Pretty Counters / Trackers

[Angel Barracks]

So WFB 3rd edition has Magic Points for wizards and Heat Points for cannons that need tracking.
I will almost certainly continue to use dice for this, but…   does anyone use fancy pants mdf/printed items for this sort of carry on?

[Sane Max]

as a player of Blitzkrieg Commander, Dragon Rampant and all of the black powder/Hail Caesar etc etc systems, I seem to be constantly looking for tokens. I don’t like gems, they clutter the table. I have some of those little gribbly dials laser-cut from wood that you can turn to the number of your choice. I have bought beads with numbers on, I also bought a set of ‘Bananagrams’ for their rather nice letter tiles. I have bought things at ‘Stationery Box’ and Poundworld, and I have made my own.

I am never happy with them. Big shineys are intrusive on the table, and the main issue is that they end up getting moved, knocked, or in the case of dice picked up and rolled in the heat of the moment. The dials are too big. home made balsa Wood chits look good, but they get grubby and ugly..the markers need to follow moving units and we end up going ‘was that THEIR ‘Wet themselves and run away’ marker, or is that his ‘4 spell points remaining’ chit?’…. As you may be able to tell, I have tried of lot of things and I get sick of it.

One option, especially for warpstone tokens or magic points etc, are sweeties. Skaven wizard eats a piece of warpstone? I eat a black midget Gem.

Only catch is I get peckish halfway through a game….

[Phil Dutré]

Years ago I invested a number of dials (0-9) and applied a green colour/flock that blends with my terrain mat (from http://www.dialdude.ca/Home_Page.php but no idea if still active). I use them for all sorts of games. But I also use skulls, wounded figures, pebbles, meeples and pawns, etc. The exact choice depends on the period and/or scale.

I even have pebbles (collected from my driveway), and hand painted numbers on them specifically for this purpose.

[Andrew Beasley]

Been around this loop for the 6mm one hour wargames games as each unit takes 15 points of damage before being removed.  My main issue is the units are hex based and only 2 inch side to side…

Dice on the base or on a small carrier base behind in Minibits frames where my first ‘go-to’ but hit three problems:

1. D15 cost more than the figures
2. D20 are way too big (even behind the walker)
3. To fit two or three D6 on the bases needed dice so small I could not handle them (circulation going to put – fingers work but not great)

Rotary dials had two issues:

1. No one makes a 1 – 14 so cost is high to have cut (not I do not need a 1 – 15 as I only record when damage is incurred)
2. 1 – 20 are large circle so again a size issue

Loose counters, glass chips etc just look a mess and are a total pain to count each time if tracking from 1 or have big piles is tracking from 14 down.

The sweets would never make it past a couple of moves before going sticky or oddly disappearing into a warp void never to be seen again

This led me to two possible solutions:

1. Track things on paper.  This is currently what I am doing as part of my QRS though unit markings make the base look untidy as I’ve resorted to painting the base edges to identify units and hate it.  I could not find any small ‘flags’ at reasonable cost and the Sashimono banners / poles look wrong in a sci-fi setting.
2. Look at getting bases made with the dial style counters built in

The latter is the way I may well go for 10mm / 15mm blocks of troops long term.  Basically (using Warbases MDF / Ply) sandwich one 2mm MDF base and one 1.5mm ply base, cut a circle out of the 2mm for the dial and a view port out of the 1.5mm to show the damage marker.  The dial would have to be fastened by magnet to the top part some how (possible increasing the base thickness again forcing me to 1.5mm ply for both parts).  Risk of failure is high to be honest – warping being the most obvious issue even with the ply.

Maybe I need some-one with a 3D printer to make some small unit flags that I can apply to the bases – hmm that may work.

 

TL;DR:

As for your tracking – how about using small buckets or flames to track the heat points and build up a base that has a ‘slot’ that can be filled by a line of these as the battle progresses?  No real idea for the magic other than paper tracking.

 

[Mike]

Andrew Beasley wrote:

As for your tracking – how about using small buckets or flames to track the heat points and build up a base that has a ‘slot’ that can be filled by a line of these as the battle progresses?

This is my current thinking but with ball bearings as cannonballs

😀

[Andrew Beasley]

Mike wrote:

This is my current thinking but with ball bearings as cannonballs

Just watch they do not rust long term.  I bought some of eBay for paint and it was not a pretty result!

 

[Sane Max]

This is my current thinking but with ball bearings as cannonballs

my old D&D character had int 6 and was easily duped. If we went to the shop, he tended to buy all the stuff on the equipment list that no one ever buys – including a large bag of Ball Bearings*. One of the other players was tickled by this, and gave me a massive bag of TEENSY ones. I was wondering what to do with them, this may be an option…..

*which I would drag out on every occasion in the hope of ‘Comedy Monster pratfalls’ – only worked once, in a bar-room brawl. On everyone, including us of course.

[Author]

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