WoFun: storage logic 3

The final format for storing my WoFun standees, using 5mm EVA sheet stuck with a hot glue-gun. Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life but I've never used a glue-gun before. It was great fun until I accidentally glued a strip of foam to my fingers. That's when you find out just how hot the glue is and how well it sticks.

WoFun: storage logic 2

Thank you, Simon Jones, for putting me on to self-adhesive foam insulation tape. Attached to board, it's ideal for my WoFun storage trays. Arranging the foam with slots between was just the right approach, but my extravagant use of the tape makes this disproportionately expensive. 

If I get some sheets of hobby foam and cut and stick them myself, I may be able to achieve an adequate result more economically.

WoFun: storage logic

My WoFun collection(s) will ultimately fit into robust, stackable and conveniently sized plastic boxes, ie 4L or 9L RUBs according to the fundamental principle of wargame figure storage.

In the absence of magnetic sheeting, there has to be another way to stop the stands from rattling around or ending up in a  heap when being transported to the wargames club.

18mm shot, horse and pike stands are all different heights, but share two common dimensions: they are all about 30mm wide and about 20mm deep, front to back. 

Logic dictates that the most flexible and efficient way to store them (and to identify and deploy them) is to lie them down in trays. 

My prototype solutions featured homemade card trays, but I will probably switch to sponge with slots to catch the bases. The ultimate solution may look very different, but I think I've found the right form factor.

Foamboard trays for Really Useful Boxes

Rebetting foamboard

Really Useful Boxes are the best friends of many wargamers. I simply line them with magnetic sheet for storing multibased figures on steel bases, but I discovered the hard way that this did not provide adequate buffering for individually based 28mm metal figures which ended up in a heap when transported.

My first solution was to create interlocking slats from 5mm foamboard in the form of a hashtag (#) but I more recently became aware of the Warbases  MDF RUB trays which would allow me to pull out complete units en route to tabletop deployment.

Unfortunately the Warbases trays (with full-size and half-size footprints) lacked the granularity I personally needed to minimise figure movement. So I decided to make my own foamboard trays for my individually-based 15mm Sci-Fi armies with 1/4 or 1/6 footprints and various heights based on dividing the internal height of a 9 litre RUB by 3 or 4.

I worked extensively in foamboard when producing my 'Crossfiregrad' buildings. The methodology here was exactly the same but without windows the foamboard trays required a lot less cutting.

The trays were planned using CorelDraw, printed onto paper and Spray Mounted onto Foamboard. As before, the trays were rebetted, stuck with UHU Por and reinforced with dress pins. This makes them strong and keeps the corners square. The tray bottoms are lined with heavy-duty magnetic sheet. 

A 3-storey 1/6 footprint tray under construction

The 1/4 footprint trays measure 105mm x 168mm, the 1/6 footprint trays are 105mm x 112mm and the heights are 35mm or 46mm or multiples thereof, i.e. 70mm, 92 mm or 105mm, depending on what needs to be stored. You can fit two 35mm-high trays in a 4L RUB or four in a 9L RUB. Three 46mm-high trays will fit in a 9L RUB.

The advantage of this approach is that the trays are completely modular and can be swapped between armies as required. Although they require more work than the hashtag dividers, they will be my preferred solution in future.

Thirty Years War: Provisional unit plans for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Thirty Years War musketeers

I'm not sure exactly what units I'm going to end up with at this stage but I can make some provisional assumptions. In order to check storage needs at the same time I used CorelDraw to create an A4 grid of 60mm x 30mm rectangles, the size of the bases I will be using.

In each grid division I wrote in a particular type of unit and I was then able to play around with the the numbers and balance.

I know that each army will have one unit of Shot and one unit of Dragoons, 4 Generals and 2 Cannons. The Imperialists will also have a unit of Croats. The rest will be made up of more-or-less equal proportions of Horse and Pike+shot units but I won't know exactly how many until I have sorted the incoming figures and, where appropriate, mixed in additional figures.

All the Swedish cavalry will be Horsemen, whilst the Imperialists will be split between Cuirassiers and Harquebusiers.

