Some additional movement trays

Back in January I made some movement trays for my 1066 paper soldier armies as the paper units (or the way I have based them) can be quite fiddly to move. This weekend I made a few more trays, smaller trays, for my War or the Spanish Succession cavalry and dragoons units.

A WSS game away underway with movement trays.

The larger movement tray are 8x3 inches and the smaller trays for cavalry are 5x3 inches. They are painted green with a little bit of scatter added. The scatter gives a rough surface so unit bases don't shift about when I move the tray.

The smaller trays are used for cavalry and dragoon unit which have 6 bases. Infantry have 9 bases per unit and fit on the larger trays.

The smaller trays are also suitable for artillery units.

Units also fit on the trays when in column.

Not much painting was done this past week as I have been on a short break. Having time away did allow me to read "The Last Crusade" by Anthony Bruce covering the WW1 Palestine campaign. This had lots of useful background and information on the battles for my current project.

Movement trays for paper soldiers

Most of my miniatures are based on 4x3 inch bases in groups of 9 to 12 figures all fixed to the base. This works fine for me as I don't really like moving around units with too many bases, especially individually based figures. The exceptions to this are my three paper soldier armies (1066 Norman/Saxon, Jacobite Revolution, and War of the Spanish Succession) where each unit is made up of 6 to 9 bases. The reason for this number of bases is so I can lay them down in their storage boxes when not in use. Some of the figures are just too tall for easy storage.

Saxon paper soldier units with 6 bases per unit

Up until now I have moved the multiple stand units while doing my best not to misjudge depth and catch some of the spears, causing them to get bent over. Anyway, this weekend I thought I would try and address the situation and make some movement trays using some MDF sheet.

About 20 movement trays were cut out sized 8x3 inches.

The trays were painted green, then once dry painted with PVA glue and the scatter/flock lightly sprinkled over. I was not going for a full coverage, just enough to help break up the painted flat green look.

A completed movement tray.

My test of an unpainted movement tray showed there was little movement of paper soldiers when lifting and moving them around the tabletop. This is due to their very light weight. Adding the scatter/flock adds some more friction to the tray's surface and the figures only start to shift about a bit if held at an angle of more than 30 degrees.

A 6 base Saxon Housecarl unit on a movement tray.

A 9 base WSS unit on a tray in line.

A 9 base WSS unit in column,

WSS artillery limbered.

WSS artillery unlimbered.

One advantage of the 6 base units is there is room on the movement tray for counters or dice to mark hits or other unit statuses. 

Unit with hit counter (2 hits taken so far)

Unit with dice as hit markers. Although the dice are more likely to slip off the tray than the figures.

All set up for a One Hour Wargames game using the movement trays. Hopefully with no more spears getting bent over.