Been looking at the various templates for BKC on the site. How useful / essential do folks consider these to be. I am a serial buyer of wargame widgets and such like and, likewise, I have a box full of largely useless widgets that have never seen the table after their first use (too fiddly and impractical) so while I'm happy to buy them I don't want them ending up in the 'box of regret'. What seems useful with the BKC templates is that they are frames rather than solid, such that you could probably place them over units to determine units hit, rather than the solid templates I've used that you have to hold over and try to keep a steady hand when there are a lot of potential targets, mostly these have been discarded in favour of just measuring the beaten zone.
PS: Still waiting for the book to arrive so plan to order the templates quickly if they are that useful.
The templates are fairly new - so aren't something I've used when playing the various versions of BKC.
I've found the circular effects pretty easy to determine with a tape measure, as unit bases are fairly large, so easy enough to see if they are caught in the blast. As always the key piece is marking the centre.
I do recall that measuring the aircraft area of effect was the trickiest with a tape measure.
Being hollow these should be easier to put in place on the table, than solid ones.
Quote from: fred. on 18 April 2022, 07:12:00 AMThe templates are fairly new - so aren't something I've used when playing the various versions of BKC.
I've found the circular effects pretty easy to determine with a tape measure, as unit bases are fairly large, so easy enough to see if they are caught in the blast. As always the key piece is marking the centre.
I do recall that measuring the aircraft area of effect was the trickiest with a tape measure.
Being hollow these should be easier to put in place on the table, than solid ones.
Thanks, I'll maybe see how it goes then if we decide "This would sure be easier with a template" I'll order them, or at least the ones we need. More mindful of not ordering stuff I don't think I'll end up using these days as we often pay more in shipping than we do for the products. The box of 'absolutely essential' items that I've never used is already full too. Sod's law if I throw anything it'll be "Now where's.......".
I've made my own, but it is a lot easier to use a template, especially to see if a unit is more than 50% under it, rather than a tape measure.
Also made my own from clear acetate. The official ones are nice though!
Thanks for the replies, rather than mess about with existing 15mm figures I will probably order 2 x 10mm armies from Pendraken. Probably not necessary, maybe even pointless, but I'm just conscious of the smaller footprint of 10mm giving more manoeuvre space, so I may as well throw the templates in :)
Thats what we like to see!
You will very much notice the smaller footprint of the vehicles and buildings. With infantry its really down to what base size you go for.
Indeed. I have a few 15mm buildings but Im planning to got the 10mm route for Napoleonic (albeit likely using Warlord Epic figures) and it would make sense to get dual use out of those buildings and use them for WW2. Big problem for me with 15mm is that while the FOW box sets are great value there's lots of vehicles they don't contain and then anything else you need tends to come in packs of 4-6, mostly just not needed (for me).
The book should arrive next week and I plan to look closely at infantry basing. I plan to use them for O-Group too (where base size is not that important) so one thing I want to avoid is putting infantry on bases that are the same size as my 15mm. Of course 1 infantry base will be a platoon not a section but that would apply if I used my 15mm (using FOW bases) too. I want the bases to be small enough to reduce the footprint but not so small that they screw up rule mechanisms etc.