The Imperialist Pike+shot will include a front rank of armored pikemen and some musketeers with helmets. The Swedish Pike+shot will include some figures in Monmouth caps.

One Swedish unit will be Scots in hodden grey and bonnets, 7 will have coloured coats and three will be in pearl-grey.

And so, making a best guess I reckon that the armies will look something like this:

Swedes
12 Pike+shot
10 Horsemen
1 Shot
1 Dragoons
4 Generals
2 Cannon

Imperialists
12 Pike+shot
5 Cuirassiers
4 Harquebusiers
1 Croats
1 Shot
1 Dragoons
4 Generals
2 Cannon

Each of these is exactly 30 bases which is bang on target.

Roughly how big were Thirty Years War battles of the Swedish phase?

Battle of Lützen 1632

As I eventually want to use Tilly's Very Bad Day to play historical scenarios, I thought I'd better get a handle on exactly how big the major battles were during the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years War (1630-1635).

This is a ‘quick and dirty’ exercise so I’m happy to grab figures where I can. I started with Steven Thomas's timeline of the war before moving on to Richard Bonney’s The Thirty Years’ War 1618-1648. I also have William Guthrie’s two-volume Battles of the Thirty Years War but that’s rather too detailed for this purpose.

Where I have only crude totals, I’ve converted as if the men were all Pike+shot. The various different labels given to factions may need improvement.

The numbers show (1) Actual men, and in parenthesis (2) Representation at the lowest rate where 1 base = 1000 Pike+shot, 500 Horse or 8 Cannon, and (3) Representation at the highest rate where 1 base = 2000 Pike+shot, 1000 Horse or 16 Cannon. The results have been rounded to whole bases.

It can be seen that the numbers of bases required is reasonable and can be tailored to suit what players have available by changing the conversion rate. The default pick-up game in comparison is set at 15-30 units per army which gives comparable numbers of bases. In other words, if you have armies of 15-30 bases you should be able to play scenarios based on these battles without any problems.

Battle of Werben 1631

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League

Swedes
16,000 entrenched (16) (8)

Holy Roman Empire
23,000 (23) (12)

First Battle of Breitenfeld 1631

Swedes & Saxons vs Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League

Catholics
21,400 infantry (21) (11)
10,000 cavalry (20) (10)

Swedes
14,842 infantry (15) (7)
8,064 cavalry (16) (8)

Saxons
13,000 infantry (13) (6.5)
5,225 cavalry (10) (5)

Battle of Rain / Battle of the River Lech 1632

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League

Swedes
40,000 (40) (20)

Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League
25,000 (25) (13)

Battle of Lützen 1632

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire

Swedes
12,786 infantry (13) (6)
6,210 cavalry (12) (6)
60 cannon (8) (4)

Holy Roman Empire
9,870 infantry (10) (5)
6,900 cavalry (14) (7)
38 cannon (5) (2)
Reinforcements: 2,300 cavalry (5) (2)

Battle of Nördlingen 1634

Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League/Spain vs Swedes/ Heilbronn League

Catholics
23,000 infantry (23) (12)
13,000 cavalry (26) (13)
32 cannon  (4) (2)

Spanish
13,500 infantry (14) (7)
4,500? Cavalry (9) (5)
Reinforcements: 3,000 Catholic cavalry (6) (3)

Protestants
16,300 infantry (16) (8)
9,300 cavalry (19) (9.5)
62 cannon (8) (4)

Battle of Wittstock 1636

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire & Saxons

Swedes
16,000 (16) (8)

Holy Roman Empire and Saxons
22,000 (22) (11)

Thirty Years War: Additional 6mm figures for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Scottish musketeers.

After some more thought I decided get some additional figures types:

WEC05 - Musketeers, Shoulder, Monmouth cap
I hadn't realised these were also appropriate for TYW Swedes, but Monmouth caps are mentioned in Steven's Thomas's TYW Swedish painting guide.

WEC17 - Horse - Hat
Just an additional pack so I have more Swedes in hats than pots. They'll all be mixed together

WEC 19 (mounted) Dragoons
For Imperialist harquebusiers. I'm not otherwise using this pack. They've got carbines and look like a reasonably good match for later harquebusiers.

