The Commander Series Forum

I am getting ready to order some hit and suppression markers from Litko and I was curious how many would be needed for something in the range of a 2000 point game. I am also considering carrying damage over from turn to turn per the optional rule. so that may effect the amount I need. So, how many do you think would be a good number of each? Those of you that use the little dice, how many do you have/use in a typical game?

IN most games, I would say we use around 20 per turn.

I'd agree with Dave - 20 should be about right. Having said that, if you're carrying wounds over then by the end of turn 4 you'll probably only need 5!

20 total (hit and suppression) or 20 each?

Also, is their any need to mark units that used opp. fire or initiative? If so, how is that generally done?

20 each, otherwise you'll get confused over whether a unit's only wounded, or wounded and suppressed.

Regarding opp and initiative, I generally just put some dice down (not "wound" dice!). I'm toying with the idea of just cutting up some small strips of card with the words "opportunity" and "initiative" written on them - it's low-tech and low hassle but it'll do the trick.

I use various colors of bingo chip - yellow for used op fire or initiative, red for suppressed.

Thats not bad Lentulus. I am ordering some custom tokens from Litko, I was trying to think of a word to put on the token that would indicate that Opp. fire or Init had been used but I am drawing a blank.

I put some cotton down in front of units that have done opportunity fire.

For hits, I use 1cm black dice with white spots. My rolling dice are bigger and different colours.

Are you trying to distinguish between op fire and initiative used? I am not sure it matters given the effect and sequence of play.

20 Each

Personally I would use some other way of marking hits/suppressions etc. that is less visible. While markers are crucial to most wargames, they too often detract from the the appearance of the game. This is a shame. Indeed, while a necessary evil, markers can on occasion add to the look of a game or at least be neutral.

For suppressions we use small rocks based on a textured stand. I made these 20 years ago with one or two rocks on each. They are finished according to my terrain set-up. These are very unobtrusive and depending on the game we play 1 rock can be a disorder, for example, and 2 a suppression etc. Amazingly useful.

For hits, again made 20 years ago, I cut matt board pentagon shapes. Leaving a small space clear on each edge, I textured and painted each base on both sides. Once dry, I painted numbers 1-5 and 6-10 on each face. Then I varnished the edges. These have served in all my games since to track kills etc.

Litco sells something similar recently, but make your own and you can obscure the marker with a terrain finish.

For certain games I have made custom markers. For colonials I made casualty figure decorated kill markers and for Disorder and Shaken markers in my Zulu war game I made markers with one and two Zulu shields. I simply pressed the shields into some plasticine, created a texture on the clay, made simple moulds of these and cast them in hydrostone. Incredibly simple, and when painted looks great. The markers actually ADD to the look of the game and having varnished them with several coats of water-based varnish, they have survived without damage for 10 years.

Sorry to foam-on about this, but I think with a tiny bit of effort you can make markers with cheap materials that will last forever for all your games and will look better than some glowing piece of plastic.

Chris

I use small pieces of lichen for suppressed, and small squares of cardboard painted grass green for hits. Card squares have numbers up to 6 written on reverse sides.

I use white die to indicate hits and red die to indicate suppressed hits. (Like Peter uses in the book.) I use small red and yellow beads or other indications, the red beads indicate suppression without hits, (i.e. an infantry unit jumping out of a hit vehicle) the yellow beads indicate that the unit has taken some action in the turn that affects them. (We can usually remember that a yellow bead on the Command Unit or Recon indicates it has communicated, etc.)

I have markers from Litko that say attack, move, or deploy to indicate what units under command will do if the command roll is made.

I'm not worried about a scale look to the game/simulation. I know that this is a serious consideration for some people.

Buzzkill

I had some custom tokens made by Litko for these very things a couple of years ago. They are great.

These are all 1cm diameter circular tokens (small because I play 6mm)- with "Initiative Used" and "Suppressed Unit" written on one side...top and bottom - following the token edge. In the centre of each....I got Litko put a bullet picture. These are transparent tokens ...to blend in as much as possible..but still clear they are there.

I got about 30 Initiative and 60 Suppressed tokens...(after all you're only going to order once), this is enough for about a 4000 to 5000 point game in BKC2.

At the same time I also got them to do some 1cm diameter Landmine tokens (just a smaller version of the standard ones they do).

Didn't bother with Hit markers..prefering to stick with little dice. Otherwise, you either have to put down 5 markers if a unit takes 5 hits....or you have to have multiple different tokens ...each saying '1 hit' or '2 hits' etc. 60 of each ...and thats 300 tokens if you go up to 5 hits.

Good luck with whatever you choose.
Lets us all know though!

Litko makes a cool Hit marker ( http://www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/JIMSLAB ), it is a hexagon with numbers 1 through 6 on each edge, so it would work just like a die, just rotate the edge with the appropriate number to indicate hits. They look cool, I may still get some but for now I just picked up some red and white dice. If its good enough for Pete, its good enough for me!

I use micro dice for hits to reduce the number of markers on the terrain (you only need one die per unit). Suppression is already one marker per unit. This keeps the number of markers required to a minimum as well. Depending on the size of the battle, you could probably have as many as 40 units with hits and even suppression during a turn in a reasonable scenario on a 4'x6' area. I would estimate the possible number of units that could be engaged during one turn for the force and table size you are using to determine how many are required.

Russ

I was able to get bulk 12mm d6s at dicepool.com about a year ago. I got 200 white and 200 red. I also got some 36 packs of yellow and blue for marking other things.

They only have 16mm in stock now. You can get bulk die in blocks of 200 or for those really really big games 1000!!!!!

We use tiny dice - about 6mm(?) for the number of hits. White "smoke" for supression, black for KO.

I've tried using the tiny dice, but I found they weren't very stable: they'd shift too easily, changing the number of hits they were showing.

I also tried changing dice colors, as Pete does in the book, but it bugged me having to remember whether I'd reset the red dice to show 6 hits on a unit which was still suppressed but could ignore all it's hits because we'd passed the end of the turn.

My preference now is to use a die to show hits, and a red bead to show suppression. Pull the dice to show the hits are gone, and the bead stays there.

I bought a big bucket of several colors of plastic "pony beads" at a local craft store for cheap, and likewise a compartmented box to sort them into and store them. It's worked very well. Red is our default for suppressed (or pinned, in other rules systems) units; maybe yellow gets used for those that used opportunity fire already; etc. etc. They're also more adaptable from game to game, perhaps, than markers with terms specific to one game or another.

That said, I respect and am intrigued by the kind of approach Chris (cleach) describes above, and could see playing with that approach sometime.