"Troops inside buildings that are solid models" Topic

How do other gamers get around this if using solid buildings, lead or resin etc?

I always used to cluster them around so I could tell which direction any particular squads were pointing (never really bother about window locations on the model itself).

But this gets a bit confusing in confined terrain spaces in 6mm, only other way I could come up with was a separate sketch map of the village so I could put the troops in the building footprints.

Any other solutions you use?

Sketch map.

Cardboard chits, or paper listings, under the buildings, etc.

I don't subscribe to the practice of placing troops on roofs, unless they are flat, but have seen people do that. Looks rather silly, in my personal opinion, but I also don't like bases under vehicles, either.

Card cut outs of the the area of the building, numbered so you know which building off table. Not the best solution but it seems to work.

Using hexes, the hex is just a plot of land, so the same area can hold both buildings and troops and the troops essentially count as being in cover while ever they are in that hex.

For games where infantry are normally several to a base, I've thought of painting up a small number of extra infantrymen on individual bases (making sure those bases are as small as possible without making the figures prone to falling over) for each type of infantry to use as tokens of sorts. A few of them placed in immediate proximity to a building, or on flat rooftops, or in the streets and yards of a cramped built-up area could signify that the building or BUA is occupied in a visually pleasing manner. One could assume these are lookouts, runners or stragglers while the rest of the troops are out of view inside.

If the rules are terribly nitpicky about where exactly the troops are inside a building or BUA, let alone which direction they're facing, I'd probably not be very fond of those rules, especially for small scales like 6mm.

Along with Robert666, I like surrogate insides off the side of the table. Unless you have lots of buildings in a dense geography, it isn't too hard to track which is which.

If these are supposed to be hidden troops, then we use cardboard chits on the buildings, face down. They must turn face up when they fire.

I have a template under each building. If the building is occupied, I remove it and put the figures on the template.

Template.

And a cheap cheat: take photos of the sides of the building and recreate it on paper, with no roof an obviously hollow.

I've taken photos of my 15mm solid houses in the past (or ones that lacked enough room to fit in the quantity of troops)

I just printed a photo of the house in question and lamented them. I just placed the troops down on them when they occupied that house. It was very obvious which house was been used and depicted a "real" ground view of the house which gave a certain feel to the narrative. (almost like looking at a historical photo of a building used in a battle)
I have a rather large side table and I found I preferred doing this than using the houses that did have enough room.

Instantly lamented the whole idea :)

For Tim and the other spelling nazi's out there: laminated :)

All of my houses have floorplans that I place under the model. When a unit moves into the building. I remove the building and the unit is placed on the floorplan. When the unit moves out, I put the building back. The floorplans will have window and door placements just like the model.

The floorplan is pretty neat since you can actually have firefights inside the building. I don't differentiate between floors when units of opposing sides are together within the building. Units of the same side are assumed to be occupying both floors. It's just close combat.

I place markers representing the units under the house when they are hidden.

Are we talking regular wargames or skirmish games here? My Western buildings are all solid. We abstract action inside a building. For regular wargames buildings (which are generally way out of scale) they can contain a set number of figures – a unit or whatever. Figures inside are place off table.

Template/side sheet with boxes for separate floors in multistory buildings. Move the stand(s) into and within the buildings on the sheets. If occupied by both sides, both sides' stands are placed in the appropriate building floor boxes. Keeps down some of the clutter on the board.

Thanks everyone, good ideas there, especially Rhoderic's signifier figures.
It is for wargaming, Brian and yes as buildings are always overscale I always mean to treat a building as 'a built up area' with a certain capacity rather than what it actually looks like but I always seem to end up visualizing it as the latter anyway.

I use terrain templates for the built up areas, and merely move the solid (or even hollow) buildings around as required.

In more tactical games, we either just remember who is in the building, or shove th bases up against it.

Lamented?

Yes! Because they are now deep within the gelatinous bowels of the house, being digested alive. You will continue to hear their horrifying screams for a few hours, mostly from the more corpulent members in the group, who happen to take a little longer to dissolve. Mostly.

After that, stay mostly upwind of the house. Mostly.

Dan
PS. I think it's time for more painkillers!

It's why we invented hollow card buildings. Really you would need hollow duplicate houses off table to place the figures in. We cheat horribly. We assume a max of 1 weapon for each normal sized windows. That means we have vastly too few figures in the area covered by one house. However in reality troops would be in one or two actual houses where as a model house covers upto about 25 real houses. It's about what abstractions you find acceptable.

Wargaming – particularly 15mm – either on a flat roof or marked on a map (or noted with a slip of paper).

John T

Simple elevated platform. Raise building, place infantry, set platform and set the building on platform.

Simple.

I use a gray piece of felt cut to the building's footprint. Just remove the building entirely and put your infantry on the felt. You can draw "walls" and doors/windows on too if you like.