"Standard formats for using counters for miniatures rules?" Topic

I'd love to try a few 1950s to 1970s miniatures rules on the table to see how they play. The thing is, they span a number of periods and are written for a number of sizes, while I have no interest in acquiring and painting minis for them.

I can use paper minis, blocks, or just 2D flat counters. I'm opting for 2D flat counts as the fastest, cheapest, most compact to store, and easiest to move option.

Before I go working out what might be a solved problem, I wondered if there are some standard ways to format and size paper/cardboard counters based on miniatures rules. Mainly I'm looking for:

Sizing (especially when the rules give the mini's scale (e..g, 20mm or 30mm) but not frontage. How do you estimate counter size for infantry, cavalry, artillery, etc.

Standard markings. I'm assuming different colors per side, standard symbols, maybe adding move and points to the counter if space allows and a little space to pencil in what type of infantry or other specifics (armored v unarmored, elite vs regs, grenadiers, etc.)

Suggestions, anything else?

For NATO map symbols (and others) as TrueType fonts see mapsymbs.com – very handy for home made counters.

Have you considered finding a group, club or gamer does the period and already has stuff like miniatures?

Wargame Vault has a number of inexpensive "top-down" counters for various periods. Check out what Geoff Curran offers at: link

Also the Junior General web site has a number of toop-down counters for various periods: link These are free to download.

Jim

For counter sizes, if you are making them the same size as bases then the rules will give you the size to use. For Napoleonics this video covers the history of base sizes.
youtu.be/WUcG0U3NOwA

As for the counter design, this video is an example of an ancients set of counters. Perhaps it will give you some ideas.
youtu.be/ZVQxFRBWdQk

Malchor, pfmodel is right: rules usually included basing. If you'll tell us what rules you're looking at, some of us can help. pfmodel's video is interesting, but seems to start pretty late and lean pretty British. (He also seems to have missed the idea that an artillery base might reflect the space the unit took up and not just be big enough to hold a model gun.)

30's. In CLS, Infantry casting depth was 1". Frontage for the first casting was 3/4", 1/2" for the second casting, and 3/4" again for the third, so a French company base with six infantry in two ranks was a 2"x2" stand, and a British company base with three infantry was a 1"x2" stand, which I suspect was the point. Cavalry were 2" depth and 1" frontage and guns--if I remember correctly--2 1/2" frontage and 2" depth. CLS was VERY common, so a lot of other Napoleonic rules in the 1960's or early 1970's assumed CLS basing. Figure that's about right, 20mm is 2/3 of that and 15mm is 1/2--and I know troops were based that way.

But "counter" size depends on rules and organization. If you don't tell us what rules you're looking at, we're playing Twenty Questions.

You can make text boxes in Powerpoint with unit ID and the size you need. You can make an army for the cost of some ink and a few sheets of card stock.

You could always use some other figures on correct[ish] size bases; no one will burn you at the stake, it's not even illegal.

Junior General is very good

vassalengine.org

This site has thousands of board games online for free to download and play. These are not computerized and with a little work you make new counters for units. I use this when I was writing my WWII game.

Half of "Nmm" is a fair base-width approximation where none is given. Rules sets that stipulated frontages tended in the 1980s to wider than that. Figure a horseman needs about half again as much (.75 X Nmm).

I don't know why the CLS guys didn't go with 5/8" per figure, which more straightforwardly arrives at the same four on 2-1/2" frontage. Why should three be the additional 1/8" to make 2"?

There's a lot of variation, but an old tradition to convert "Nmm" size into an actual scale is to use the ratio with 1620mm (15/16 X 1727mm, or typical foot to eye measure on a 5'8" man).

Correction: a third (rather than half) again ‘minimal' infantry basing is probably a practical minimum for cavalry. The ratio tends to be greater to reflect actual ratios of number of men per unit of frontage historically.

Individually based figures need bigger bases to keep them from toppling over, so squares ranging from 2/3 to full Nmm are fairly typical.

Looking at photos of old games, I sometimes see further gaps between figures; a unit's recommended total frontage might or might not be clearly stated.

Such considerations are really relevant only to replicating how some people would have had their figures based. What's most likely is that they based and/or deployed per the most popular rules set actually giving a standard!

Perhaps a better basis for actual play is to look at the assumptions stated and use something plausible in terms of knowledge of what frontages are realistically normative.

E.g., guys armed with matchlocks might have files two yards wide, but one yard would be skirmish order with flintlocks; in the latter period, 21" to 27" is more reasonable.

Some ancient cavalry may have operated with 4' or even 5' files, but for European cavalry of the 18th-19th centuries that would be reasonable only as reflecting a gap between squadrons; I think British regulations suggested about a yard per file, with 1/3 frontage between squadrons bringing that up to about 4'. More generally, somewhere between 36" and 40" seems very plausible.

Some rules writers who do recommend basing recommend something really out of whack with stated ground scale and figure to man ratio!

That might be because they inflate the ground scale to get more scale yards per real foot of table, or it might be an error of arithmetic. With the limits of physical figures, reconciliation typically ends up meaning adjustment of the ground scale.

Common advice is to make bases no deeper than necessary to accommodate the figures. Multi-figure bases that are deeper than they are wide were generally deprecated until Napoleon's Battles became popular (and people with figures based for that wanted to use them in more tactical games). It remained more usual, though, to have an aspect ratio ranging from 4:3 to 3:1. (4:1 would be desirable for small-tactical horse and musket, with a figure:man ratio of 1:30 or 1:20 or less.)

If a rules set does stipulate base sizes, it's a simple matter to scale them proportionally to whatever is convenient. If what's called for is 60mm X 40mm for play on a 180cm X 120cm table, then you can cut each dimension to 25% (and ranges and moves likewise) and play with 15mm X 10mm pieces on a table just 45cm X 30cm. Functionally, they are perfectly equivalent.

A widely used assumption, at least in the horse and musket period, is that per yard of frontage we have:

4 infantrymen formed in 3 ranks (27" files)
3 infantrymen formed in 2 ranks (24" files)
2 cavalrymen formed in 2 ranks (36" files)

Artillery is commonly reckoned as averaging 15 yards per cannon.

Some people go by indications that a battery would tend to deploy on about the same frontage (around 120 yards) whether made up of 6, 8 or 12 pieces.

Others reckon that it might commonly range from 10 to 20 yards per piece (though I'm skeptical of the small end, for efficient limbering up of medium-weight or heavy guns when it's time to move), and where opportunity presented extend to 30 yards per gun (with adequate canister coverage, and greater arc of fire).