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So this might be a weird question but here it is:

My grandmother lives in a tiny village in Germany that has some nice terrain (woods, fields, rural roads, small creek, farm) that I am thinking of making into a 8x4 table sometime. My idea is to print out a satelite view of the area to get a sense of the scale and transfer that onto 2x2 or 1x1 tiles to make the actual table.

I just don't know what scale would be best. I know that it will not be exact, but if I could get a general idea about 1 foot on the table should be x feet in real life on a map that would be helpful.

d-usa wrote:So this might be a weird question but here it is:

My grandmother lives in a tiny village in Germany that has some nice terrain (woods, fields, rural roads, small creek, farm) that I am thinking of making into a 8x4 table sometime. My idea is to print out a satelite view of the area to get a sense of the scale and transfer that onto 2x2 or 1x1 tiles to make the actual table.

I just don't know what scale would be best. I know that it will not be exact, but if I could get a general idea about 1 foot on the table should be x feet in real life on a map that would be helpful.

15mm is roughly 1:100 scale, which should help when it comes to making buildings, but as for actual ground scale you might have to fudge it a bit, since FOW features a sort of telescoping ground scale as ranges increase. But roughly 1:100 is a good starting point.

Thanks,

so here is the area I was thinking about making into a table:



The red square is pretty much using 8 bars of the 100 feet scale at the left bottom, so that would be the 8x4 table. I don't think that would give a lot to work with though. The blue square is the red square + 50% on either side.

I wouldn't be as worried about getting the exact number of buildings and their exact size and location. I figured as long as I get scale buildings where there would be buildings and keep the streets, the creek, and fields and trees/bushes fairly acurate it would make an interesting map. The big canal wasn't around during WW2, so I figure that it would be an extension of the creek and fields that way.

The creek might be fairly small, so I don't know if there should be a bridge or any areas to cross.

I think that should work well. It looks like it'd be a cool table to play on! I would say with the creek, you could deal with it a few different ways. If it's quite shallow, you could just make it difficult or very difficult going, which would mean infantry can cross it with no penalty, and vehicles either have to make a bog check or a skill check respectively. If you want it to be quite deep, you could make it impassible with one or more bridges or fordable shallow spots, that could also potentially be either difficult or very difficult going.

Don't be afraid to play around with it and make adjustments as you go along. I think the most important thing, like you said, is to get a few to-scale buildings in the area where there are buildings, and keep the streets, creek, and treeline where it is, and just go from there. It definitely looks doable!

I like the layout a lot. It also seems that you could play a nice defensive game by either playing on the long edges and using the top left for cover, or playing along the short edges and have one army garrisoned in the village to the right and the other advancing down the street.

Now I just need to actually build my table (should be next week or so) and then get the tiles to start planning this out.

It is certainly a unique layout. By that I mean you will have distinct options depending on which side you set up on.

That creek side looks decidedly open. Other than the creek itself, not alot of cover. An arty park/armor park will be aircraft bait.

I wonder if you shifted it to the right, bringing the town further into play for both sides with that y intersection and pulled it back in time...a few more trees or fenced off fields you would increase the cover available in the open area and decreased the reliance on the creek as the only place to hunker down.

I just know I hate playing on tables where a die roll for sides practically decides winner and loser before the first recon move is made.

Shotgun wrote:It is certainly a unique layout. By that I mean you will have distinct options depending on which side you set up on.

That creek side looks decidedly open. Other than the creek itself, not alot of cover. An arty park/armor park will be aircraft bait.

I wonder if you shifted it to the right, bringing the town further into play for both sides with that y intersection and pulled it back in time...a few more trees or fenced off fields you would increase the cover available in the open area and decreased the reliance on the creek as the only place to hunker down.

I just know I hate playing on tables where a die roll for sides practically decides winner and loser before the first recon move is made.

So maybe stop at the red line on the left and then go until the edge of the map on the right? Keeping the streets but thinning out the houses a bit (more farm like)?

I didn't know if adding the trees bushes at the greek would give cover, and maybe I would be able to add some more rows of bushes across the field or fence lines as you indicated. Might be able to turn some of the fields into more of a pasture with a barn or something.

If I shift the map up a little bit where the street that runs across is more towards the center it might even things out a bit. Although I don't know if open areas on both sides would be better or worse. Might be a dash for cover in the middle, although I like the current orientation as far as top/bottom is concerned so if I can fix that with cover I would be happy.

You could also add some field areas in the open spaces with high grass or hay or wheat or something, that could give concealment to infantry and gun teams.

That would probably make the most sense. I was planing on doing some of that tall wheat stuff in different areas. Definetly in the top middle and bottom left behind the creek.

Might have the creek turn back up towards the left and exit closer to the middle of the board, that would give a big wheat section there. Doing that would give the top third of the map buildings and wheat fields, and the bottom third of the map the creek with bushes and wheet fields. That would mean that the only real open area would be the middle.

And then maybe some hay/grass in the middle field? It is Germany, maybe I can have them grow some hops in there, that would be tall and give good cover maybe?

Hops would be cool. Depending on what region of Germany you're trying to represent, a vineyard could be another option as well.

Hordini wrote:Hops would be cool. Depending on what region of Germany you're trying to represent, a vineyard could be another option as well.

it is actually in Francoia, but it is a little too far south for that fine Frankenwein, so vineyard would probably be out. Hops is more likely to be found in the area where the village is located although it is still not very common. We used to have a lot of tobacco grown in the region though.


It's Miss Hops 2008 by Marcus Kesler, on Flickr

My wife admiring the fine Bavarian hops during our vacation, certainly would give lots of cover.

Nice, I really like the way you've done some reasearch and are using real world maps to engineer a board. It should look very realistic and natural. I am very impressed.