Plane Counters

In my last post, I mentioned that I was searching for counters to use for my air combat box. Well, I made some progress.

A Lot of Options

I found quite a few options.

• Board Game Geek has photos of the Dawn Patrol counters.
• Junior General has quite a few top down aircraft in their WW2 section.
• I previously purchased this jet age counter set from Wargames Vault. As you can see, the counters are quite nice.

But
I was not sold on these options. I found that I could not decide on an era or even a theater of a war. I wanted everything! To do this, I need to print a bunch of counters. 

But I want to keep numbers down. This means using generic aircraft. Because all the counters I found are specific, I need to make my own.

Initial experiments

I started with some WW I counters, modeling them after specific planes. These are for the red forces and are patterned after an Albatross and a Fokker Triplane.

I also tried my hand at a WW2 plane. This is a Russian I-16, which is the miniature I've used for my bad guy planes.

I also made some jet age planes. The fighter is pure fantasy while I modeled the attack plane and bomber on the A-6 and B-52.

At this point, I returned to WW I. While I liked the counters, they were just not generic enough. So I went a different route. I ended up creating a generic fighter and bomber, modeled after real planes but with a few tweaks so they are not instantly recognizable. Here is the final product.

As you can see, I use the same plane for both sides. I distinguish them by color. The bombers are in generic gray. That way, I can use them for either side.

I originally planned to make different plane counters to represent different aircraft quality. But that can lead to far too many counters. Instead, I will probably use a token of some kind to mark the difference.

What about different eras?

While the above counters work for WW I, they would certainly look odd for mid-century or jet age. So I may make some generic counters for each era. Stay tuned.