Markers & Cards for the RCW (Cards Properly Released, 23 Nov)

[Wirelizard]

Like a number of the other TFL games, Through The Mud & The Blood features "blinds" to introduce a bit of fog of war and obscure the initial deployment of your forces. Rich of TFL did some very nice generic oval blinds recently, and those inspired me to create some Russian Civil War themed blinds for my upcoming M&B RCW games.

They're available over on The Warbard in both Letter and A4 size. There's a Russian tricolour for the Whites, and a Red Army banner for the Reds, and I did both oval ones like Rich's and plainer rectangular ones (easier to cut out!).

[Red Sveta]

These blinds are great thanks. I have been using Through the Mud and Blood rules for my RCW games as well. They are a really good set of rules and can cover any early 20th Century conflict. In fact they could cover almost any period if you adapted them a little.

[Wirelizard]

Mud & Blood from the TooFatLardies requires a deck of Initiative Cards, one per Big Man (Officer or Senior NCO) and a few extra for certain units and events. I've started doing up some Russian Civil War cards for both the Bolsheviks and the Whites.

They're not finished by any means, but here's what they look like currently:


Assuming this damned cold goes away and other bits of so-called real life don't go stranger than they are already, I should have the set of cards finished by this weekend. They're designed to print onto Letter-sized pre-punched business card sheets (of which I have a surplus for some reason) but they're easy enough to print onto ordinary card and cut out for use, and if they're rescaled slightly while being printed onto A4 or whatever it's not the end of the world.

[cstoesen]

The cards and blinds look great.  I can't wait to see the whole set.  I need to work on some Mud & Blood cards myself for Russians and Austrians.

What software are you using for making the cards?

[Wirelizard]

What software are you using for making the cards?

Inkscape is my go-to graphics program for nearly all of my projects like this; it's fantastically powerful and, being Open Source, also free. There's versions for Windows, Linux & Mac available.

I get the flag images from Wikipedia (which has SVG graphics files for nearly every flag - and SVG is Inkscape's native format) and some of the rest from Open Clipart Library (OCAL). (which is apparently down for maintenance currently, but hopefully not for long!)

Over on my blog, The Warbard, my brother and I co-wrote a series of articles on Inkscape and related subjects. I should do another article specifically on doing cards and other wargaming props too.

The Inkscape articles are Part One, Part Two, and Part the Third. You can see some of the other stuff I've used Inkscape for with a search for "Inkscape" on The Warbard.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, an article specifically on using Inkscape to create cards and other gaming aids is a damn good idea. Look for that soon!

[cstoesen]

Excellent.  Thanks. I may actually have inkscape installed on my laptop when I was shopping around for a graphics package.  I will have to check on that.

Chris

[Wirelizard]

Just finished assembling the PDF of the first release of my RCW Initiative Cards for using in Mud & Blood in the RCW - they're over on The Warbard.

The whole thing is a 7 page PDF, 4.3Mb in size. The first three pages should be enough cards for a basic game; the next three are the more advanced cards, the less commonly-used ones and some duplicates for larger games, and finally there's a page of partially blank cards for customizing your own.

Enjoy, feedback here or at the blog!

[Wirelizard]

I've removed the card PDF for now, a couple of people pointed out an error in the PDF that caused Acrobat Reader to choke.

Other PDF readers worked OK, but given Acrobat Reader is pretty much the world's default PDF reader, obviously I had a problem.

The strange thing is, the seven single-page PDFs that form the released project are all fine in Acrobat, it's just the combined seven-page document that doesn't work.

I have no damned idea why. Computers are fun, especially past midnight on a work night.

So no RCW cards for now, I'm afraid. I'll get the thing sorted out tomorrow after work. Now I need to fall over so I'm vaguely coherent at work tomorrow...

[Wirelizard]

Right, with some help from various parties, we've got the RCW cards for Mud & Blood into the form and format I'd intended to release them in, and they are over on The Warbard again.

4Mb PDF, all seven pages of cards in one PDF finally.

Enjoy!

[Wirelizard]

Never did show off the whole lot of these cards & blinds printed, did I? They really do exist.

I've also now done blank versions of my card templates in a couple of formats for download and free reuse by anyone interested. My standard card template is letter-sized and designed to work with Avery (or similar) business card pre-punched sheets, although I often just print onto standard card and cut the resulting sheet.

[sepoy1857]

Nice!