Monday, 16 March 2015

"Arc of Fire" and markers

"Arc of Fire" rules are one of those systems I tend to return to and I've used them regularly since they were published. I'm not a big fan of markers on the tabletop and in AoF there are some required but in the past I've tended to just write the various status and conditions on the orbats I produce for the games. This keeps the tabletop clear but you tend to continually be turning figures over to get their ID to check on status, this can get a bit irritating and slows the game down.
As a result I've decided to try using markers and see how it goes. In AoF you're not looking at masses, I'm looking at 3 markers for Tactical Modes for each unit, they display 1 of these 3 states at any one time, and for each figure you need to mark if its wounded or not and lastly wether the figures broken or not.
I use AoF mainly for my 20mm collections which are based individually on metal discs, I've discussed these before, the links here, 20mm Basing discs so I wanted to utilise these for the wounded and broken markers but for the Tactical Modes I opted for Warbases Acrylic marker service, here's the link Warbases
To start off with here's what warbases produced for me, quite pleased, as you only 1 of these per unit they're not too obvious on the tabletop.
I wanted something to blend in on the tabletop for the wounded and broken markers, wounded was fairly straight forward, blood marks but for the broken status I hummed and harred! I considered discarded equipment and other ideas but as  initially I was going to knock out 20 of each so  this may have become a bit long winded. I eventually decided just to use rock formations, this would be more generic and not theatre or nationality specific.
The photos below show the construction. Dougie.
The discs with miliput and talus added.
Attached to a painting stick to ease the process and completed with some tufts added
1 of each marker,m wounded on the left broken on the right.
How they'll look, this insurgent is wounded and broken.

7 comments:

  1. They look great- much better then the rings and tiddlywinks that I used to use.

    Not played Arc of Fire in a long time after moving on to Force on Force then the Two hour Wargames stable.

    What sort of game do you still play with it?

    Cheers,

    Pete.

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    1. Hi Pete, I use it at my club and it still gives good results, last scenario was Top Malo in the Falklands and it played out fine, I've also used it for Rhodesia and Angola.
      Dougie

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    2. Sounds good- will need to revisit it sometime soon.

      Any pics of the games?

      Cheers,

      Pete

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    3. I've got some on my phone from Tuesdays Top Malo scenario at my club, I'll have a go at using my IT skills and upload them ;)

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    4. Please do.

      Cheers,

      Pete.

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  2. Love the wounded counter idea, I'm stealing that ASAP! Played a brilliant FoF Afghan game at Northumbria Adventurers Guild today, the biggest game yet, with a Taliban ambush on a USMC EOD team with Bunderwehr QRF... but keeping track of which Taliban units had reacted and which hadn't was a pain without a specific counter so those Warbase custom counters look ideal.

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    1. FoF is good but its a system that rewards regular play, I have gaming friends who don't play it regularly who have huge issues with the game flow lol! Too Fat Lardies "Fighting Season" is also imminent, its their adaptation of "Chain of Command" for Afghanistan and Iraq, it plays very very well, my favourite yet for the period. Released at Salute! Glad you like the counters. Whitley Bay 3D Gamers is a club worth checking out ;)
      Dougie

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