color used to represent an in-game condition. Probably set you back a couple bucks per color, but they'd be useful for just about any game you play.

Not that bad really.
Glass beads, bingo card markers work.

It is a hobby though and there will always be another cool thing to buy.

You can print out counters as well.

Drop me an email, I might be able to help.

For counters at least.

Was just starting to work on a set.

Check out the Ambush Alley website. They have a forum with lots of neat downloads that you can use for your games. No need to buy Litko, etc. stuff unless you want to.

Mike

Small stones / pebbles are the best, because they look like terrain and dont distract from the look of the game.

I have found the small stones look so innocuous they get overlooked!

Cheap no.
Easy yes.
Pretty yes.

Litko:

litko.net

link

To learn to play simply write the status on small pieces of cardboard (white preferably) or even paper. As you go along you will pick up/make better counters. Over the years we have used dice, pennies, poker chips, pebbles, beads, buttons, colored pipe cleaners, bits of yarn, or raided an old board game. Plus don't forget the ubiquitous cotton balls or the little colored puff balls from the craft store! I have very few counters that cost much at all.

Good gaming!

I just have a stock of tiddlywinks in various colours (red, green, blue, yellow). Cheap and can stand for whatever you want. Plastic tile spacers are also dirt cheap and useful as hit markers.

Less cheap but also useful are mini dice of the type sold by Irregular Miniatures in various colours which also make handy markers.

I used paper markers until I had everything painted and then I began buying wounded and dead figures to put in the units as they took fire. It looks cool and I've never met a gamer that doesn't like the visual aspect of having casualty figures. 8)=

I've used stones/pebbles glued to wood base with flocking. the number of stones have different indications. I also painted some of the stones for various stages of morale.
Yellow for suppressed, red for route, etc.

I'm finding that with any sizable miniature project, there are always a few figures that break or that simply aren't needed. Into the casualty box they go! Trim them from their base, smack/warp them a bit, and glue them 'horizontally' to something. Basically free and as nazrat said they enhance the look!

For damage markers we sometimes use the red plastic rings that hold the lid in place on plastic Coke bottles.

Otherwise I have a set of simple flocked bases that have been flocked and covered with colored flock for flowers for rural settings and asphalt bases with different types of garbage for urban settings.

Litko tokens is the way to go…once you buy a few its an addiction….I buy my 20mm thin bases for my minis and a few tokens….adds up quick

You can end up owning hundreds of counters. I use markers for everything, because I dislike having to write things down and look things up on bits of paper. I mostly use beads (cheap) and home made (cheap) – because, you guessed it, I'm……

Here we have stones (casualties), barrels (reload), and tufts (disordered). All on coins (they're cheaper than washers). Also note the command quality marker. Image printed on sticky backed paper, on card, in a 'restaurant table place setting' holder.

off table artillery markers (the red ones) in 6mm

Blast markers made from nails, glued with a glue gun, covered with sand and grit (I'll add some 'smoke' sometime) and Milliput on coin shell craters. I use the former for routing and the latter for reloads – but they could be used for anything.

The simplest counters are beads. Here are beads marking various forms of damage (in this case Vs hull, crew, and holed) and a 'onfire' marker made from paper and foam. Pony beads (9mm) are cheap as chips; you can get a hundred for a pound or so. The square beads, with a peel of letter sticker on top (side and squadron marker) are more expensive.

My blog has counters everywhere

olicanalad.blogspot.co.uk

Pony beads are, as olicana notes, dirt cheap, and they come in a plethora of colors. If possible, I prefer to keep them off the table – in games where you have a unit card for each unit, they can simply be placed on the card (although then you do have to keep track of which card represents which unit on the table).

One of the more clever approaches for ancient and medieval games that I've seen recently (here on TMP) was pins stuck into a small cap shaped thing. In larger scales, a shield would work as well, and in smaller scales the thing pretty much disappears when flocked. The number of pins (arrows/spears/etc.) in the base tell the tale.

Doug

If possible, I prefer to keep them off the table – in games where you have a unit card for each unit, they can simply be placed on the card (although then you do have to keep track of which card represents which unit on the table).

This approach makes the game look better, without a doubt.

My 'on-table' method speeds play because everything is there in front of you. There are far fewer mistakes made because no rosters or memory are required. After working all day, the lack of brain power required to play a game is usually appreciated more than the aesthetic.

I prefer "diorama-type" markers. I mean, if we didn't want the spectacle of painted minis on a miniature battlefield, we'd be pushing cardboard counters around on a flat hexmap, right?

Since you need to keep track of how many rounds of fire a unit has been in for Ambush Alley, I like a narrow strip (say, 10x40mm) with some yarn or teddy-bear-fur dirt puffs on it. Put down one STRIP for each round of fire, and subtract one die for each strip. Yeah, you will need a significant number of them.

To indicate that a unit is Pinned, I like to use a larger explosion/dirt cloud. put it on a penny or a 1/8x3/4" fender washer like I use for minis.

Wounded figures? I have a pile of the old Flames of War dismounted tankers, most of them are either bandaged or supporting wounded. (You can special-order them through the BF webstore if you want them without buying a tank)

Damaged tanks? black yarn because it's smoking. Add red and yellow for when you blew it up.

As for buttoned/unbuttoned, I haven't found a preferred setup other than two turrets. Hatches are usually a bit too small to magnetize…

Objectives? I typically snag my Flames of War objectives and just flop them on the table, or some blank FoW bases. I still have a bunch of the old, smooth bases, so I can write on them with a sharpie or Visavis.

Counters or no, olicana, that naval game looks beautiful! Well-organized, consistent, cohesive marking systems need in no way detract from the visual appeal of a game. We lose the "perfect realism" battle as soon as we put figures on bases; after that everything is stylised and representational to some extent. If the game plays well without too many "quick reference charts" and side-tables' worth of books, all's well!

I use two different sorts of fibre-fill fishtank filter smoke to designate different degrees of kill:

Stuck to a coin, sprayed with rattle cans and cheap as you like. For the rest of the movement stuff I used to use Litko now mixed with Figures in Comfort Slammers tokens for games.

I find that tokens with things written on them and colour that can be seen at a distance help me greatly in a way that's usually worth paying for.

John T