"Rules. Old Age and Priorities" Topic

I hate rules even though I am a rules designer/writer, they are a necessary evil and should be kept at the absolute minimum, just enough to get the simulation to work properly. Rules about fog of war are the worst; they should be avoided like the plague (normally). If you can get it by camouflaging your troops, hiding them or just marking them on the map it's so much better.
So imagine my horror at having to break my own priorities. My modern forces are in squads each of 4 men, one team with a Light Support weapon and one with and RPG. The figures are prone, how they shoot and suitably armed and 12mm tall. The weapons are as close to real size as a 3D print will allow, I hate oversize figures even more than rules, so close up you can tell who has what but it takes a lot of peering due to Old Age, that spoils the game, wasting playing time. That means I have to break my priorities and somehow mark the bases, the alternatives like standing figures or oversize weapons would be an even worse deviation from the ideal. So with great reluctance I have started printing the Light Support bases with cut off corners to differentiate them from the RPG teams. This hands information to my enemy, but Old Age is a bad companion. Fog of war sacrificed to old age, the horror!
It did lead to another conflict of priorities having sprayed the new bases an appropriate green I was confronted with the task of painting and covering the base with flock. Old Age means I don't have the Time I used to have, so play or paint. Easy clash of priorities (for me) the bases will stay a uniform green for now, play is more important than paint.
What compromises between best play and old age have you made if any.

My sympathies, UshCha. I've certainly made changes in recent years. Troop nationalities, types and conditions are more easily distinguished, rules are (on average) simpler, and there was a serious effort a few years ago to make the dice easier to read, and to increase lighting in miniature-related areas.

I couldn't honestly say how much of this was something I needed to do because my eyes weren't as good or the processing power of the brain isn't what it was in my teen years, and how much is something I ought to have done years before, and was just being pig-headed about. Probably a bit of both.

Could be worse. A distinguished wargamer once phoned me after a game and said "don't ever downscale to 20mm, Robert"--he was a 30's player--"we lost a green rifle battalion in a woods and had to stop the game until we found it." The players in that game would have been between 40 and 50 at the time.

I've got a ton of 54mm colonial Sudan figures that I am never going to get painted, so I expect my son and I to game with unpainted figures. The same can probably be said for the fantasy/medieval forces I am buying.

My terrain is pretty minimalistic and has been used for various scenarios that span a couple of hundred years.

My son is 13; he doesn't mind. He just likes to play toy soldiers with his dad.

I used to be able to tell which weapons 6mm troops had, but now they are just little blobs so I put different troop types in different formations on the bases.

The only consolation is that my opponents are as blind as I am so it doesn't really give anything away.

My main concession to old age is playing sitting down as far as possible, which means smaller tables etc. I put my back out leaning over a big table while moving some very heavy metal tanks years ago and it has never recovered.

YUP Old Age Sucks ;-). But some of my never made it so we should be gratefull.

I've not really made much change or concessions to age but deteriorating eyesight does mean making room on or near the table for two different pairs of glasses and having to ask opponents what certain troops are because, whatever glasses I have on, I can't see them clearly enough for ID. As I don't play modern skirmish games this is not a major issue for any of us.

I'm still painting 3mm figures and actually find it easier than 20mm & over, even 15mm are feeling 'big'. I am using more powerful magnification to paint and age has slowed me up a lot but still putting new armies in the field at 72.

Back issues certainly feature significantly but, having shifted a persistent problem with sciatica thanks to a local physio and targeted exercises, I'm enjoying freedom from pain so long as I'm careful.

I don't think I was ever interested in micromanagement of a battle the way in which UshCha describes – in my games I'm a general, not a captain, so let minions worry about the details. Generals can be old & decrepit, captains usually can't.

I can actually see the break points. I didn't need to ID crew-served weapon types in 15mm, but I do in 6mm. And the quality of units and the types of cavalry (and armor) are self-evident in 6mm, but have to be indicated by numbers and formations in 2mm. Every major shift in scales has its own set of possibilities and requirements.