Monday 18 February 2013

New Jenga phalanx WIP


A quick WIP shot, of most of the phalangites for the 4th and 5th pike blocks for Raphia, mustering on their Jenga painting blocks.  Most of these were painted (very nicely) by Raglan, but I needed to replace his pikes with my blunt pins, re-base and repaint most of his crests from black to the red I'm using for my phalanx.  I spent a very long evening yesterday, painting the 60-odd required pikes.  Yawn...

In other news I've been plugging away with my draft set of Ancient rules, which are now 9,300 words long.  I reckon that they will be more than twice that, when finished.  I managed to work out how to upload them onto my iPad as a pdf, and they are now stuffed to the gunnels with hyper-links, so it should now be possible to navigate around them easily.  I'm going to try running tomorrow's game from the iPad... 

Out of curiosity, does anyone use iPads or laptops at the wargames table?

11 comments:

Jonathan said...

I don't currently use my iPad at the gaming table, but that is due to a lack of rules and not my reluctance. If I had a set of rules on the iPad, and they were easy to navigate, I would certainly bring it to a game.

BigRedBat said...

My friend Ian put me on to a fascinating debate about the merits of pdf vs print on Sam Mustafa's forum:-

http://www.sammustafa.com/honour-forums/introducing-longstreet/format-for-longstreet-i'm-still-on-the-fence/90/

I'm following it with interest... my instincts currently say "both" is the way to go.

Cheers, Simon

DeanM said...

Nice work by Raglan on these troops.

Some of my buddies, who are far more tech savvy, have been known to use their ipads and such during games to look up rules they otherwise didn't have on them hardcopy. I can see the advantages for this - someday for me as I don't have these devices yet.

Best, Dean

BigRedBat said...

Thanks Dean. I couldn't see much point in using a PDF on a tablet, until I recently had a "road to Damascus" moment, when I realised how quick and efficient and efficient it is to navigate around a set of rules using hyperlinks. I'm now thinking that a book might be the nicest way to learn rules, but a pdf the quickest way to access them at the table. Cheers, Simon

Handgrenadealien said...

As a dyed in the wool luddite I've always used a quick reference sheet at the table backed up with the relevent rulebooks close at hand. However in the modern environment I think that producing & distributing rulesets as PDFs might make sense economically.
You seem to be making good progress with your phalangites, its a shame these big projects can end up feeling more like work than pleasure though.
Regards HGA.

BigRedBat said...

Hi HGA, it's like Everest; I have to do it, because it is there! ;-) I've worked on this batch for 3 and a half hours tonight, they are starting to look really great and I'm feeling good....

I never fancied putting a laptop on a gaming table, but a tablet...

Cheers, Simon

Anonymous said...

Not actually located a club close enough to me yet to get involved with. But have already started to store my sheets and data aswell as my reference books for future use to a tablet.

Busy building up a 1:72 napoleonic force aswell as 1:72 armour for the Battle of Kursk gameset. Anyone out there know of any clubs in the Midlands (England).

Tarty said...

I'm nowhere near organised enough to use a tablet and if I did it would always be low on power at the wrong time..... for sure ! guaranteed knowing me : )

Raphia project is coming along nicely Simon.

BigRedBat said...

Thanks chaps! Almost ready to base... Simon

ian drury said...

Glad to see someone else using a tablet. I use GQIII naval rules, which are the size of a phone directory, but you very rarely need to look things up: so the rules live on the ipad and we play from printed quick ref sheet.

BigRedBat said...

Glad to see there are a few other tablet users out there!

Cheers, Simon