"Is it heresy to use blocks?" Topic

Let me preface this… What started out as a few months of painting has turned into almost two years of nonstop painting and scenery building. Oh, I'm certainly better at it than when I started, and there are some things that will look good if they ever see a table. That's the problem, I haven't actually played anything in at least six months. I'm so sick of painting that I sold off a bunch of figures just to get rid of them. I'm trying to wrap up a few 6mm armies, a few half-painted figures, and then calling it a day (or a year). Still, I won't have any Napoleonic armies, or anything from a bunch of other periods that might catch my eye from time to time.

It has occurred to me that a fast and flexible option would be to cut some square dowels into rectangle-shaped pieces, spray paint them a variety of colors (red for British, blue for French and Americans, green for Russians, black for Prussians, etc.), and then maybe make some marks for facing. In a day, I could have five or six block armies that I could use with my 6mm scenery, compared with another year and $1,500 USD for miniature armies (which would certainly look better). Is this legitimate, or have I become so overwhelmed by fatigue and Dullcote fumes that I'm babbling heresy?

That's why I use GMT's Command & Colors for Napoleonics and Ancients. Like you said it's better than nothing or piles of unpainted lead. Also, with extra stickers and paint you can create any obscure armies you want.

Its Kriegspiel!

No, you must not do this! Stone the heretic! Stone him!

Of course you can use wooden blocks with your miniatures rules. Several sets of published miniatures rules include cardboard counters, for those who don't yet or won't ever own 3D miniatures. System Seven Napoleonics won a Charles Roberts award (much to some figure sculptors' chagrin) for their fancy cardboard counters. Go ahead, take a break from the painting death-march and cut some dowels. I'll play games with you. If the dowels are neatly painted. And, um, have little faces on them with moustaches…

I have used cardboard units to test new rules, or in one case to lure a board gaming friend to the dark side. He now has armies from the Hundred Years War up through 1870 Prussians.

I think it's legit.

That said, my cardboard counters gave way in time to painted armies. But I do think you should see if you like the period/rules/etc. before painting up and basing a bunch of miniatures.

And yes, strictly speaking, it is heresy. Light the torches.

I too play command and colors napoleonic games. I just don't have the time to spend painting the figures. Or the space either.

Check out this blogger

link

Why?

Whilst I think you can play a game with blocks, for me it does remove one of the attractions of the hobby. I know it can be a chore to research uniforms, clean up figures, prime them, paint, varnish and then base before you can actually play but there is immense satisfaction when the figures eventually get placed on a wargames table, with carefully modelled scenery etc. The aesthetic appeal of a well painted army on a carefully staged battlefield is enormous. Blocks would not do it for me.

I do this all the time. I have tried "Cold War Gone Hot" and while the games were fun, not anything I wanted to put time and money in to. So I bought a set of downloadable counters. Spent a say cutting and pasting to Litko bases. Now I have a Soviet Division. Cost me $35 USD and done in an evening while watching a movie.

I may buy Micro-Armor and replace it some day, but part of the thing is the modern kit doesn't do much for me…

"Is it heresy to use blocks?"

Of course not!!

I've got a set I made for Hordes of the Things. I used bases of the appropriate size (bought from a base company, I forget which). I clued lengths of square dowel across the middle, making them easier to pick up. I drilled a hole in the top center, and inserted one of those pins shaped like a T. I made paper banners that fit on those Ts, with what the piece represented printed across the front.

My son and I were going to play campaigns. In theory, I love the HotT rules. But in practice, we kept getting bogged down with angles and whether we could contact. I don't remember the specifics, and it feels like that sort of thing shouldn't be a problem, and should just work out, but we definitely remember that the light, quick feel never materialized for us. It was HotT 2, I think.

Oh, and while the above isn't "miniatures gaming", it is still gaming, and, in theory, should be fun. We used pretty simple terrain (felt, etc). I do play games with painted figures, but feel free to play alternatives, too.

andy

Blocks, counters, markers are all cool in my book, especially if you are more interested in the gameplay than the minis.

good for handling Fog of War issues as well.

Nothing wrong with using blocks. In fact, blocks often look better than badly painted (or unpainted) figures.

My question is what have you been painting for a year?

As slow as I am I could have two armies in a year

But blocks are fine

I've used excel files to print out units to try out new rules.
I'm also planning to use paper figs my kids who may be more destructive than I would like with my painted figures.

