Saturday, 2 June 2012
Stuff that gives you the right hump!!
When it comes to wargaming I'm a fiarly fastidious chap and as I walk about at shows or view the blogs/ read the magazine I still find that there are things that give me the right Hump.
Mostly these are sins of ommission - worse when I commit 'em myself than when I see them on other tables or collections
No1 Shyte basing!. This term covers a multitude of sins. Most obvious are those blokes who don't paint the bloody edges. Surely if you terrain your bases or even simply paint them one colour you paint the edges too- why leave them staring white- if you use mounting board- or plastic black if you use those nasty plastic bases? Surely you paint the edges to blend in - ish- with the table surface andor the rest of the base? Why have the edges sticking out like a politician at a Truth convention- (I was going to say like a Vicar in a knocking shop but you have to be so PC these days).
It just looks odd and unfinished- ewven when the bases have been deliberately edged black.
An off shoot of this is "Gloop dribble" - that of course is when your terrainig material dribbles over the edge of the base. Run around the edge of the stand with a blade too scrape the excess off or you'll get knobbly bits- even "whinnits" or possibly "klingons" - and yes its the base I'm talking about- Personal hygene I leave to each of you !!
No2 Mixed basing - we've all seen this. Armies on the table where the basing for one side isn't the same- some units stick out like a sore thumb- choose you own similie this time. A few units like this on any given game can spoil the whole visual effect.
No3 Paper Flags Now paper flags are fine thing I use them a fair bit but the number of times I've seen them both at shows and in the pages of magazines looking like supermarket price tags is amazing . Flags do not look like this . Animate the things even just a little bit but most of all PAINT THE BLOODY EDGES MAN!!
The white edges on a colured flag reallly do get noticed. I've missed it enough times myself only to mutter and curse later on.
So after tha little rantette- what gives you- Gentle reader- the right Hump ??
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Any FoW game. Tanks, hundreds of tanks all parked up next to each other trying desperately to seek shelter behind a telegraph pole so that an enemy unit that it couldn't realistically even be aware of can't blow them to pieces.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure tank crews weren't trained to fight like this!
Aaaah the battle of the K-mart car park, they are a stunning visual display of "what the"!
ReplyDeleteParticularly like seeing them in the glossy magazines all ranked up waiting for a flight of Stukas or Typhoons (choose your side).
I'm particularly fond of 18thC armies where no two battalions are facing the same direction, even within 45 degrees of the same direction, most acw players are able to keep their armies in a linear formation better than the chaps fighting linear warfare. Maybe I'm being too harsh and only ever seen photo's and games at the very death knell when all is a jumble?
I could rant almost as long as you have Andy, about what gives me the hump about various things in wargames and shows in particular. However I think the thing that gets my goat currently has to be "slotta" bases, or the equivalent plinth-type without the slot !
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with you about the "basing sins" . . . very off-putting indeed . . . and so simple to correct too.
ReplyDelete-- Jeff
I guess I'm a bit more liberally-minded - I'll even spare more than a passing glance at unpainted armies fighting over books and ribbons if the thing shows imagination. But I do agree with you this far: if you are going to take the trouble, then don't spoil the broth for a ha'porth of tar (you know what I mean)!
ReplyDeleteFor mine, I will swear by paper flags, but you are right about touching up the edges and getting them to flow or 'drape' in a realistic fashion. For edging, I'll use a felt-tip pen of the appropiate colour and 'paint' down several millimetres on the side I glue. When I made my own flags, I used a skewed, lozenge shape for each 'face' of the flag. Given a certain amount of 'hang' in this way made the flags easier to 'drape' from its pole.
These days I download flags. The old favorite 'warflags' site conveniently gives you obverse and reserse faces in the one image. Using something like 'Paint' you can select and skew each side, and then select and shift the narrow piece that goes around your flag pole.
At some point I found that if you were given only an obverse image (say) you could also peel a mirror image of the thing, so that you got an obverse and reverse in one. Having done it a couple of times, I've completely forgotten how I did it!! Now that won't get me called Humphrey! But An alternative method is to copy and reverse the image, set them up beside each other with a slight gap between and fill in the gap as the sleeve for the flagpole.
Examples of the flags I've produced using these methods can be seen in the 'Wholly Romantic Empire' and 'Napoleonic' archives in my blogspot 'Archduke Piccolo' (archdukepiccolo.blogspot.com).
