Brest Breakout 1886 - Part 3

Saving & Reloading a Game

We've all been there. You get all hyped up about playing a game at your local club or at home, but people turn up late and/or spend most of the session chatting. You get about 2 or 3 turns into the game and, just as things are starting to get interesting you have to pack up, and although it was nice to have a bit of a chat, you leave with the feeling it was all a bit of a waste of time and effort. Even without other players involved, you may be forced to clear off the dining room table by totally unreasonable members of your household demanding they be allowed to do something utterly trivial like eat dinner.

Luckily these days almost everyone has a fairly decent high res camera that they carry around with them at all times. So the answer is simply to mark out the table with a grid of dice, and then photograph it. As well as the main wide shot covering the whole table, make sure you take plenty of zoomed-in detail shots, especially where you have markers etc, and it's a good idea to take some notes as well. What seems obvious right now will probably not be in two weeks time, so if doubt write it down.

I've never actually tried this before and was surprised at how easy it was. It took less than 10 minutes to record the game, and no more than 15 to recall it. Here's the table with the 30cm dice grid before breaking it down:

And here it is recalled several days later:

It's not 100% perfect, but close enough. As with scrolling, it's best to do this at the end or beginning of a turn, so that any inaccuracies will be ironed out in the movement phase. In other words, don't do this in the middle of a turn after movement and before gunnery.

I'm sure this can't be a totally original idea, but personally I'd never thought of trying it before, and I've never come across anyone else doing it, so just thought I'd mention it.

Onwards with the battle in Part 4.