Casualty Counters, Chickens and a Man in a Hurry

Casualties, chickens and one guy in a hurry.
Click to enlarge all pictures.

I spent last week in Costa Rica for my daughter's spring break so I lost a week's time for my preparations for the SYW Association Convention on April 5th and 6th in South Bend, Indiana. 

My Costa Rica Vacation

Not that there is anything wrong about taking a vacation in Costa Rica, in fact we had a good time with the weather sunny and in the 80-95F temperature range. We spent the first part of the trip in the Arenal area, which is where many of the volcanos are located. With the higher elevation, the temperature was mild (70-80F range). Our hotel had a large hot springs pool which was kind of nice.

The second half of the week was spent on the Pacific coast, where the air is drier and the temperatures are oven hot. I'm not one who likes to sit around the swimming pool roasting in the sun, so we went on three Eco-tours to see the countryside and the wildlife: sloths, various types of monkeys, Caymans and alligators, birds birds birds, and a few snakes.

Here are a few pictures of the wild life that we saw on our trip: 

Some Howler Monkeys have the right idea, take a nap in the trees.

A big old nasty Cayman sunning himself on the bank of the Canon Negra river.

Our riverboat nature tour.

Painting Challenge

I'm participating in a Painting Challenge with some of my friends and acquaintances and so I was finally able to enter some items in the Challenge. It is not a competition and there is no pressure to paint lots and lots of figures. The idea is to give one a short time goal in which to do the painting.

I finished 18 Russian casualty discs, one RSM Aide de Camp, one dead Cossack and one Hovels vignette of a farm girl feeding the chickens.

Mostly Minden casualty figures in green coats and Foundry Russian casualties wearing the red waistcoat.
The Cossack and horse are also foundry figures. 

Russian ADC/messenger - RSM figure mounted on a Minden horse - and the  Hovels farm girls

Casualty Discs

I use the casualty discs to represent the removal of figure stands during a game. Most of my battalions have 5 stands of 6 figures, so when there are 6 casualties on the stand, it is removed and replaced by a fallen soldier to mark the spot where the stand was remove. Over the course of the game, you can see where the battle is moving by looking at all of the casualty discs that are scattered across the table.

The casualty discs can also be used as "Victory Points" in my games. Each side gets a VP for each enemy stand that is removed from the game. For the cavalry, I use only one casualty stand to mark the place where a cavalry melee occurred.