Cheers,
Ion
Well chaps I agree with all of that- I never considered FOW as its usually beneath my notice but since you bring it up .... Slotta baes hate 'em though I have used them in default of an alternative - which I have now found so my 40mm FIW Brits will be coming off the nasty plastic. Dancing Infantry in 18th century armies- yep hate that too but tend to find that is a function of the units being too small and of wargamers not kowimng the period- or indeed any period.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course do the whole job not just half of it
Anything with hexes.... soldiers with painted eyeballs.... WWII games with hundreds of tanks all shoulder to shoulder.... unpainted units.... I'm clearly getting too old.... :o)
ReplyDeleteOooh, painted eyeballs! .. I'm with you on that one Steve!
Deleteseeing nicely painted 18C figures shown (in pictures) but with bent muskets/bayonets/swords.
ReplyDeleteNapoleonics players who bang on about the wrong coloured buttons on a figures uniform and spend three weeks to paint a single figure.The same players who then think it's ok to display their works of art on a tabletop terrain looking like something from a primary school project.
ReplyDeleteSomtimes I take 3 weeks to paint a figure.... usually because I'm too busy selling the un painted ones.. and its not just the Nappy dudes who bang on. Where I ask myself do you draw the line with "correct" uniform detail. I like to get it as right as I can but there are limits. I hate painted balls !! as it always looks as if the poor lads need a good dose of preparation H .
DeleteHexes are of course tools of the Devil .
Oh and wargamers who "know their period" but actual know nowt but some crappy ruleset (and will learn less)
ReplyDeleteThe painted on ten-thousand-yard stare takes a bit of getting used to, but I heve seen it done well (by a Japanese dude, no less!). Eyebrow and dot works for me and looks fine.
ReplyDeleteAs I remarked recently elsewhere, I find Megablitz looks odd, and yet at the same time, rather attractive. Not sure how I feel about that!
The 'correct' uniform colour gig I find very strange. You could go for that look, but really it's not historical anyway. If in the 21st century paint manufacturers will tell you to mix your multiple tins of a colour for the sake of a consistent shade, hue ot tint, how3 much more might we expect variations in the dye batches in earlier times? What colour is Khaki anyhow? I am reminded of a remark, by the way, by a Confederate general of the only man, and infantryman, he ever saw in full regulation uniform. There he stood, resplendent in the uniform of an artilleryman.
That is why, when in receipt of some plastic Napoleonic Prussians someone was going to toss out, I culled out only some of the French figures...
Cheers,
Ion
Oh and anything with Zombies... can't stand the idea.
ReplyDeleteAs for "Correct" uniforms it depends what you mean- perhaops a better word is "Possible" or "approriate" uniforms. Its not really about colour but about time, place and style. an example I've seen ECW "Greencoat" infantry in bright parrot green, Bluecoats in very electric blue neither of which were possible or appropriate en masse with the dyes available. In the same- but slightly different vein silly heraldry on medieval figures- heralry is easy it has rules that was the point.
So IMHO it depend on what sort of army you are after. I might decide to do a "Parade" army where appropriate- correct to the known regs but I might also decide to do a campaign army in "scruff order" . Its about being as correct- or possible- as you can to the time and place you are attempting to portay.
Speaking of heraldry, I was rather pleased at my invention of an 'Ursus Theodorus or displayed' (yellow teddy bear) as the centre device on my daughter's army flags. Heraldry had its rules, sure, but they weren't consistently applied, and the Continent seems to have been a bit more relaxed about placing colour upon colour or metal upon metal than was Great Britain.
DeleteAn instance of inconsistency was Sir Walter Scott's description of the device upon the shield of the "Black Sluggard": a fetterlock and shacklebolt azure upon a field sable. In a note to the publication, Sir Walter responded to criticism of his placing 'metal upon metal' (sic). Apart from the error in identity (it was actually colour upon colour), such a scheme would not have been improbable at the time the Ivanhoe story was set. Like military uniform and dyes, these things evolve.
I do agree, though, that some thought has to go towards colours and schemes that are credible, and, dare I say it, aesthetically pleasing. The 'Sluggard's' fetterlock and shacklebolt would have been prettier - and more easily read from a distance - an it were a metal: argent, say.
Cheers,
Ion
But also Scott was writing fiction (as were your heraldic teddy bears)and yes different countries had different rules- at different times so for instance in Poland the whole family can waer the same coat without difference and Gaerman Heraldry has lines of partition that don't appear in English or French.
Deleteandy never admiting he,s wrong even when he knows he is :D
ReplyDeleteBut you know the rule Jim-"The Umpire is Always Right- especially when he's wrong" Its simply that I do more umpiring !!! and by the way that "Especially when he knows he is " - it just doesn't happen that often !!!-and if you'll believe THAT gentle reader....
Delete