A Whimsical Notion

I have spent some time today working on the rules for use with the blocks. The scribbled notes and ideas are slowly coalescing into a definite shape and so the great type up will take place shortly. The plan is to have all of the land based blocks ready by the end of the weekend and the first test draft of the rules ready to use on next Wednesday evening at the club. I have managed to secure the services of a suitable volunteer and am confident that the first run out of the system should be fine. I fully expect some tweaks to be required and am looking forward to further testing (and reporting the same via the blog) over the autumn months.

The Whimsical Notion of the title of this post concerns the future of my block project and how it can be developed further. The obvious gaming genre for me would be for naval games and I already have some ideas to experiment with in terms of ship blocks. It does not end there though - no sirree - as I also have plans to try a similar approach for the ancient period, as well as my old (and, sorry to say, much neglected) friend - Victorian Science Fiction. I think that once you have gotten past the heresy of not using figures and consider the practicalities and possibilities of the use of labels and blocks then it begins to make a lot of sense. Sadly not though, if you enjoy painting and using figures!

From my own perspective I find myself with sufficient blocks ready to use to cover pretty much anything land based from 1700 until the end of WW2 - with the sole exception being (at the moment) air support. I have three definite and one possible campaign in   mind for use with the system - I use the word system intentionally as I will be including campaign considerations - and of course, progress with these will be recorded on the blog in the usual fashion.

The ACW river based campaign and the Balkans are the two to kick off with, followed by Operation Barbarossa in the new year. I also have a hankering for a low intensity war - something Colonial perhaps - and so am looking long and hard at the following:

NW Frontier, Arab or Sanussi Revolt, WW1 East Africa or even something completely different e.g. Napoleon in Egypt.

With some a coverage of some 250 years of military history to play with I am quite sure I should be able to find something to keep me amused….;-)