An Experiment in Limiting Options

When my son was a baby, I used to spend hours on the couch with him sleeping on me. In an effort to be a good parent, I would watch Super Nanny. Now, whether or not it did anything for my parenting I can't say, but one idea has stuck with me all these years.

Children often have  more toys than they can play with (sound familiar?) and so some things are neglected or the child plays with no one thing very often before moving onto the next (ahem!). One suggestion Super Nanny had was keeping ten or so toys (a loose definition - a box of bricks would be a single toy), and store another 10 or 20 or whatever. Then every so often, rotate toys out that were not getting much use, and rotate in something from storage.

A similar approach is often beneficial when song-writing. Setting up limits/parameters on what notes or chords can be used or which must be excluded has the counter-intuitive effect of inspiring creativity rather than restricting it. Limits force you to stretch more. 

And of course, "less is more" is an accepted aphorism - outside of miniature gaming circles at least.

For a variety of reasons, I have decided to apply these ideas to my toy soldiers.

Borrowing the "Battle in a Box" concept from other bloggers (such as Ross Mac) and posts on Facebook groups, I decided to create some "Battle in a Box" combinations of forces and to limit myself to just three such containers.  This required leaving some figures from each force/genre/period in storage. 

Don't worry! They aren't gone! (I've already let go of a ton of figures in the past year).

Of course, to make any decision that I wouldn't have to amend almost immediately, I decided to narrow down the selection of rules that I'd aim to have forces for. Here I was inspired in large part by Norm's observations about the the benefits of limited rule sets.

Although I have thousands of rulebooks, when including PDF and Kindle formats, I tend to come back to the same sets repeatedly:

• One Hour Wargames (well, my modified versions) - Kindle (originally) and print (within the last few years)
  
• One Hour Skirmish Wargames - print
  
• The Portable Wargame - any of the variants. I have Developing in print form, others in PDF.
  
• GASLIGHT - original, but I have the Compendium, too
  
• 1BC Toy Soldiers - free PDF
  
• One Page Rules: Age of Fantasy : Skirmish / Grimdark : Firefight - free PDFs
  
• My homebrew rules 
  

I'm not ruling out other rulebooks, but these cover all of my needs. The only thing missing, really, are dedicated sets for individual figure games set in WWI or WWII with more than a section-ish per side.

Figure-wise, here are the three containers I kept out for this experiment:

 VSF / Lost World / Fantasy / Ancients : Tanitia (Carthaginians), Bokrug Confederacy (Lizards), French Foreign Legion

British and Solis Nox (Medieval) left out entirely this round, the others have a fraction of their figures in storage.

WWII Italy Invasion of France - June 1940 (I tossed in my 1/35 Weird World War One since the space is there)

WWI Italy vs Austria

Lancieri are in a separate box this container is not deep enough for cavalry.

Admittedly, these are not complete games in a box - there's no rules, dice, rulers, playing surface, or terrain. The latter at least is stored in two small-ish bins. One of which contains everything I need for most of my favorite One Hour Wargames scenarios.

Now you might be thinking, "Surely, that cannot be enough figures for more than a skirmish. " To which I say, "Don't call me, Shirley!"

If we're talking 1:1, I concede you are correct. However, on a grid or on a sabot, they work quite well for "bigger battles" (with less figures, ironically).

I rather like the simple clean look of Alan's (Duchy of Tradgardland ) games on his potting bench (such as this one), and Maudlin Jack Tar's grid games on Projects and Procrastinations (such as this one). My own experiment with just two-figure units on a grid was a revelation and suits my preferred aesthetic - that of toys and games, not serious modeling or simulation.

Here are figures on a grid:

Below is the same grid, but figures on steel bases. These work well on a grid or on surfaces without a grid. At 3"wide, they are half the maximum size recommended for One Hour Wargames, but it's easy enough to resize the paying area downwards - no bad thing in my opinion.

The plan is to check-in in 3 months time (end of January 2024) and see which made it do the table and which did not, and which in storage is calling to me for an outing on the table.

I should add, in full disclosure, the following will also be out and available for use:

• 28mm Fantasy - We use these mostly for D&D so they are not going into the storage closet. They have the advantage that my son is willing to play Age of Fantasy: Skirmish with them.
  
• Blitz Bowl (28mm fantasy football) - I really feel like this is a board game. It literally has a board.
• Wings of Glory - Who doesn't love the little bi-planes?

In addition to all of the above, I'm clearing my paint table, For the remainder of the year, I'll purposely try to limit myself to painting the following:

• 54mm Lancieri (converting and painting two or three)
• 28mm fantasy figures (including Blitz Bowl) - no particular figures or number - save the Nurgle Blighters. Otherwise, just whatever seems like it'd be fun to paint.
  
• Weston WWII British infantry - 10 figures.
  
• 54mm "Shiny Happy Grimdark" - an idea that has been percolating in my brain (first seen here)  and which Mark, Man of Tin, kicked into overdrive with some of his recent posts. I have three chibi space nuns and a fair number of plastic knights to paint convert, plus three or four modern/future-ish tanks.
  

As I am still under my figure purchase moratorium  (austerity measures) through the end of the year,  no new unpainted figures will be added to the pile.

Will I get more games in with less indecision? Will the games played be the kind I most enjoy playing? Will I dread painting less? Will I feel like I have more time for and more enjoyment from my figures or will I find something lacking?

We'll find out!