Op KURGAN Crowd Proof of Concept

Those of you who've been hanging around patiently for Operation KURGAN to drop, will be pleased to know that it inches ever-closer to release. But you may also be interested to know that developing a book like this isn't just a matter of sitting down and writing some rules.

If you've been with me since the early days, when Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark was called MechaWar will know that I have been obsessed with making miniatures wargaming as accessible as possible to people who are struggling with time- and/or money-poverty. So when I introduced the concept of crowds to the draft rules for Op KURGAN, as the CIVPOP analogue to the Defence Mech, I wanted a way for someone to be able to put a crowd on the tabletop easily and cheaply without having to drop £100 on printed minis or to have to put up with weirdly-scaled railway figures from China.

Several months ago I teased to the Patreon that I had hit upon a idea of how to do it, but actually executing that idea needed me to be, psychologically, in the right place. Anyone else out there living with ADHD will know that we are capable of intense hyperfocus, but unpredictably. And sometimes it's a case of waiting for the lightning to hit and then riding it to conclusion.

And today, when I was working on fine-tuning the scenario text and fitting in the photography for the Op KURGAN rulebook, the lightning hit and, before I knew it, I was on Pixabay, downloading every human silhouette I could find and then filtering through them to work out how to get the right size and scaling for what was in my head.

By happy chance, a recent trip to a charity shop had secured myself an old CD for £1.50 for exactly this purpose and - by even happier chance - I hadn't lost it in the general chaos of my studio since then.

And so, with scissors, white glue, a slightly manic attitude and frantic speed I finally got my "crowd" concept thrown together and, to be honest, I'm pretty astonished at how good it actually looks:

I'll be working on refining this and creating instructions on how to assemble it. If anyone out there knows someone with a laser cutting machine or something that wanted to make a better version out of laser-cut acrylic or 2mm MDF of whatever, let me know. Happy to collab.

I'll share this as a PDF for Patrons ASAP.

Anyway, I'll be doing more over the weekend and will update where I'm at in due course. I've also booked a whole week off work in July when I aim to get the book finished and the test copies ordered so, maybe, we'll have an Operation KURGAN book out this summer!