Wednesday 6 December 2023

ECW casualty markers

This week, I decided to make some new casualty markers for my English Civil War games. With my Medieval games, I use individual cardboard figures that are placed on the unit's base. This works fine for low numbers of hits, but in my ECW games, units are eliminated after more than 8 hits. I normally use plain green square tokens with numbers on the sides to track the hits, but I thought it would be more interesting to try and improve the look of these tokens.

The current way of tracking hits. Here the unit has accumulated 6 hits.

To make the new tokens, I found some images of dead ECW miniatures and enlarged them to be suitable for 25mm figures. I then printed them, cut them out, and used their shape to paint over them in new colours. After that, I photocopied them and added the numbers, then photocopied them again. These were glued to cardboard, cut out and glued back to back with 1-4 on one side and 5-8 on the other. After drying, the edges were painted green.

The new casualty tokens.

The first step in making the tokens was finding images of dead ECW miniatures and enlarged them to be the right size (approximately 25mm). They were cut out and the shape used to paint over.

A batch of four dead tokens are made.

After photocopying the originals the numbers are written on them.

Additional photocopies were made and stuck to cardboard.

The tokens are cut out ready to be back to back, 1-4 on one side and 5-8 on the other.

The edges are painted green.

Sticking the cardboard the two sides of the tokens back to back makes them thicker and easier to handle.


13 comments:

  1. Your casualty markers look great! I wonder if the numbers were in white if they would be easier to see? I am thinking mostly for remote gaming.

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    1. Remote wargaming presents a conundrum, by making the marker less obtrusive it becomes increasingly difficult for the remote participants. Dice may remain the answer. Although I will go looking for a white marker pen.

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    2. No need to change your markers. Either a die or making me guess are both reasonable answers.

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  2. These look excellent. A very neat solution!
    Chris/Nundanket

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    1. Hopefully a useful low cost solution to try. Thanks.

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  3. A simple, yet very effective idea for making casualty (or other unit state) indicators less obtrusive on the table. An idea I - and many others, I believe - will copy. Thank you!

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    1. Once you find and print the right image to tailor they are very quick to make.

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  4. Thank you. It is always nice to have period specific markers where possible.

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  5. An elegant and cost effective solution Peter.

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  6. Very nice, you put me to shame, I must do better, I'm stlll using tiddlywinks...

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    Replies
    1. They worked out reasonably well and only took a couple of evenings to make.

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