The other night at Tuesday Historical Gaming Night at Tabletop Hobbies in K.C. Kans., Kenny Van Pelt (Lions Den Wargamers Club of Greenwood, Missouri) brought in his collection of Napoleonic Sailing Ships for wargaming famous historical battles on the tabletop using  "As Per Margin" rules (out of MWAN magazine) or other rules-sets (Kenny’s home-rules set - "Full Sail - Fleets Actions in the Deep Ocean").  He opened the box lid his fleet was stored in and to our amazement, the ships were flats! Great looking, colorful, big, detailed, fully rigged flats! He had lots of ships (SOLs, frigates, brigs, sloops, merchants, even small transfer rowboats) and they were all of various sizes and they were all flats!     For those of you who don’t know what I mean by flats, these are 2-sided pictures or drawings of something (ships, troops, tanks, etc.) mounted on a base and moved around on the tabletop (or floor) like the 3-D figures and miniatures were all familiar with as historical wargames players. These type figures (flats) were used widely in earlier times when lead figures were too expensive!    The Napoleonic sailing ship flats that Kenny had produced were of very high quality and we all would be proud to play out a historical naval battle using his ships counters (flats)! I was reminded of earlier times and the thought occurred to me that not everyone out there in the wargaming world can afford to purchase the highly detailed lead models currently available for about $10 per ship from GHQ, Navwar, or others available in the local hobby shops or over the internet! Particularly if the battle we want to do involves a large number of ships (Trafalgar - 1805 needs 60 SOLs total involved at $10/ship = $600 and you still haven’t put them together, mounted, rigged, and painted them yet)!    Considering this, I asked Kenny to describe how he had made his flats and he told me the two methods that he’d used to pass on to any interested party with Kenny’s blessing. A couple interesting ideas came across that I thought were very smart, and I mention them later when we come to them! First you need to get some images of the various ships that you want to use for your flats. Each size (class) ship needs an appropriate picture (drawing) showing the various scale and design differences between the ship type from SOLs (ship-of-the-line, the largest) to the smaller Brigs and Sloop types. Kenny used images he found in a book, "Navy that Beat Napoleon" by Walter Brownlee. I’ve thought of some places (MB Broadside game has good line-drawings of the various classes of ships, also Valiant Miniatures and Thouroughbred Miniatures both put out a flyer with good line-drawings of various ships they sell)! Next use a copier to produce and size (enlarge or reduce) till you get an image that seems the right size for you. Kenny’s SOLs were about 4" long by 3" high with the smaller ships at smaller sizes. I would make mine "smaller" still for stability and handling (mounting on bases - more ideas later)!   Next, and this was a "smart" idea, he made his final (size/scale) copy of his images on acetate (clear plastic) sheets like you use at work for overheads projections. This allows you to flip-over the copy and makes reverse duplicate images of the reverse side of your ships (so you have BOTH SIDES) of each ship type. Then he matched up each side image of each size ship (so you can fold the matched sides over to make a two-sided flat)! Kenny matched-up the images at the tallest mast point but I think it’s simpler to match-up the ship-waterlines and fold upwards! Another smart idea, he used white-out on the national flags and banners so you could fill those in later to designate nation & squadron of the ship! Then he printed his two-sided images on card-stock so when folded over they stood up and had strength and weight (versus paper)! He also uses glue (Elmer’s type) to keep them folded. Kenny also cut out each ship before mounting to the base and touched-up the cut edges with a black felt-tip marker. Then he mounted each ship on a cardboard base and painted each ship with color using colored pencils, etc A finished ship model (flat) to use on the gaming table! Lastly, he put a label on each ships base with the name & gunnery rating of each ship.    Next is the "NEW WAY" using the computer! Use the "paint program"!! Take your "images" into "paint" and work your "colors & details"! Use "copy" & "paste" as needed to do each class ship.  Flip images and align to get your mirror images you need to get BOTH SIDES of each flat! Print on card-stock as before and "cut", "fold", "glue", "mount", and "label" to make as many ships as you need for your battle you want to do (THERES A COMPUTER-GENERATED WARGAMING PRODUCT TO SELL OVER THE INTERNET SOMEWHERE IN ALL THIS, a-la Axis & Allies Battle Cards, etc.)! I can see it now, Napoleonic Sailing Ships, Roman Ramming Galleys, Pre-Dreadnoughts, WW-1 Ships, etc. all flats!!  Web sites to check out are: www.juniorgeneral.org/Trafalger http://skynet.be/gwindel/index.html. Thanks for the idea go to Kenny Van Pelt of the Lions Den Wargamers of Greenwood, Mo.!! Good gaming all, Harold (Harold’s Old Games) Morgan of Gladstone Mo. (N.K.C. Mo.). Back to Table of Contents Penny Whistle #56 Back to Penny Whistle List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Lion's Den Publications. 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