MODELING GAMEPLAY ACCESSORIES
Part 1: Warhammer Accessories

As an experienced Warhammer player with a couple of painted armies and dozens of wins under your belt, it is quite easy to recognize that a game of Warhammer would go a lot smoother if you just had a few additional game accessories. In the absence of any specific tools, we often use dice, chits, and scraps of paper to help us keep track of turns, wounds on our character, units charging, objectives, and the myriad of other logistical items in a game. Unfortunately, one D6 looks the same as the next, and we invariably pick up our marker dice when we want to roll to see if our 20 repeating crossbows hit their mark. Chits and scraps of paper are great in the short term, but eventually your army deserves something befitting its greatness.

One solution? Make a set of gameplay accessories so you never have to use dice, cardboard, or pieces of torn paper again! Now, don't get me wrong – these accessories are not much of a priority if you are a new player working on your first warband. However, if you've got a few mighty armies and want to augment them with cool tokens, then here are some ideas that might be of interest to you.

Turn Markers and Magic Counters

One of the most useful gameplay accessories for an army is the notorious turn marker. No longer will you need to use a single D6 to keep track of your Turns 1-6 – now you can play in style. No longer will you have to fear any scenario with 7 or more turns, as your trusty, customized turn counter can handle any game up to 12 Turns in length. Have you ever accidentally picked up the turn marker D6 to roll for Leadership and then forgotten which turn it is? No one ever picked up and rolled a turn counter like those shown below (click the images to see larger versions).

If you are a general who likes to play with lots of Wizards and magic items, you may want to construct a dual counter to track your Power Dice and Dispel Dice. Once set, the dials will probably stay the same until the death of a Wizard, but at least you won't have to add up your dice for your opponent's benefit every turn.

Movement Trays and Blocks

Don't want to splurge on a turn marker? No problem – it is not an essential accessory. However, for any game over 1,000 points, movement trays are essential. Playing games much larger than that without movement trays will slow the game down SO much that no one will ever want to play you again! Games Workshop has sold plastic movement trays for years, but we left it up to ambitious players to decorate them with sand, paint, and flock. As of May 2005, Games Workshop is actually selling textured movement trays. Thus, you no longer have an excuse not to decorate your troop trays!

Okay, so you've got your entire army moving across the battlefield in finely decorated movement trays. Unfortunately, your models tend to fall out of the tray whenever they move up or down a steep slope. A simple solution is to make a half dozen foam blocks that you can use to prop up the corners of your movement trays whenever they attempt to move into uneven terrain. Save your precious painted models from damage with these cheap items. Decorate your cubes to match the army you are fielding, and you're ready to roll.

Combat Movements

Keeping track of your combat movement is pretty easy when you are playing a small game, but it can be a bit more difficult when you are battling it out with 3,000 or more points. Keeping track of who charged, who has fired their missiles, which units are fleeing, and which units just rallied, can be a bit confusing in the heat of battle. Click the three images below and to the right to see larger versions.

Charge Counters: When it comes time to declare charges, just lay down a charge counter between your charging unit and the intended target. No matter how much action you have going on, you won't forget to move them once other moves have finished. Also, by keeping the marker on the table until close combat will remind you that this unit actually charged this turn and has yet to fight.

Fire Counters: Similar to the charge counters, the fire counters can be used to keep track of who has shot their missiles and who has not. Place all your counters on the table at the beginning of the Shooting Phase and remove them as each unit fires. Alternately, these counters can be used to declare your charge reaction. When your enemy is charging en masse, you don't want to forget to shoot!

Hold Counters: Just rallied? Place a hold counter to remind you NOT to move that unit this turn. Don't forget to remove the counter after the Movement Phase is over or you might not move the unit next turn! Alternately, you can use this token to indicate your hold charge reaction.

After painting our counters gold (they were old models that we didn't need anymore - waste not, want not), we placed them on 40mm bases for two reasons. First, this assembly made them easy to see and remember. Second, there is no way that a golden Dwarf on a large round base can be confused with one of the characters in your army. However, if your entire army is dry-brushed gold, you might want to do something else to distinguish your markers.

Wound Counters

Any army that fields characters (yep, that's all of them), monsters, war machines, or any other kind of multi-Wound model can benefit from the creation of a half dozen Wound counters. In my experience, dice that are sitting beside units to indicate lost Wounds on characters are usually the first to be grabbed in the mad rush to roll to hit with mass quantities of missile fire. If you're not too careful, you can be cheating or helping your opponent without even knowing it! If you have many models with multiple Wounds, you might want to make many different denominations of Wound counters. Ogres, for instance, will need a lot of Wound counters (ranging from 1 Wound to 4). Click the image of the four markers above to see a larger version.

Next: More Gameplay Accessories

- Article by Ken Kennedy; modeling and painting by Rob Hawkins, Jeremy Vetock, Dave Taylor, Tim Huckelbery, Jeff Hall, Steve Fuller, and Ken Kennedy.