Chance Cards Part Two

I intended to make a total of thirteen different cards with a variety of instructions printed on them some more than others. The right balance has to be made, but I will not know this until I start using the cards. But here is how I have made the set up at the moment with a grand total of 40 cards in a set.
There are for ADVANCE x2, AMMUNITION x4, EAGER x2, HALT x4, LUCKY x3, NO RESTRICTIONS x5, NO TARGET x3, OFFICERS KILLED x2, RESUPPLY x4, RETREAT x2, STEADY x4, TEST FOR MORAL x3 and UNLUCKY x2. 

Now that I have sorted that out, I can now get down to making my cards up. Okay I have the front of the card which is a picture of the Battle of Waterloo map and on the reverse side a picture of the old guard at Waterloo with the written instructions printed on top of the picture.

I was first going to cut up stiff card to the correct size before gluing on the pictures and the instructions on both sides of the card. First the thickness of the card came into play and then they are going to get dirty very quickly and bent when in use over time. Lamination was the answer but card being too thin could still bend and too thick will not leave me much room for the lamination pouch to contain the card.

So after finding a shop with laminating pouches in credit card size, I brought a box of 50. This should give me enough even if I muck a few up as I have never done laminating before. Lucky for me my daughter had a laminating machine, so that part was solved.

Then out of the blue I had an idea, to use the well-known Lottery cards that you can fine at many shopping outlets in the UK that play the game. These are made out of credit size plastic card and they are very strong. These will be ideal for my chance cards. Once I had collected a few and printed out the front and backs to the cards, the assembling of the cards took place. Sticking the front and reverse side to the plastic card by a bit of sick glue just to place for positional guide, once dry I then inserted the card into the lamination pouch and here you can see the results and I think that they look very professional if I do say. Now I have to find time to play a game and to try out my new cards.

 

 

Chance Cards Part One

I thought that I would share one of my many projects that I have lined up to do at one point in my life with you now.  Being a solo player and having a nice set of rules to play with is all very well but when you do not have an opponent to play against, they can be very long winded in playing a game against yourself, not only that, you are in total control of commanding both armies on the table. To me although this is better than nothing, it will only be moral rules that will take away any control that you have over the two armies. So to get around this I have come up with the CHANCE CARD. 

I started this project back in 2008 after I found the idea on another war gaming blog, a club that was adding these cards to their games and I thought to myself that they could help me. I gave it a lot of thought and how I could incorporate these into my games.

The answer that I came up with is that I would have to draw a card when a unit is attacked in any way and that unit would have to act on what the card said. So I hope that the only rules that I need are for moving, shooting and hand-to-hand combat. 

I made the decision that the cards should be a credit card size which is easy to handle even with kids taking part in the game. The spec was that they are to be made in full colour front and back. So with a rough I made I now had to design my own cards.

With an aide of a computer I made the template of the front and back of the card. On the front of the card I inserted a coloured picture of the Battle of Waterloo map and on the reverse side was to be the text. This was my first draft and I later changed that to another picture on the back of the card with the old guard at Waterloo but lightened it so the text, being in bold black, would stand out from the picture.

So what was the instruction or chance that was to be made on these cards? Well again some of the instructions came from the war gaming blog but most were changed to help the game roll along, I hope!

I intend to make thirteen different cards with some of the instructions would be more than others. The right balance has to be made, but I will not know that until I start playing with the cards. There are for LUCKY and UNLUCKY, STEADY, HALT, RETREAT, AMMUNITION, RESUPPLY, OFFICERS KILLED, NO TARGET, TEST FOR MORAL, EAGER, ADVANCE and NO RESTRICTIONS.