Saturday 9 February 2013

Getting used to the new scale for SDS

After so many years using a distorted scale in the gaming table, I'm finding very hard to visualize the houses, trees, streams, bridges, roads. etc to the same scale, 1/72 (HO), of the figures forming my wargaming armies.
Before, when Napoleon's Battles (NB) was my only ruleset (the scenery of my previous wargaming efforts was too stylised) one figure represented always 120 men, and a 4-figures base the area covered by 480 men. On the other side, a NB building or B.U.A. was the representation of a village or small town, while several buildings or BUA's made for medium-sized towns. A forest consisted of an area with several randomly scattered model trees and with the ground covered with lichen or model foliage. Obviously, roads and streams were oversized, while rivers were undersized, a bridge was a bridge, a lone tree was only an ornement... in short, a small chaos where everything was abstracted. However, my brain was perfectly accustomed.
When I moved to Lasalle, which has a larger scale and allows to game smaller battles, the things began to change slightly, but everything was still easy to fix by simply increasing the number of buildings or B.U.A.´s or increasing the forested area... and so.
But we arrived to Song of Drums and Shakos (SDS), a skirmish game where one figure is one man. Here, the things definitely do not look good, because the soldiers look like giants when they are side to side to buildings or trees.

The solution is simple: to build new scenery elements at the correct scale... and there we are.
The following pictures show the play area of Kosen, the next SDS scenario. The scenic elements are not yet fully finished (mostly need the final painting touches), but the overall look will be about the same.








Too realistic for me!


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4 comments:

  1. I think you still need to abstract/scale down to a certain degree. Otherwise buildings dominate the board. The good thing is that you can use lots of small hills to represent the (very real) uneven nature of the ground. Few skirmishes were fought on parade grounds. :^) It is easy to abstract away small changes in elevation when playing Lasalle or Napoleon's Battles, but it doesn't make sense to do so with SDS.

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  2. The new scenery looks great Rafa but will you be returning to "Napoleon's Battles" in the future? I'm still waiting for Leipzig!!!

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  3. Ha! Yeah, I see what you mean. I tend to keep to abstracted myself, for all scales, but there is something to be said for keeping closer to scale all around at this level of fighting/gaming. Your setup looks good!

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  4. I think it looks pretty good Rafa. I am looking at some Napoleonic skirmishing myself now.

    John

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