Being of a thrifty nature and preferring to fork out for rules, models and terrain rather than bits to make gaming easier I worked out some short cuts for games that need dice, cards or markers. These details should also be useful for gamers looking for play aids but located in places where the postage to receive them might be hefty.
First up are dice. Mortem et Gloriam uses specialist dice. The easiest way to craft these is taking an image of the dice faces from the web site. This is then resized, cut up and stuck onto regular dice. The examples below look naff at this magnification but are good enough for regular play. They have been printed onto label paper using a laser printer. This sort of colour rubs off very easily so the images were covered in clear sticky plastic before cutting them out. A better effect can be achieved by printing onto specialised sticky back printing paper. The base colour scheme of these dice could be better. Red and black is not a good choice for contrast. An improvement would be to change the black to white or forge new but similar symbols from scratch. A good starting point are the Saga dice symbols; these will need colouring in a paint program. There are plenty of heads and weapons but no ‘S’. Either use an ‘S’ from a text tool or pick a suitably squiggly Saga symbol.
Next up are cards. There are only 50 cards (not including flank or ambush cards) in MeG and ReG but the colours do not match a standard pack. The best solution is a Uno pack that has 5 colours in the right numbers except for a lack of white cards. Using blue cards for white fixes this. In the example shown the cards are in green-backed card sleeves that cost more than the cards themselves. They do provide some protection from shuffling and look better on the table than seeing the Uno backs.
On to templates; these are used for turning and moving. This set was made using PowerPoint as the drawing element as it allows a line to be rotated at one end by an angle. The trick is to draw a line of the required length (1 or more base widths), then copy it and rotate the copy. The exact angle required can be worked out hand or online. The 2 long sides will be the width of the block moving and the short side the distance to be moved. For example an 8cm wide unit wheeling in increments of 4cm. The circle round the edge has the radius of the unit width but is mainly here to aid in lining up the triangle edges and in making the template look good. Parts of the slide not in use have been blocked out with white rectangles to save ink. The finished templates are glued onto cheap floor tiles (sold in packs of 3 or 4 in discount shops). This adds some weight and is still easy to cut with scissors. The resulting templates are equivalent in accuracy to commercial MDF cut examples. Their big benefit in MeG or ReG is to work out if a charge can get in before declaring it. A few fractions of a millimetre won’t matter and most gamers’ bases are not working to that sort of precision having been built up with filler and flocked.
A final note on markers. Simply print out and stick to floor tiles. For double-sided examples you’ll need to use glue on one side. These are for Chain of Command. Hit markers could be easily made up although any bead or crystal will do. Just make sure that the hit markers keep pace with their allocated units as they move around.
Gaming in Blackshaw Head 