"Visualising terrain on your table" Topic

We have had a couple of recent actions Russians vs Brits set in the 1980's. The setting was very English terrain, arguably not that representative of Norther Europe, at least not the bit England we were representing. I thought about this and realised that as a simulator, for a scenario to be of interest to me you have to be able to intuitively relate to the terrain, so that you are not looking simply a set of models on a bit of table, but a representation of terrain you have seen and walked through, so that the rules applied can be reconciled with the real world situation.

Now with Google maps and Street view you can get some handle on different real terrain, but I do find it adds a time penalty as you have to look at the table, think of the photos and hence make plausible decisions. Far harder than if you have an intuitive grasp of the terrain being represented and its typical spacing's.

How do you feel about your terrain?

It's pretty unrealistic but there's not much I can do about it. The hardest thing to portray is what I'll call micro-terrains, small depressions, dead space, and rises that are hard to model in a game but historically were taken advantage of by attacking infantry.

I use a clear plastic sheet and a magic marker to portray depressions. It's also difficult to portray contour lines on a hill.

When you look at a Google Map of rural Europe, it's mostly a patchwork of farms and small villages.

For me portraying terrain and towns accurately is easiest to do in 6mm.

Wolfhag

We considered 6mm as a scale many years ago and dismissed it as impractical for us, the models are too small. We only fight at 1:1 and while you can turn turrets on tanks at 6mm it is impractical for smaller models.

However our 1/144 games use the same ground scale as some 6mm games i.e. 1mm represents 1m. This allows representation of most linear features such as streams, hedges, roads etc. Obviously like most wargames we flounder in the face of an urban area. Our own approach treating each model house as representative of that area is by no means ideal but it is as far as we are concerned, the least worst approach we have found so far. Again 6mm would not work for the same representative village area, we would need 4 times as many houses. That bit count would make our rules impractical and the alternative approaches for us would be even less plausible so by definition far less interesting and so far less entertaining. Again an issue of how you personally visualise your terrain compared to the real world.

As far as terrain goes we saw no merit in 6mm scale models regarding representation of hills. The only truly flexible hill systems that are practical are large hex based systems, our own old system and the new and better Hexon 2 systems. The limitations of bit count to be practical are such that the resolution is fixed, regardless of scale of figures. 6mm models could use 8mm thick basic hexagons not our 16mm for 1/144 but the area resolution would not be any better. Hill size is effectively limited by hill slope and hex size. You could for 6mm, have two levels of slope that would be more useful but at a very high cost in storage of items, you would need to store 2 sets of slope tiles. In effect we have some 8mm thick hex that we can represent 4 ft. (ish) contours but they have not been something we have made use of generally, they do not offer over much. We do have some home printed hex that incorporates a ridge in a single hex but they have not been overused as they again have a build time and storage issue so they are not frequently used.

Clearly small features could be placed within a single hex. However given that for us our real scale fire teams take up about around 30mm by 15mm there are not over many opportunities to represent smaller features, again a less than perfect compromise.

Interestingly other than denoting Fighting position and houses we have not felt we have missed too much by not representing smaller features than a single hex individually. What real ground scale dimensions do you represent the small features you describe.

Note. I am aware of hex based systems with smaller hex sizes, as small as about 1". However they are placed in blocks so they are not that flexible as you need even more "tiles" to build to a map, at times you would need to place individual tiles to be better than our larger hex and so bit count would be unacceptable high in my opinion.

I play fantasy. I make up the terrain as it suits me, and the game I want to play.

As far as making it realistic, I do not try. I accepted a compromise between Diorama-like painting and scenery, and the other end of the spectrum, which is simple counters to represent troops and/or terrain. I am somewhere in the middle between the two extremes. I am happy with my compromises, mostly.

I opted for stepped hills, due to having played too many games with sloping hills: I watched figures tumble down the hillsides because they could not stand on them! I choose practical, over realistic, all day, every day.

I play games, not simulations. I pursue fun, not research. Cheers!

I lean towards Sgt Slag's approach.

This is part of my 6mm board:

I can't use 1/144 scale models with 6mm buildings as they are too large and out of scale. Each hex = 100m.

For the 1/144 scale I use 1" = 25m and for spotting and LOS checks, we use the front middle of the hull because the model is out of scale and too large of a footprint on the table.

Here is one I built without the palm trees:

This is my typical 1/144 scale board:

The markers in front of the model show the distance moved in 10 turns. The longer the marker, the faster it moves.

I've seen a lot of very nice-looking towns and buildings but they look like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting from the 1950's.

I'm more concerned with modeling the topology realistically along with the correct scale rather than detail.

Have to confess, I looked at Norman Rockwell paintings and could see no comparisions between them and Wargames battlefields, but hey I am a bit of a philistine regarding art.

To me a table is a large(ish) map. The level of detail needs to be credible with respect to the size of the figures. Area detaisl smaller than a figure base is not for me, not a usefull item in general.