The Joy of Bad Footwork: creating Off-Balance markers

“In the carriage of the feet, you should float your toenails in a little and step strongly with your heels. In the use of the feet, you should walk as usual, whether the case calls for large, small, quick, or slow strides. Feet that seem to fly, float or be immobile are, all three, undesirable”.

Miyamoto Musashi “The Book of Five Rings”: The Water Chapter

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Good footwork is one of the key elements of fine swordplay. And bad footwork is something which can be introduced into a miniature wargame of sword-fighting to try and add to the fun.

In both “When the Last Sword is Drawn”, and the Three Musketeers-inspired companion ruleset “With Flashing Blades”, one of the consequences of combat can be a miniature figure becoming off-balance.

Initially, I used to mark the off-balance status on the tabletop. But with a small playing area in these games, this became unwieldy.  I then moved to marking the character card of the miniature figure which has become off-balance.  I added a place on each card which could be covered with an off-balance marker.  

As being off-balance is a circumstance which is temporary, the off-balance markers could be added, and removed, as the game progresses.

I had a lot of fun making the off-balance markers for both games. Of course, I didn’t need to make any markers at all - a simple counter would have sufficed to place onto a character's card. But part of the pleasure in creating a smaller foot-printed game is that the time saved on not needing to paint lots of figures can pay dividends elsewhere.

I hoped that smaller 20mm MDF bases, of 2mm depth, would be enough to allow some modelling opportunities. I had a number of spare metal swords, scabbards, tessen (a Japanese armoured metal fan), and fallen sashimono banners to get me started. To those items I added small dōsojin stone shrines made from green-stuff, tiny geta wooden sandals (which are quite clumsy and look a bit like wooden flip-flops), small 3D printed bonsai trees, a 3D printed Buddha, and some Zen-like towers of prayer stones made from modelling putty.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve created a “summer set” and a snow-bound “winter set”, with the same items.  Two sets were not necessary, but were certainly fun to do.

I felt that the extra work in creating these items help spread the fun from the playing board and onto the wider table.  The entertainment around the table in awarding a character a set of clumsy wooden sandals when that character becomes off-balance is more than worth the additional effort.

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