Here I Stand: Army boxes

 Believe it or not, our game of Here I Stand by email is still going on! As I write this, we're in the second round of impulses in Turn 3's action phase. We're really enjoying the game, but one of the problems I mentioned in my introductory post has come up again: the board is starting to get very cluttered in places.

Here, for example, is Calais: we need to fit an English square control marker, fleet and three army tokens onto that space on the map, and it's a little bit challenging. 

I mean yes, we can stack all three armies on top of each other, at which point no-one can see what's in the stack. This is highly inconvenient when playing by email, where everyone except the Sublime Porte is relying on pictures of the board. Even stacks become a challenge when, for instance, an army made up of regulars and mercenaries is besieging a key.

We've decided to implement a solution. Now, the Here I Stand board already has these nifty holding boxes for many of the capital cities on the board, as shown below.

War of the Ring did something similar: it basically had a box like this for every stronghold on the map, but also something ingenious: army boxes.

The square boxes are for strongholds: when one is placed under siege, very much like a key or fortress in Here I Stand, you put the garrison models in the stronghold box. The rectangular white boxes are army boxes. If it becomes difficult to fit all the models in an army on the board, you put them in an army box instead, and use the associated counter. You can see a Free Peoples army counter next to the number 1 box, and a Shadow army counter by the number 3 box. It's a really good system, and we're replicating it for Here I Stand.

**

Here's the army boxes and counters my partner made:

Here are the counters on the board:

And here's the corresponding units in their boxes.

We'll see how this works, but I'm very optimistic it'll make the game board much easier to decipher.

Blood Bowl: Bleachers 2: The Bleachening

Earlier, I built some Blood Bowl bleachers, which I've been populating with various miniatures since. Now it's time to take the next step and mount them on a plywood base, and add even more spectators.

**

Back when we played a lot of Necromunda around the turn of the millenium, I built a 4' × 4' game board and with some help from my friends, a set of 1' × 1' modular terrain boards for it; you can see them on my Instagram. We're currently using it to play Warhammer 40,000, and since the board itself is fairly solid, I'm going to build my Blood Bowl stadium on it. I even have some of the 1' × 1' plywood boards left, so I'm going to mount my bleachers on one of them.

The way I made the original terrain pieces was with two sheets of 4mm plywood: one 300×300mm and a 280×280mm sheet glued to its underside. The original idea was to have the pieces lock into position on the board, but that turned out to be way too fiddly. It turns out there are several advantages to doing it this way, though: the 4mm gap at the edges of the boards makes it easier to mount hinges on the baseboard, and since 4mm plywood can bend quite a bit, gluing two pieces together helps the whole thing stay level. So I've started by creating a plywood board like the previous ones:

The top side is then spraypainted white:

And then we stick on the stands!

They're a bit wonky, but then again my fluff reasoning is that all this has been built by the lowest-bidding goblin contractor!

**

While all this is going on, I've also got some new miniatures to add to my spectators. First up, from Perry Miniatures, their excellent Female and young rioters.

They'll be joined by three of Perry Miniatures' Female civilians. I've painted so many grimdark 40k miniatures and drab military vehicles that I wanted to do something totally different with my spectators, so it's bright primary colors all the way.

I also painted up some Muslim and Ottoman civilians, plus a leftover crewman from a Gatling gun. Here I felt like the models called for some more earthy tones.

And here's HP Lovecraft from Impact Miniatures.

Can you imagine how much Lovecraft would have hated a football game? I take an inordinate delight in placing an effigy of him in such multicultural surroundings.

**

Earlier this fall, I signed up to be harassed by a bird, so as to learn some rudiments of a new language. Soon enough, I went looking for an appropriate 28mm miniature to paint up as the Duolingo owl, and found it in Dark Sword Miniatures' Owl Mage.

I'd previously noted that Dark Sword's King Robert Baratheon looks remarkably like he's watching a football game, and I've been thinking about building a royal box for my stadium since. However, what I only noticed this time around was that so does Viserys. The Beggar King is obviously going to be slumming it in the stands, and he looks so much like he's losing a sizable bet placed on the game that I got Illyrio Mopatis to be there as the guy he's losing to.