I find they are perfectly acceptable for periods that you only play sparingly, life's too short to invest in a painting project for a marginal interest. It would be different if it was a club project.

Play and be happy.

David

Depends on wheter you're a wargamer, or a miniature wargamer.

Personally, at this point in my wargaming career, I wouldn't play a game if I can't field a painted army.

So the key is to adapt your games to what you have or what you can realistically paint in a given timeframe.

But there's no wargaming secret police that will come knock at your door if do otherwise ;-)

It's not heresy to use blocks, but it's not miniatures gaming either.

Miniatures gaming is extremely labor intensive, as I think you've noticed, and it takes a long time to build up to giant armies on big tables. You haven't said what scale of game you're aiming for or even named a rules set, but if you set out to create giant convention-style games before even playing the first game, you're setting yourself up for failure.

In the mean time, settle on a game that will use what you have already and start playing with them. There are plenty of games that require extremely modest investments in figures and terrain to get started, and this is one of the reasons skirmish gaming continues to be be popular.

It also helps to pool resources with other people to get larger games on the table, and it increases the engagement of the other players if they're playing with their own stuff.

If you want to play giant games but can't craft everything yourself (a position I often find myself in), buy painted figures or send out bare lead to be painted by a painting service.

- Ix

I'm not sure I can list them all, dragon6, but here's what I can think of off the top of my head:

28mm WWII German and American squads and support weapons
28mm modern American, French, and German squads
A hoard of 28mm Middle Eastern and African insurgents
28mm civilians
28mm cowboys and outlaws
Hot Wheels cars for Car Wars type action
Risk figures for SYW (before I really found 6mm)
Risk (or similar) sailing ships
About 80 1/600 aircraft
Some Thoroughbred ironclads
1/285 WWII figures (enough for a company or more) for US (Pacific and Europe), UK (Europe and North Africa), Germans (Europe and DAK), Italians, Poles, French, Japanese, and the USSR
1/285 1980's companies (or more) for US, UK, West Germany, and the USSR
Assorted monsters
Assorted trees and scenery bits
Old West/Middle East adobe buildings
A small Norman church

There may be a few other things I've forgotten.

When a few of us first began 28mm Napoleonics in college, we couldn't afford figures. We simply cut out "bases" from poster board and used the number of required stands. Of course, we used rules that didn't require you to track individual figures

That list screams "Ooh! Shiny!" Instead of starting a whole new project with blocks, I suggest you just pick one period and set of rules, work enough to get a game going, then add to it if you like the game. If after playing a few games you decide you don't like that period after all, sell off that collection.

For example, you can have a fun ironclads game with 2 ships. Paint one ironclad and one wooden ship (preferably the most powerful one), play that game, paint another wooden ship and play the 2:1 game, paint another wooden ship and play the 3:1 game, etc. Instant campaign. When the ironclad finally gets defeated, paint a second ironclad and try to defeat that one, adding ships to either side until it succumbs. If it turns out you hate gaming with ironclads, sell them off and walk away. There are lots of people who would like to buy them, especially Thoroughbreds.

- Ix

It's your table and your game, do whatever works for you. Don't worry about what we think!
I know… More heresy.

The Commands & Colors Napoleonic system from GMT Games may be just the ticket for you. The stickers for the wooden blocks have nice accurate uniformed illustrations on them. The first/core game includes French & British armies and Peninsular War scenarios. Later modules added armies for the Spanish, Russians, Prussians & Austrians. You do have to put the stickers on the blocks, but it's a heck of a lot quicker than painting the figures would be. Later on if you get the urge to do so, you can use your minis to replace the blocks.

There are a number of excellent board games that only require a one time purchase and your done. No terrain, no buildings, no figures, no painting and they take up less storage space.

Not only are there some great board games available on the second hand market but companies like GMT, Decision Games and many more still produced high quality games on just about any conflict you can think of.

To me that makes a whole lot more sense than using wooden blocks to play some sort of half hearted miniatures game.

decisiongames.com/wpsite

gmtgames.com

As long as the blocks are painted, then all is good.

I briefly experimented with blocks but then switched to 3mm by Magister Militum link at least until I started playing virtual games

However, do what makes you happy and don't worry about any one else's opinion

Video review of Commands and Colors:
link

I have some dominoes from Bulkdominoes.com that I am planning to use in corp and army level games. I just don't want to paint any more and I cannot afford to pay for painted figs. I am solo gaming.

