Testing the Terrain Setup

This evening I did a trial run setup of the battlefield for 1st Newbury. The purpose was to establish exactly how much terrain that is left to be done.

The result was uplifting. I got almost all the roads I need and just 40 new small sections of hedge left to do. My basic layout is sound, but needs some finishing touches.

As you can see, the pictures are not very good looking or inspiring. I blame the photo flash and the fact that much is yet to be painted.

New Goal: The First Battle of Newbury

OK, Edgehill was planned, done and played. Some celebration and a few days of rest later I want to announce the start of the planning for the next goal.

It´s going to be 1st Newbury. Why? This battle is another half mapper, see the picture above. It also has relatively few troops. It´s also a favorite of mine, an exciting and balanced battle. The scenario has free setup which I usually enjoy. The players set up their troops (within limits) how they like and hidden from each other. This makes setup into a game of itself.

To play 1st Newbury I need:

• 10 double hex heavy infantry brigades. (I have 11 so this is already done)
• 2 single hex heavy infantry units. (Easy to do, I have the figs but unpainted.)
• 29 units of cavalry. (I have 20, so 9 left. Not bad at all.)
• Light infantry: 2 dragoons (check), 3 musketeers (check) and 3 large units of musketeers (have 1, need 2 more)
• Artillery: 2 culverins, 4 sakers, 4 falcons. I have ordered some Siege guns from Baccus to paint up as the heavy culverins. The other guns I have already.
  

So what is the challenge? As you can see from the map above, Newbury has quite a lot of terrain. There are several types of terrain that will cause me problems:

• The hill that covers a large part of the battle field. This need to be modeled somehow. I´m thinking about several options at the moment, which I will get back to shortly.
• The many hexes of hedge lined road. I did a long straight section for Edgehill, but this will be much more challenging.
• Woods, villages, houses, Roman burial mounds and a river....

More later on this. Wish me luck!

The Map

The first issue was the map, so that I had something to put my new 6mm figures on and play. This is how the Edgehill map looks like in TACW (picture above from Vassal-module) with the opposing forces setup. Click the picture for a larger version.

My initial plan was to simply scan and print out the regular game map at 200 percent and play on that. But this felt a bit silly and I do want some terrain so some other way had to be found. I then turned my attention to terrain maker systems such as GHQ:s. But their hexes are too big, 10 cm across. I would need hundreds of them to play even small battles such as Edgehill above. Too costly.

Then I found, through a forum, Hotz Mats. They produce felt game mats with preprinted hexes. Perfect for my needs. I quickly ordered a mat with 1,5 inch hexes. After a while I realized that 2 inch hexes would be better and changed my order to a mat with 1,5 inch hexes on side and 2 inch hexes on the other.

As you can see on the picture above, the heavy infantry is formed into double hex counters. These big formations are my favorites. Here´s a closer look at them (picture from BGG):
















My project will be centered around the requirements of these big units. The space these occupy will determine how everything else will look.