Pick a card, any card...

Well, I'm happy to report it looks like I will be taking my Charasiab game to the Colonial Barracks V convention in Metarie, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans, on the weekend of Friday November, 6th through Sunday, November 9th. 

My game is scheduled for the 2:00pm-6:00pm Afternoon and 7:00pm-11:00pm/12:00am Evening sessions.  If the game goes long we'll have enough time to play it through to the bitter end, and if it goes even a bit short and the players are up for it, we may be able to run it a second time.

If all goes well I hope to actually complete my second play-test tomorrow night, with the gracious and generous assistance of Daryl Haselton, a fellow Colonial gamer from just down the road in Pasadena, who I met online over at the always inspiring LEAD ADVENTURE FORUM (just click the site name to visit!).

I really wanted to run the game from start to finish several more times before taking it to the convention... but life and my various fellow gamers' own personal schedules got in the way, so right now I'll be very happy and relieved if Daryl and I can reach a definitive conclusion once before I hit the road!

By now you may understandably be asking, "So... where eactly do the cards come into this?"

Here's where: after Charasiab play-test 1.0 about a month and a half ago, I wanted to create a set of custom game charts for the scenario -- which I did -- and also a set of custom GAME CARDS.

This would not be a full set of 52 cards, but rather a scenario specific set, as called for in the "800 Fighting Englishmen" rules, with one card for each British and Afghan "Maneuver Element," Afghan and British "Bonus" cards (Black & Red Jokers serve this purpose in a regular deck), and Afghan and British "Command" cards (Black & Red Aces in a regular deck).

When I attended to the very first Colonial Barracks convention back in November 2011, I saw for the very first time ever an oversized deck of 5"x31/2" Jumbo playing cards.  I ordered a deck for myself soon after returning home, and have used them ever since for TSATF.  Their extra-large size makes them perfect for miniatures gaming, with card faces easy to delineate from even a 12' distance across the full length of the table.

Between this jumbo size advantage and the fact that I only needed a total of 13 cards for the Charasiab scenario deck -- 3 British Elements, 6 Afghan Elements, British Bonus & Command, Afghan Bonus & Command -- I decided to make my cards Jumbo size.  Even then I could still fit 4 cards onto a single sheet of 81/2" x 11" paper, though I did buy a package of thick card-stock to print them out on.

Like the custom Quick Reference Sheets I posted about a few weeks ago, creating these cards required more software know-how than I possess, so I once again called on my 15 year-old high school Sophomore daughter for assistance.  She is very busy with school and Varsity basketball and the social life of a teenage girl, but thankfully for me she managed to get everything I needed done, and IMHO did an excellent job, so now in addition to the custom game charts I also have a custom card deck, as seen below:

NEXT UP:  I hope to be back later this coming week with a report on the second play-test, which as I said above we should play tomorrow night -- and for which we will most definitely be using the cards shown above!