Here's another option that's halfway between blocks and figures. They look surprisingly good.

PDF link

That is certainly a lot of stuff you've painted there. As noted above, why not get started on some smaller games?

But yes, blocks, counters, paper armies, whatever. We've all used those.

I'd avoid blocks made of balsa wood, far too light for gaming use. The nice thick wood blocks you get in command and colours are great, I use them as 2mm blocks of buildings:)

It is wargaming, just not miniature wargaming. I would not mix the two though (except if you are indeed going for a kriegspiel thing, with the blocks being units before reveal).

Not quite what you are thinking of doing, but blocks are very useful when used for large-scale, map-based wargames.

The following is my version of Prof Phil Sabin's KRIEGSSPIEL 1914 campaign game.

The blocks were made from the pieces from a cheap, small copy of the Jenga game (48 pieces for £1.00 GBP) which I painted using cheap artists acrylic paint.

If you want to do big games sometime in the future, the key is to build it up gradually.

I've started new periods with 4 inf units, 2 cav, 1 art on each side. That's 7 units a side, 14 total. Depending on how many figures per unit etc, that's manageable to paint. And it is enough to play some interesting scenarios.

Then try to add one new unit (or even half a unit) for the next game. If your end goal is to have big units, paint up half units first, play some games with a reduced figure count, then later expand to full units.

If you play one game a month, things can go rapidly. If there's no game, no need to paint, because you won't need the figures anyway ;-)

If your aim is to produce a bazillion figures, even before you would consider setting up a first game, then you're doomed.

You can also buy painted blocks from Columbia Games:
link

With enough prepared blocks and a copy of a large battles rule set such as "Bloody Big Battles" by Chris Pringle, you could play out the large battles from the horse & musket era up until WWI.

It looks like you have produced a lot of stuff, but it's a very diverse lot. If you want to have a lot of figures for a particular era, you have to focus on that as your goal and stick with it until you get the job done, and have very few distractions that interrupt your focus.

I started painting 28mm miniatures for the Wars of the Roses a little over a year ago. I can now field a force of nearly 300 figures. I painted nothing else during the past year so that I could focus on the WOTR stuff with all my effort.

One thing that I do is to pretend that I need "X" number of miniatures painted by a certain date in the near future, say three or four months from now. I set out the figures that I want to get finished in that time period and get started. If I get those done before the deadline, I set out some more figures and start on them, challenging myself to try to see how many I can get done before the original deadline is reached. If I paint with the mindset that "I have to get these guys finished as soon as possible…I have to get these guys finished as soon as possible", you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish.

Admitting to it on 'The Miniatures Page' is heresy.

Playing games with blocks is fine, but if doing so myself I'd tend towards abstract scenery as well.

We have played a few games of Blucher using cards, and others using figures. In each case, the scenery was 'standard' club figure-game scenery. Using cards (effectively big. thin blocks) didn't feel right in that circumstance. Though their was NO functional difference, I really preferred the figure games.

I don't understand why players who have no interest in the hobby side don't go this route. It boggles my mind to pay the money for miniatures if you are going to leave them bare plastic/metal. If truly the game is the only thing that matters, just use labeled wood blocks (or cylinders for skirmish games) and save your money. You just need to change the labels, and you have a brand new unit.

I only see two issues using blocks and cylinders have. First is I assume many players game at stores which obviously wouldn't like the idea of you obviously using non-store purchased stuff. The second is true line of sight games would make it much easier to spot everything. Though, it would be more fair with square blocks and/or cylinders.

I have used blocks to trial new periods that I'm not sure I want to spend serious money on. It lets me try out formations and tactics without taking time to build a painted army first.

@mwindsorfw

Clearly a case of dullcote poisoning, although the symptoms are usually a strange look in the eyes and muttering "ooh shiny" under your breath as you reach for your wallet

Looking at your list, you are trying to hit too many things at once so not surprising – I am a sufferer myself

My advice
- pick one scale
- pick one period (and one action/campaign from that period)
- play games, use blocks, paper figures (they exist), paper scenery, bits of felt, whatever, get those dice rolling
- understand what your are enjoying most about those games and use that to focus on completing what you need
- the "The PLEDGE" thread on the painting board is a useful way to be honest about what you have got done and see what other people are up to
- be happy with figures you have completed and don't go back and repaint them
- when you have got one scale/period, if you do another period in that scale, most of the scenery can be re-used
- consider buying painted figures on ebay to fill or complete something, but be careful with budget, for some people ebay is a trap
- be happy with what you get done, and don't get frustrated that you haven't completed as much as you would like

I have completed 3 armies in about 3 years, but live close to where a great club meets – I can always get a game with people who already have all the figures etc.