WEC31 - Lowland Pikeman, advance
WEC33 - Lowland Musketeers, shoulder
For Scots in Swedish service. This is a very expensive way of filling one base,  but I couldn't resist them and I'll just sell on the surplus (or start a Scots ECW army?.

GNP 8 - Unarmoured cavalry
From the GNW Polish range for Croat and other irregular light horse.

POW02 - Large Church and churchyard
POW03 - Large House
These look fairly Germanic and are for a village feature.

These will probably not be my final purchases as I still need to confirm how many figures I'm actually going to put on the bases and how many bases I might want to field in order to create the largest historical scenarios.

Thirty Years War: Bases for 6mm figures for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Battle of Noerdlingen 1634

My normal practice for basing multiple figure stands is a combination of 2mm MDF and sheet steel. This gives the figures stability in transit when I put them in boxes lined with magnetic sheeting and on the table because of the additional weight. The depth gives you something to pick them up by.

However, I was not keen to use 3mm+ deep bases for figures that were themselves only 6mm high. Because of my firm requirement for steel over MDF, my friend Ian suggested using steel alone but that seemed fraught with difficulties as it is actually very awkward to prize a thin steel sheet from the magnetic plastic without having long nails or damaging the figures.

Printed template for mass-producing storage trays.

Ian suggested that if I inserted a sheet of paper between the surface of the storage boxes and the bottom of the bases, the bases would remain adequately in place but I could use the paper to 'peel and lift' them away when it was time to deploy them.

This worked a treat - thank you, Ian - and I've even started to create little paper trays so that the bases can be lifted out even more easily. Trays made from 80 gsm paper are a little weak and probably won 't last. 160 gsm card interferes with the magnetism. Somewhere in between I expect 100 gsm or 120 gsm paper to provide an optimum trade-off.

This arrangement would save me 2mm of unnecessary, artificial height. But something still tells me that it is a risky idea. Bases 3mm+ deep will give me (and others) something to grab - other than the figures themselves - when moving them around the table. Perhaps I will add the MDF after all!

Organising playing aids

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I’m pleased to publish a guest article by Simon Jones, a reader of this blog who has a very systematic scheme for organising playing aids.

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This is the kind of thing I make up for games we play regularly. I just grab the box and go - they are all labelled.

I complete unit info in Excel and can amend and add info to make new unit sheets easily. I laminate these, and QRFs etc. I can then reuse them with water soluble pens.

The bag contains dice, tokens etc. The box has tape measures (cheap in B&Q, but any other brand will do), other gaming bits and pens.

If I can every now and then I find a cheap extra copy of the rules. It helps when people sit in on games.

You can find extra bits like unit cards on the Internet. I laminate and make up this kind of stuff as well. I have started adding movement bases to boxes as well now.

For Poseidon's Warriors I even have the ships included in my rules box.

So I have boxes for:

• Congo
• 7TV first (DVD size box) and second editions
• TMWWBK (Rebels & Patriots will probably share this box)
• The Pikeman’s Lament
• Dragon and Lion Rampant (although I do not play LR)
• One Hour Wargames and The Lamps are Going Out early WW1 Rules
• Poseidon's Warriors
• Just started a box for One Hour Skirmish Games and What a Tanker

You can obviously reuse boxes etc when no longer needed. To be honest the cost is not great. I know I have everything to play easily to hand and portable.

Bespoke foam trays

Custom-made trays from Just Lasered. The centre one
is pick'n'pluck.

I didn’t want my new Dark Age resin scenery rattling round in a box when I transported it. I had already been looking at foam trays for figures, but I couldn’t find any to fit and fill my favourite storage solution - Really Useful Boxes.

Then I found Just Lasered whose products include RUB-friendly foam trays made to order. If you know exactly what you want you can get the cavities ready cut, but I decided to go with the pick’n’pluck option. Just Lasered are brilliant at meeting bespoke requirements and provided just what I wanted.

