While at Game On I had a chance to see the hard core OCS/TCS and now BCS players cranking on a late stage scenario of BCS’s first title Last Blitzkrieg.
They had epxerienced some of the frustrations and challenges I faced solo. They however have over come!!
Above, Support Weapons counters are replaced with tiny dice much easier to use and to see what is going on.
The adaptation here for Support weapons counters to use dice, as the constant flipping thru chits or moving them out of the way is painful is a neat idea. They also had roster sheets which alleviated the pollard chit mess that can happen.
If you squint… you might see American counters… But they blend into the map. No divisional stripes. It really makes me wonder why not. I was told by 2 different playtesters that “there are not enough colors” to do stripes…” Fellas we all know the Gay Pride rainbow aint all the colors now dont we. Then we have two colors.. then boxes..oh how about circles? But if you do play on VASSAL its easy! Just right click and hey presto your Division is identified.
I’d encourage the next iteration of BCS to be more physically user friendly than VASSAL friendly. Some of us game in the real world.
Hello Kevin,
You write above:
” No divisional stripes. It really makes me wonder why not. I was told by 2 different playtesters that “there are not enough colors” to do stripes…” Fellas we all know the Gay Pride rainbow aint all the colors not dont we. The we have two colors.. then boxes..oh how about circles?”
Lets be a little more proactive about the issue of Color Stripes on counters. Dean’s position is that finding enough colors that are:
1. Distinguishable at a glance
and
2. Are visible to people with various degrees of color blindness
is, very difficult if not impossible.
AND
All counters are now identified with their historical Formation designation in text.
So I propose that we gamers could help by providing a color solution rather than complaining about the lack of a color solution.
So…
LB has 69 Formations so let someone among us post an image of 69 distingquishable colors. Then we all could look at that image and state our ability to distinguish those 69 colors. With a large enough sample of people we should include those with varying degrees of color blindness.
So, symbols you say. Same test… make an image of 69 discreet color/symbol combinations and oh by the way make those images the same size that would fit on a current LB counter with all the other information.
At the very least this exercise in the public domain could serve all game designers by providing a list of color and/or color/smbol combinations that a wide range of gamers could agree are usefully visible in a game display.
Just a thought.
Lynn Brower