Ahh… now that brings back memories. Nice to see an armor pool every now and then.
@Black_Elk:
It’s a pretty cool idea. By having the decal in place on the units, the only time you’d really need a roundel is when two ally nations are occupying the same conquered territory. Like say if Japan and Germany were both in Egypt, or USA and UK both in France. But otherwise that saves on room, since standard cardboard roundels are pretty large. A lot of prime real estate gets taken up by them, enough room for what, like 4 infantry? I think it would help with crowding for sure.
I often wonder why they don’t cut the diameter on the roundels in half so they could print twice as many. They’d still be easy enough to pop, since you could just use the back end of a pencil or something. Japan often run out of roundels, sometimes G and UK too, so any system that cuts back on them would free those up for other uses.
My perspective here… The standard bases are totally fine with me. I like the units to look as realistic as possible and adding a larger rectangle on the bottom of a tank or a ship would just look very odd. The only units I have had issues with falling over are subs. Yes, infantry will fall if you knock the board, but they are really pretty stable as they are. And airplanes would look ungainly with a rectangular base, not to mention it would cover up a beautiful painted carrier deck.
In the future, whenever that is, I intend to have all of my units fully painted. I do not feel the need to keep part of the unit unpainted (original plastic color) to aid in recognition. That is what decals are for or the roundel bases on infantry. Being able to determine a unit’s nationality may not always be glaringly obvious with a cursory glance. However, that is okay for me. Seasoned players should be able to keep track of their units and territories. I think it also can add to the ‘fog of war’ effect, which is sorely lacking in this game.
Tall Paul mentioned Allworkandnoclay, who has painted many of his units. I remember that in Allwork’s original painting thread, he actually left a very small portion of each unit unpainted to show the plastic color underneath. Supposedly this was to allow for recognition of what country’s units they were, though I thought the unpainted part to be way too small for truly effective recognition. But you could do something similar with your units if you are concerned about being able to tell the difference. It might look weird, but it’s an option.
I highly doubt that either HBG or Wizards will reconfigure their molds to include squared of bases. (I don’t know if you were suggesting this, but it kinda sounded like it) It would add a huge amount of plastic and therefore expense. However, I would think that you could glue your pieces to rectangular bases pretty easily. That way you can make them exactly how you would like.
And as for roundels (because I love sharing my opinion… :roll:), my philosophy for their use is that they are only necessary in conquered territories and only when you have few or no other units in that conquered territory. No need to put roundels in your own territories (rather redundant since they already have one printed on the map) unless possibly said territory is changing hands every turn and needs to be kept close track of. Consequently, they don’t take up too much space for me. Each roundel is only slightly larger than an infantry base, so I do not quite understand why you are saying they take up enough space for 4 infantry. Reducing their size by half would save a little space, but they would be harder to see and more prone to getting lost or moved around on the board. Integrating a roundel on each infantry base will further reduce the need to use roundels on their own.
