While we looking at my latest project, The Grand Correnne 1914 in 15mm, our noble editor came up with a gripe (as usual). The battlefield was littered with white markers. He spoke of an Armati game where large dice were used as casualty markers, the pips up were the correct number of hits the unit had received. While this was informative. he told me, it detracted from the general visual impact of the game. "After all," he groused, "We spend a long time researching, and than painting our figures so they will be accurate and beautiful, and we ruin the whole effect with bits of white cardboard, or dice." I too do not like the so called casualty cap, so I mount my figures on magnetic stands, with individual metal bases, as casualties are accumulated they are removed from the affected unit. The author, Rich de Rosa is the guy who puts on those 1914 games with thousands of figures, at our CA conventions. --Ed. Not everybody likes this system. The figures displace from the base too easily, which makes them hard to move, Ed. When I first started using wargaming to illuminate history, my students and I used the roster system. Since in my ACW rules, units caused casualties in groups of 10 and each figure represented 40 men, a stand being 160 men a roster per regiment was necessary. I found an easier way to do this. Most card shops sell baseball card holders by the page. The page is composed of clear vinyl plastic, so the baseball card shows, but is protected from wear and tear. Each page has individual pockets that the cards slide into. Each page can hold many cards. Instead of baseball cards. you use white cardstock with the unit's morale, weapons rating, ammo supply and number of casualties on left or lost, all written on it. The card size is large enough so the data can be obviously seen, while any changes can be marked on the clear vinyl with a china marker, which can be easily erased after the battle. Instead of turning book keeping into a nightmare, this simplifies things greatly and makes rosters an option to the miniature player again. Rich is now in the process of accumulating all the Russians who took part in the 1914 campaign, as he shifis focus from the Western Front. You will need a lot of rosters for that project, Rich! Ed Back to Table of Contents The Messenger April 1996 Back to The Messenger List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1996 by HMGS/PSW. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com