My 4 year old daughter has been asking for her own armies. I could probably just print her up any of the ranges I've already made and as long as they're pink, she'd be over the moon. But... she saw the Eureka Bear ranges, and now she HAS to have them. They seem near impossible to get a hold of so I've been commissioned by my daughter to make her a bear army. After looking through Napoleonic, 18th Century, Roman, and Late 19th Century Uniforms, she selected the 18th Century as the "prettiest". So that's what we're going with. The current plan is to have very simple unit types of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. I'm open to any kid-friendly rules that are available, especially if I can cheat to help her win without her realizing. She's good enough at counting that I can't "misread" dice anymore.
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| The Duke of Marl-Bear-O |
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| The Duke's Line Infantry Arrayed for Battle |
If the bears stand roughly 25mm, the 3 bear line formation takes up 1.5" (pardon my unit mixing). I could probably squeeze them and some simple terrain into a 2" grid. This would keep the game more accessible for youngsters and fit with my preference for grids. Hopefully at 25mm scale the facings and cuffs could be altered for each unit. Hopefully, eventually we could make both kids a set and play some Song of Blades and Heroes or the like as they get older.
Now to start another painting project that I'll never finish...
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| The Queen's Own Royal Guard Grenadiers |
For rules, I'd suggest Bob Cordery's Portable Napoleonic Wargame rules. Uses only d6: throw to hit, then throw for effect if a hit scored. Gridded battlefield, so no need for measuring. Easy to tweak/adapt if you want. For details of PW systems, see his Wargaming Miscellany blog.
ReplyDeleteI assume that simplifying a version of PW would be my first attempt. I might need to add/tweak some of the leadership aspects to make hero bears play a bigger role.
DeleteIf you want to go big, try cake decoration silicon food moulds with fimo (not sure if they would take molten metal) - I made a couple of these bear figures
ReplyDeletehttps://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/bearskin-cake-of-death-warriors/
Those do look great. I'm pretty sure I referenced them for scaling in some of my initial sketches.
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