As the term suggests, pick’n’pluck allows you to create your own cavities by pulling out the partially-cut foam pillars. This allowed me to tailor each cavity to each individual piece of scenery, minimising rattle and making best use of the available volume. The pick’n’pluck comes in various thicknesses and some people favour a layered approach so they can pick out various different depths. This is possible but I found it a little tricky.

I will certainly be considering Just Lasered for future storage requirements where appropriate.

Just Lasered

28mm Metal Figure Storage

Original 'optimistic' storage

I previously posted some photos of my 28mm Zulu War armies as stored in Really Useful Boxes (example posted again right). The figures are mounted on steel 2p pieces and the boxes are lined with magnetic plastic. All looked well but when I opened the boxes after wheeling them to my local wargames club, I discovered the figures had ended up in a heap!  Some figures had come off their bases but luckily there was no significant damage.

The 0.55 mm thick magnetic plastic is usually fine for 10mm and 15mm figures on multi-figure bases, but metal 28mm figures are simply too heavy to stay put.

Foamboard dividers under construction

I've since lined other boxes with 0.8 mm magnetic sheet which is significantly stronger. I've also used foamboard to create internal dividers. I approached this in a similar way  to using foamboard for buildings.

First step was to measure the internal dimensions of the RUBs. I then played around with a design in CorelDraw. After some thought I decided to  go with four figures per compartment. This accommodates the regular infantry who have protruding rifles and bayonets and which are convenient to have in pairs.

Better protected than before

After printing the templates using an A3 printer, I used SprayMount to fix them onto 5mm foamboard, before cutting them out with a scalpel. The design is very simple. There are two long slats crossed by four short slats. Slots are cut in each set, up and down respectively, so they slot together. This is then placed loosely in the RUB with some sheets of bubblewrap above. Next time I will make the dividers a little higher so they are flush with the lid.

I will also be dropping bubblewrap pads into each compartment on top of the figures.

There may be some movement in transit, but the threat of damage should be reduced.

Storage crisis

Floor to ceiling

Despite having a whole medium-sized upstairs room just for my personal stuff (mostly books and wargaming-related), I've run out of storage space.

The room wasn't a bad size when we first moved in some twenty years ago but with the accumulation of cabinets, cupboards, racks, bookcases and storage crates, it's gradually shrunk to a narrow corridor. Besides filling all these storage units, the units themselves are stacked with plastic boxes which literally reach to the ceiling.

One particular problem is that I now don't even have a free space for moving stuff around or getting games ready to take out. What is the answer?

Move to a larger house

Moving  house is a very time-consuming and stressful undertaking. A larger lounge would enjoy uxorial support but the demand for more wargaming space is an aspiration unlikely to achieve joint critical mass.

Put stuff in the loft

Although the loft is already crowded with domestic junk and books, I could make some more room there. However, I've tried this before and it's very inconvenient.

Have a loft conversion

This would be fairly expensive and might not give me a bigger room than I have now, unless I utilised both rooms which would be a somewhat disproportionate use of a house. The main problem, however, is what would I do with all the other stuff already in the loft?

Colonise other parts of the house

Not an option.

Compress existing storage

This is an ideal solution but I doubt if it would free up more than 10% of the used space.

Sell books and/or figures

I already have about twenty crates of unwanted books in the loft which I would try to sell on Amazon or eBay if I had time. I have sold some figures at shows, but most of my armies are, I think, still wanted. The problem is that I will probably never finish painting them and they may never be used. So I have a strong attachment to them but it's probably more emotional than rational.

This is a troubling dilemma, but I have a plan of sorts. I think I should start by chipping away at the problem, that is selling off stuff I least want and seeing how far I get. There is some scenery and even a few figures which are definitely surplus to requirements. Gaining a cubic foot here and there would be an immense help. But it's getting rid of books that would probably be the least painful and most productive way forward.

While books about uniforms, hardware, organisation and tactics are essential to any wargamer, general histories and memoirs are only of marginal interest, especially once read. There was a time, perhaps, when I would have liked to have become some sort of 'military expert' and would have required a library to support that conceit, but it's too late in life now and I have other priorities consuming my time and energy.

Any suggestions will be gratefully received!