Artillery Stick for "2/3s scale Charge"

 Working as I do in a school of architecture here in Virginia has its perks especially at the end of the term when students pack up their studio stuff to head home. It's usually a good time to check the recycling bins for useable materials that can be re-purposed for gaming. This past summer term found me in the possession of several nice 48" wood strips leftover from a shop project. I made off with them and did a bit of painting and lettering on one of them to make a pretty serviceable artillery stick for "Charge" at 2/3s scale.

The large number is the to hit number and just to the right the casualty D6 to be rolled...on the upper right of the range band is the to hit for light battalion guns (a house rule of mine...lower to hit probability by one, but the same casualty D6)

The end of the artillery stick has the 45 degree field of fire marked and with a bit of graphic flame to enhance the "abstract" look of the thing...which to me is paramount in an old school game.

I had some stencil templates to do the lettering and a coat of white artist gesso did good service as a basecoat. I did two coats with a light sanding between coats to make a nice smooth surface, though if you were in a hurry, the gesso covers in one coat. (the stencils are a hard-to-get metal reproduction of the classic set used by the famed architect Le Corbusier back in the 1920s...so they look pretty good and have a "workmanlike" look... but I think one could get just as nice an effect with an inexpensive paper stencil of the right size). The artillery batten is about an inch and a half wide so it works great to also indicate roughly any blocking of the field of fire by intervening friendlies.

I'm also thinking of doing some tweaking of the melee rules to take into account some things like grenadiers, light cavalry and lancers...that would have some advantage in the melee rolls but not as dramatic as the doubling of the D6 in the cavalry versus infantry melee situation.

I'm enjoying the 2/3s scale version of the rules (many thanks to Ross for the suggestion) and it works with my table depth very well.