“Here in Brazil we don’t play wargames”, Junges says, adding: “They are very expensive, and without a community, it’s hard to make it popular.” He got the idea for his DIY recruitment tool when he saw some Napoleonic games in the truly miniscule 2mm scale, and realised he could easily make similar models and terrain from cheap ingredients.
Each unit of Napoleonic rice takes Junges about five minutes to put together. “It’s fast when you do a lot altogether”, Junges says. The most challenging part is glueing the rice and other components to their bases, and Junges recommends superglue if you want to try this at home: “white glue takes too much time to dry”, he says.
Junges made almost the whole project from things he had lying around, saying “I think I only bought the EVA foam” that he uses for hills. As well as rice, he uses cardboard and broken spaghetti to make unit stands, and a mixture of sand, glue, and paint to make forests.
Junges releases his own games through the company Coisinha Verde and his itch.io page, and he’s working on “a lot of projects”, including four wargames. He says he’s particularly inspired by the classic De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA), the free Warhammer 40k alternative One Page Rules, and Neil Thomas’ One-hour Wargaming.
White there’s an undeniable pleasure to painting miniatures from your favourite Warhammer 40k faction or Warhammer Age of Sigmar army, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to enjoy the strategic aspects of miniature wargames – our list of the best war board games has plenty of entries with minimal chrome and maximum strategic depth.