Busy times here at Meanderer Central. Preparations continue apace for the three games I’ll be running at the Mayhem Convention this weekend (yikes!). In the background, I have also resurrected and been writing (and writing, and writing) the Chocolate Box Wars rules, which are now complete and ready for playtest (after the Mayhem convention).  I’ll not post those here until they’ve been proofed, so it will be awhile, but I mention them because it was in preparation for playtesting that the topic of this post came about. I needed activation markers. As I was casting about for what to use, I went through the usual suspects and the usual parameters. I wanted them to be small, but not too small; I wanted them to have a bit of heft so they would not tumble about, and also so that they would be easy to count out and  handle, and I also wanted them to add something to the look of the game (why pretend that they aren’t there?).  Given that CBW is all about post-Napoleonic, 19thC armies, I stumbled on the idea of old coins…and that brought me to searching on ebay for old coins, which brought me to the venerable 1 Pfennig from the era, with its imperial eagle. And so I pulled the trigger and ordered some…

…almost all have a lovely dark patina, but a very brief application of fine steel wool brings out the imperial eagle very nicely–better looking than any graphic that I could find or stick on a marker of this size…

…and speaking of size, they are exactly what I was looking for: about 16mm (for our metric friends) or just under 3/4″ (for US and readers who use imperial units). And they also fit the hand-feel/heft requirement nicely. 

The markers need to have a front and a back (heads and tails?). So my answer is to leave the dark patina on the „1“ side and shine up the side with the eagle. This will deliver an easily recognizable dull/front and shiny/back to even the „mature“ vision levels of our group. And the eagle is just darn cool, too!

Although not as cheap as buying a set of markers, they were not all that pricey. I picked up a lot of 100 on ebay for $70 USD. Given the added character that they will add to the game, and the fact this will give me  all that I need, I think it money well spent–and not out of whack with the cost of other things I’ve purchased for the hobby (see Jonathan’s analysis of the survey of hobby spending habits…).  I’m looking forward to playtesting and seeing these on the table.