Fun With Flags

No, not like this:

What I've been doing is making up some flags for tomorrow's Imjin War game. And some other bits and bobs for the game.

I actually started these yesterday. In the campaign (played out on email), I've had the role of Hyujeong who was the leader of the Buddhist monks' Righteous army of Sangha. And we've managed to cause a bit of a stir. I realised that none of my units have flags yet, so it was time to make some up. I also needed to do some flags for my Korean regulars (easy enough - the Perry's have downloadable pic files on their website).

For my monks though, I'd need to be creative. So yesterday I came up with various slogans and used Google Translate to get them in Korean Hangul script. Then it was a case of setting up a table in Word and pasting in the various slogans. Some of them are fairly general, some refer to campaign events and others are praising or insulting various other commanders.

I printed them out last night and was in the middle of cutting them out when I got an email from the umpire. Bad news for the Sangha monks - two of the brigades are extremely unlikely to be part of the battle as they are too far away; the third might make it, but that will depend on certain other events.

Drat and curses! I can't really blame anyone other than myself - I'd volunteered them to scout/scour areas on the flanks of the main Chinese army in case any Japanese were lurking in the woods and hills to catch them when they march out. The third brigade, well. they might (or might not) be up to something very important.

There will be two units of Righteous Army in the battle (it might actually be two or three simultaneous battles played out on different tables), but they are with the Korean field army led by my enemy, the cowardly traitor General Eon Go-baek. As I was doing flags anyway, I've done a couple for them. I just hope that the player commanding them can't read Hangul!

OK, so what can you see here?

back wire - Perry flags for the regulars (the pointy ones) and some large flags for the Sangha

middle wire - flags for Eon's righteous army units (they all have the same text in different colours on different fields)

front wire - normal sized Sangha flags

I should point out that the wires were liberally greased with Vaseline before the flags are glued  around them to avoid sticking.

As for the other bits, I was on a bit of a roll yesterday and thought it would be nice for all the participants to get a little something. I figured that it would be cheap and easy to give them each a little "plaque". Cue Google Translate again to generate some messages, create a new table in Word, fiddle about with the formatting, print and cut them. The plaques are double-sided - everyone gets the same reverse, but a personalised front.

Today I hit the 40x60 MDF bases with red primer using the airbrush. I also primed the "wall" you can see (which I glued together last night). I'll talk about the wall next. This afternoon I glued the messages to the bases, then left them to dry. This evening I hit them with a spray coat of gloss varnish to seal them.

OK, the story of the wall. In the last campaign briefing document I received (and possibly also received by the other Chinese/Korean commanders) there was mention of graffiti appearing on walls in occupied Seoul, some of it referring to a place called Kyoha-ri where they may have been a battle. Which might have involved my monks. Who might have killed nearly 400 Japanese troops.

So, the wall was put together, primed and allowed to dry. This afternoon I used some fine black pens to write various items of graffiti on it (including "Kilroy was here"!). This evening I sprayed it with matt varnish. I'll be using it for sledging the Japanese players tomorrow.