Hold your ground, hold your ground!
Welcome to a new segment here at the Order – Quick Tips! Fast video tidbits carefully calculated to increase your tabletop gaming enjoyment.
Quick Tips are here! And I’m kicking this new series off with what will probably be the longest of the bunch – a little tutorial on creating your own card stands for War of the Ring. I can’t count the number of times my Memoir’44 card stands have tipped over at a critical moment, so it was long past time for me to make some of my own for the large WotR cards. And while these could still tip if given a bit of a shove, they are far, far heavier, have a large backing piece (so your opponent can’t see how many you have of each card type), and even feature a spot to place your dice.
Of course I’m always open to suggestions for improvement, so feel free to share if you have any better ideas to refine these, or indeed, to replace them with something better!
Nice build, Peter. I use these, and love ’em. Nearly indestructible and almost impossible to tip over.
https://www.amazon.com/Ableware-15-Inch-Playing-Holder-712520015/dp/B000TYO1XO
Never thought about loading my action dice onto the front lip, but there’s plenty of space.
They look good – though remember the canny opponent can see what proportion of strategy and event cards you have!
That’s actually open information in the game – your opponent is supposed to know many strategy and character cards you hold.
Great work Peter, these are amazing!
Oh no, really? Damn! I purposely made the backs high to hide that. But how can your opponent know what ratio of card types you have if you’re normally just holding them in your hand?
The cards ARE different on their backs – so that is open information! Your opponent is supposed to always be able to check how many and what type of cards you have in hand. We usually just ask (happens rarely).
It’s not explicitly mentioned in the rules (though I think it’s implicit), but we checked with Ares Games when developing the java client and doing clarifications in tournaments.
Oh well, I won’t worry about it – as you say, they can ask!
@UH… do you have shares in a foam board manufacturer?
Oh, how I wish I did. I’ve spent a fortune on the stuff over the years.
To help stop the tipping could you add a couple of arms off the back? Maybe two straight off the back, maybe making a triangle with the main length. It would add to the overall depth of the stand and therefore would require more space on the table. Maybe only a cm or two would be enough though.
That’s just my first idea on helping with the tipping problem. I like using the brackets as weights!
Hi Dave. These have been ‘tested in the field’ now, and they work really well. They can rock a little, but only if you push them, and actually the slight rocking motion makes them quite hard to tip over. I don’t think they need any further bracing, because the weights are keeping them pretty steady. And they do have the virtue of taking up very little table space, which is important for WotR. All in all, I’m happy with this design!
Very cool to hear that things work well as designed! The arms were just my first thought while you were mentioning tipping during the video.
If you’re still concerned about tipping, you could use flat right angle brackets instead of straight and let the sticking out bit go under the board for the game… or screw it to the table… if you want to risk the wrath of wife 🙂