Hi Tom,
I happen to have your website as one of my favorites. Your terrain hexes are inspiring and I hope to emulate and spice mine up in a similar manner in the future. Your tutorial on your website and pictures are absolutely superb! Mine are plain canvases right now but I hope to rectify that before too long.
I agree w/ what you say on your website regarding GHQ vs. other manufactures. Like you my collection in about 99.2% GHQ and a few foreigners (very few-under 20 out of 2,000) that GHQ will never produce since the equipment is out of service and it would probably not be cost effective for the few sales they would garner. Having said that, not only am I impressed by the detail of the minis (I celebrate 30 yrs of GHQ this year), but I am even more impressed by the quality of the people that I have talked to and chatted with when I have called GHQ when placing orders. Not to mention this is an outstanding forum that is very supportive and everyone freely shares their knowledge (as you have so selflessly done with your OUTSTANDING tutorial on creating visually stunning Terrain Maker hexes).
Thank you very much for the suggestions on the paint! I too for many years have used Ceramcoat by Delta, and FolkArt paints from Hobby Lobby for non-camouflage colors (such as my hexes which I paint Old Ivy before I flock them).
I like the visual of the tanks without the bases, but for playability purposes I mount mine on bases to preserve the barrels (I lost 2 of the barrels on my original King Tigers) and mount them on 1" x 1 1/2". This enables me to protect the precious barrels on my self-propelled/tank destroyers as well as post-war and late-war long-barreled tank designs such as Panther and Tiger. I also like to put a based-size excel cut-out of game info on the bottom so you can just look at the bottom and not have to look anything up!
I like to create data cards to keep all the info consolidated in one place. What I have found is any game slows down when people have to look one place for the unit info to find out which weapon your using, look another place for info on your target, and another place for the weapon your firing. It is so much easier to just look at a data card or turn the mini over! Just my humble opinion from many years of playing with our group and running minis events at cons in Houston and Dallas.
Everything is fairly intuitive. Black for convenional armor/anti-armor values, orange is HEAT related, blue is HE/anti personnel, green is speed cross-country. I tried to select colors that were intuitive (like green for grass...).
I like to put my firing values at the bottom of the firing card so they can be matched up to the armor values on the top of the target card if desired. Match up the top of one to the bottom of the other and you have everything you need (or just flip over the bottom of the target your shooting at).
For KE and HEAT you roll the number (or less) on a d10 in the parenthesis to hit. For HE just roll the number (or less) on a d10. Unit then makes a cover roll. Very easy and games flows quickly. 2nd roll on d10 (1-5 turret hit/6-10 hull hit). 1 is always a kill regardless that renders an NPK (non penetrating kill), 10 is always a miss. Needless to say if you're Hull Down, the 6-10 roll results in a miss. Very good for simulating the effect of Hull-Down.
Just trying to contribute as others on this forum so generously do!
Thank you, Tom. I really appreciate your suggestion and encouragement! I hope your day is going well!
I for one am very glad I joined this forum and am very appreciative of everyone's support and encouragement.
Frank
aka zaevor 2000
Roy (Frank) Waugh
former 19D20 (SGT) Cav Scout, E Trp, 2/2 ACR from Sept 85-Mar 88.
This is very evident at the edges of road, river and railroad hexes. (sigh)