Battle Group Kursk and Overlord counters

I had been wanting to do something about the counters for Battle Group Kursk so they would be easily gathered at the end of a game, and to make them a little bit more interesting to look at, at the side of the games table. It was also a project that I had in mind when I got Kampfgruppe Normandy. I had spotted some hardboard counters on Ebay - and after a bit of thought about it, and seeing them in the flesh at a friends, decided that was the way to go. Here are some of the finished counters.

I wanted a bit of colour, so decided to get a mix of Allied and Axis WW2 posters and put them on the back of the counters, with the counter facing on the other side. This presented a major problem with finding Allied posters that compared to the Axis posters in terms of colour and theme. Loose lips sink ships and Rosie the rivetter were not what I wanted. Neither were racist Nazi posters. This was limiting the options for the Allied posters and what could be used for the Germans, the end result was the sample counters above. I found 30 posters I could use, and they were all German to keep to a theme, but with a few duplications making 32 counters, and a three times repeat to give 96 poster backs to the 96 game counters. At the same time I found some black and white photos of aircraft attacking ground targets and put them on the aircraft counters.

The counters were cut from some old hardboard I found, and cut into 25mm square pieces. It's easier to get them from a base supplier, but this pushes the price of the counters to about £7. They were finished off with a file to make any edges from being rough, and to give a fix to the glue and paint.

The counters were then sprayed black on both sides and edges.

The counter sheet was printed of, with lines marked for cutting, and then cut and glued on to the black primed counters. The aircraft counters can be seen. I have a link from the Guild to connect with a pdf of the counters sheet from BGK. This was transfered onto an excel spreadsheet. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/27271090/BGK%20BRcounters.pdf

The other side of the counter is then glued on - the posters were put onto an excel spreadsheet, sized to the counter size,and printed, then cut for the hardboard counter back. Best to try 1 or 2 counters first before printing a sheet! The finished article showing the pattern repeating 3 times, quite nice and colourful.
The other benefit from this exercise is that I have been told that BGK counters are the same as the counters will be for BGO. And with everthing on the computer, I can print off and make replacement counters as and when that will fit in with new developments.