I am still waiting for my second copy of TRAVEL BATTLE to arrive, and over the past few days I've been thinking about whether or not I should paint the boards or leave them as they are.
To help me decided, I had what I though was a simple idea; draw out each board and colour them to see what they would look like. I sat down at my computer to draw some simple images of each of the two boards that come with the game ... and some four hours later I had created the following:
I then coloured them in using a very simple colour scheme, and the results looked like this:
I then placed the two boards together ...
... and then swapped then over.
The affect of this simple change of position was quite startling. In the top combination there was an obvious choke-point between the two hills in the centre of the map, whereas in the second the terrain seemed much more open in the centre of the map.
I hope to spend some more time over the next few days looking at the various combinations the boards can be placed in, and seeing if it is possible to produce a mini-campaign map using these different combinations together.
TRAVEL BATTLE was designed and manufactured by Perry Miniatures, and the materials I have produced above are in no way intended to infringe their copyright, and have been created for my own use and amusement.
To help me decided, I had what I though was a simple idea; draw out each board and colour them to see what they would look like. I sat down at my computer to draw some simple images of each of the two boards that come with the game ... and some four hours later I had created the following:
I then coloured them in using a very simple colour scheme, and the results looked like this:
I then placed the two boards together ...
... and then swapped then over.
The affect of this simple change of position was quite startling. In the top combination there was an obvious choke-point between the two hills in the centre of the map, whereas in the second the terrain seemed much more open in the centre of the map.
I hope to spend some more time over the next few days looking at the various combinations the boards can be placed in, and seeing if it is possible to produce a mini-campaign map using these different combinations together.
TRAVEL BATTLE was designed and manufactured by Perry Miniatures, and the materials I have produced above are in no way intended to infringe their copyright, and have been created for my own use and amusement.
Bob,
ReplyDeleteA good idea - but FOUR hours? I could have sketched them by hand on squared paper, done copies with my printer, coloured with pencil crayons and been able to rearrange them to my heart's content in far less time!
Some times 'old school' methods really are better!
Best wishes,
Arthur
Arthur Harman,
DeleteMy sketches (on which I based my final images) took a matter of minutes to draw, but converting them into BMP images that I could replicate and manipulate took a lot longer ... mainly thanks to me discovering a number of mistakes that needed to be sorted out when I thought that I was finished.
By the way, MS Paint - the program that I used - is very 'old school' in the image creation world!
All the best,
Bob
Ah, but now you have them in digital form for any future manipulation desired.
DeleteI'm a "pen and ink" guy myself but sometimes the additional time up front can be quite useful later on.
I'm looking forward to the mini-campaign ideas. I know that there are notable exceptions but in my long but limited experience, mini-campaigns are the only type of campaign with a reasonable chance of success.
William Stewart,
DeleteYou have precisely summed up the advantage of making the images digital. I was able to create two mini-campaign maps in a matter of minutes using the digital images, something that I could not have done as quickly using a pencil and paper.
Over the years I have taken part in quite a few wargame campaigns, and you are right that it is the mini-campaigns that always stand a better chance of being fought to a conclusion.
All the best,
Bob
And there are a lot more potential combinations than the two you have shown, as the boards can be rotated. Add on the extra pair of boards from the second set and you'll have even more combinations to play with.
ReplyDeleteI would guess that you could also add your own scatter terrain to create even more variety.
TamsinP,
DeleteTomorrow's blog entry will include a couple of 4 x 4 mini-campaign maps that I have created by putting together and rotating different combinations of the two boards.
All the best,
Bob
There are 16 permutations of the above 2-section map. If you could find two very disparate battlefields by aligning the maps as drawn, who knows what the other 14 may yield!
ReplyDeleteArchduke Piccolo,
DeleteThe different battlefields you can create using the two boards is very interesting, as is shown by the two mini-campaign maps I will be including in tomorrow's blog entry.
All the best,
Bob
I'll be looking forward to that!
DeleteArchduke Piccolo,
DeleteI hope that you won't be disappointed.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeletePleased to see your success with CAD...the board-maps you have done and their combinations will come in very handy if you decide to draw up a pre-game 'Battle Map'showing troop positions. Cheers. KEV.
Kev Robertson,
DeleteThe same thought had crossed my mind.
All the best,
Bob