I would caution people against jumping into creating huge armies. Start small and then sit down and think about what you are enjoying. Napoleonics is the biggest risk as people spend as much time arguing about rules as anything else, and there seem to be about a dozen new rule sets released every year, all highly rated and well reviewed which can even drive you into different scales.

An alternative to wooden blocks is to print images/colours/unit ID/flags or whatever onto paper or stick labels and stick that onto pieces of wood, tiles or something

Good luck – would love to see how you feel about it all in a years time

John

I am, of course, not brave enough to print my list, but here is yours :)

28mm WWII German and American squads and support weapons
28mm modern American, French, and German squads
A hoard of 28mm Middle Eastern and African insurgents
28mm civilians
28mm cowboys and outlaws
Hot Wheels cars for Car Wars type action
Risk figures for SYW (before I really found 6mm)
Risk (or similar) sailing ships
About 80 1/600 aircraft
Some Thoroughbred ironclads
1/285 WWII figures (enough for a company or more) for US (Pacific and Europe), UK (Europe and North Africa), Germans (Europe and DAK), Italians, Poles, French, Japanese, and the USSR
1/285 1980's companies (or more) for US, UK, West Germany, and the USSR
Assorted monsters
Assorted trees and scenery bits
Old West/Middle East adobe buildings
A small Norman church

And you can make your own blocks with these top-down unit illustrations from the Junior General website:
link

Great topic and conversation.

First a question: Why do you play? To simulate and learn about war or for an artistic, creative hobby. Both are valid. I'm not trying to knock either. I can see a lot of value to studying the uniforms of the times and units. I get the whole collecting, creating, hobby scene. Very cool. I love the look.

For myself, I'm more interested in the art of war. I don't have time and space for the full treatment of minis, painting and terrain. I do like the minis rules system. Hex wargames always look and feel funny to me. Minis systems just feel right.

To me, blocks are the perfect answer. Quick and easy but they still allow you to keep the rules you like. We took this idea a step further and started to play them on period style maps instead of tables with terrain.

Everybody really liked them. We offered them on Kickstarter. It's growing into a business now. It makes sense if you think about it. It is very much like the original wargame: Kriegspiel. It's basically a mini style game played with blocks on a paper map.

Heretical? Yes but we keep hearing that these are becoming their most often played games just because they are fast and easy enough to fit into today's busy life.

How could it possibly be wrong, its Your game.

In short thats my one answer to almost any gaming question.
If "you" are satisfied with the result, then its right. After all the 'Primary result" should be to have fun when youve finished the work.

On a personal note to you -MW, it sounds to me that you were simply pushing yourself far too hard, to the point it just wasnt fun anymore. (been there)
In fact one project long ago, by the time I was done, I had no interest in even looking at let alone gaming w/ them . It only reminded me of the headache to 'hit some quota for the day'.

In his magazine "Table Top Talk" way back in the 60's Jack Scruby had an article where someone used blocks. The "Blocks" were BIG and consisted of two by threes wood studs which someone had not painted, but squared off to sharp corners and on the five sides glued pictures painted soldiers or copied prints from Knoetel on to the sides to look like miniatures. the size of the minis he was attempting to scale it to was 30mm or even 54mm. You can easily do this today with simple computer artwork programs, scanning in the base soldier, cutting it out and repeating it from front and sides and glue it on the blocks. The blocks were five and six inches long by two to three inches wide and two or three inches high.

These were three dimensional and the top could take the tags with the troop statistics etc. These things could also be made from cardboard as well to make them lighter. They looked quite good and would be rather impressive, like a hypothetical war game table "back in the day" that real life generals might have used.

So there is a historical precedent as it were for their use.

If you are careful, you can even make the boxes out of corrugate that can be slotted and hinged so you can "knock them down flat" for storage or transport and might solve a lot of issues.

Yes, go post on theblockspage.com…

Ooo! I forgot. A friend suggested I try this: pictures of troops glued to the blocks.

Somebody has already done it? How did it turn out? Do they look good? Can you post pictures on here or give us a link of where they are?

"theblockspage.com"

That doesn't come up. Do you have the link/url?