A bit of TtS solo Crusades action

[olicana]

It's a battle report with positional maps and pics and it can be found here:

http://olicanalad.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-solo-meeting-engagement-holy-land.html

Usual stuff by me

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l8AxM611MFw/YADP0nxYDJI/AAAAAAAAO3o/QZ7WHleJYigAMn66aiUKIqIlkGHqJwpdgCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h326/solo%2Bgame%2B2.1.png





Hope you like it

[Atheling]

Great looking stuff James 

Glad to added "Crusades" to the title

[MGH]

Great job, superbly painted collection! But then all your stuff is. 

[Frostie]

Stunning as always

[rampantlion]

Beautiful game!  I can't see it on the board, so how did you do the grid required by the game?  Sorry if I missed the explanation somewhere in your write up.

Thanks  -  Allen

[olicana]

There are 'cross hair' marks at the box intersections. Squares are 200mm x 200mm, nine to a tile (3x3).

You can see a 'cross hair' mark, in the pic above, just in front and between the two units of foot sergeants. It's all you need. You don't need big dark lines on the table. On my green cloth the marks are simply darker green spots, about 3mm diameter. Because you know there is a grid, and you know the units lie within the boxes it creates, the boxes are very apparent in play - you don't even look for the cross hairs, the brain finds them all by itself.

One of the misconceptions people have about TtS is that the grid will detract from the aesthetic of a game played with miniatures but, if I put this game on at a show, I would guarantee that most people looking at it wouldn't realise it was being played on a grid until you started moving things or calling out ranges without the use of a tape measure: To the casual observer, it would just look like all the other games on show.

[fred]

Great looking game (as always) !

I totally agree with your points about the grid - simple marks for the corners is all you need - as you say the units reinforce this. We have sometimes played with just marking the corners with a few pieces of grit or something similiar as a temporary measure, and this works too. Even if they get moved a bit, the boxes are big and you know what the grid should be - units are in a box, there is no worrying about where they are in the box. All of this really speeds up movement.

I’m like the extra rules for the Crusades, at first glanced they seemed rather a lot, but on further reading they all make sense, and are actually straight forward in practice.

[Atheling]

We just stuck grass tufts on the corners of the rectangles, which were pretty much invisible.

Easily removed afterwards too.

[Gibby]

Brilliant battle report, and an amazing looking one. I'm not all that familiar with TtS but I think your rule additions sound perfectly sensible and thematic.

I agree with your on the aesthetic side of things - you cannot tell there's even a grid. One thing I've noticed, though, with TtS reports I've seen, is that the grid does seem to stop people bothering putting units in melee right up to one another, instead fighting between the boxes. Is that right? I've read a few reports and never seen units in melee all that close together!

[fred]

In TTS you do move at least slightly into the enemy box to melee. But at the end of that melee the units will separate

And as there is no melee phase, melees take place at the end of each activation, so in photos you are even less likely to see units together.

[Gibby]

Understood, thanks! It was just something that came to mind on the topic of aesthetics of the battle.

[fred]

If units are fighting, you can certainly have them positioned at the front edge of each box, to give a better look that they are engaged. We play the ECW variant (For King and Parliament) and in that the units sitting a little way off probably looks better as they are likely engaged in a short range fire fight, rather than melee.

[Axebreaker]

Fantastic looking game!

Christopher

[Vis Bellica]

Great looking game, and I agree about the corner marks. I've got a battlemat with just the corners marked in the same way, and you soon become blind to them.

Here's a pic of one of my FK&P games to show what I mean:



You can just see some of the corner markings if you look hard enough!