Finally, I got Aeron Damphair, who I think also looks dissatisfied with the score, or maybe the refereeing. With the assistance of one of the casualty figures from Perry Miniatures' superb Zulu Wars infantry box, he is re-enacting a scene from my theology studies, of which the less said, the better.

**

I rather liked this idea of theological characters in my stands, so the natural thing to do was visit the Foundry Miniatures website for some Jolly Monks, Medieval Characters and Anarchists. These are also superb models! I'm delighted with them. Some of them joined Aeron at the back, along with one more Perry Muslim Civilian:

The rest of the monks and some of the anarchists got better spots up front.

Here are two vehicle passengers I got from the Bad Squiddo kickstarter:

Finally, the stands are now getting crowded enough that I think it's time to deploy The Crowd from Sally 4th. There's not that many seated 28mm miniatures about, and even fewer that are perfect for Blood Bowl, so I'd been saving these folks until I had a better idea of what these stands were going to start looking like.

The fellow in grey below has a long hair head from Anvil.

**

So here the stands are in their current glory!

I have to say that this is by miles the best modeling project I've ever done. I'm really happy with it, and very much looking forward to my stands finally making their Blood Bowl debut; hopefully later this year.

Let's Read Tolkien 73: The Tower of Cirith Ungol

Sam roused himself painfully from the ground.

Frodo's loyal batman finds himself outside the tower in the title, with his master inside. He sets off to rescue Frodo, helped by the fact that, as foreshadowed last time, the orc-garrison has started fighting among themselves over the loot.

On the way, we get our first proper look into Mordor: jagged mountains, an ashen wasteland and the volcano, Mount Doom. To get to the tower, Sam has to make his way past two Watchers: statues that project some kind of force field that blocks the road. He does this by using the Phial of Galadriel.

At the tower, literally all of the orcs are dead, except for a small one called Snaga and Shagrat. The wounded Shagrat encounters Sam, but makes his getaway, bearing the items taken off Frodo which would later (but earlier to us) be shown to Aragorn and the others at the Morannon. Sam then finds Frodo, returns the Ring to him after Frodo flips out about it, and they disguise themselves in orc-clothes and leave.

**

So, after a surprisingly long chapter, Frodo and Sam have escaped from the tower. I guess there's a bit of a disconnect going from the very epic scope of King Elessar and his army to Sam finding orc-pants for Frodo, and it took me a moment to adjust. Of course, the main theme of this chapter is Tolkien's notion that evil ultimately defeats itself, but if I'm honest, the notion of the entire garrison of an at least mildly strategically placed fortress conveniently massacring each other to the point where there's just two of them left stretches credibility. It also feels like the chapter just goes on for a really long time, and I'm not really sure what purpose a lot of it serves. Maybe I'm just being too negative.

It's easy to gloss over Sam's temptation by the Ring as a little bit silly and paternalistic "aw shucks" moment, which is basically what it is; it's the closest the Lord of the Rings ever comes to what Moorcock et al. claim is its dominant theme of "do what you're told and stay in your place". Of course the loyal subaltern has no dreams above his station! The ease with which he hands over the Ring also seems a bit exaggerated. But I was struck by Sam's ambition being defined as a garden of his own. I've talked about Tolkien's use of physical geography, and lately his corresponding lack of interest in human geography. Another juxtaposition is wholesome nature versus artificial evil, which is, of course, strongly present in this chapter, where Sauron's realm is depicted as an ashen wasteland.

But how does Tolkien actually conceive of nature? Good nature, to Tolkien, is basically a well-tended garden. Places like the Shire, Rivendell or Lórien, even Ithilien, are actually fairly bourgeois gardens. How often does anyone even encounter any wildlife anywhere? Even Beorn's animal friends behaved like well-trained servants or drilled soldiers. Outside of the various gardens and lawns, there's the desolate wilderness and scary, almost evil forests. Even when they're not actively hostile, they're very alien. Nature is only really idyllic and good when someone has mowed the lawn and clipped the hedges. Solidly, impeccably middle class!

**

Next time: more singing.