New Campaign Maps

Eisenbach Tactical Map

This is the map which we use in the current campaign.

There are three squares between towns/cities.   This is one day’s movement on road for infantry, artillery and supply vehicles.   Depots can only be established in a town/city, and to resupply a corps must be within three squares of a depot.  Using this map an army can remain within supply distance providing that they move their depot from town/city as they advance.

A wargames table is also three squares by three squares.   Therefore one town/city will always be included in each battle.  There is a tendency for defending armies to put a corps in a town/city, giving it a big advantage over an attacking army.

Erlangen Tactical Map

This is the tactical map for our next campaign.  

At first sight it looks very similar to the Eisenbach map.   But you will note that there are now four squares east to west between towns/cities.   This will make it easier for attack armies to manoeuvre without having to attack a defended town/city.

It will also make it much more difficult to resupply an attacking army.   They will have to move outside resupply range of their depot in order to attack the enemy.   This make it even more necessary to stockpile and to ensure an attacking corps is fully supplies before they advance out of resupply range.

No doubt unexpected problems will arise once we start using the new map.

New Campaign Maps

Eisenbach Phase Tactical Map

The map is designed so that there is a large town or city on each wargames table.   On the map there is one every three squares either north to south or east to west.     A city (indicated by a church) is always four scenic squares and a town always two scenic squares.

The rest of the map has a built up area in each alternative square.   This is always a single square representing either a village or a farm.

In between is either a hill or river or a blank square representing either a woods or a marsh.

So on each wargames table there would be one city or large town square, normally in the middle of the table.    This left eight other squares.   A maximum of four would be village or farm.   The remainder would be river, hill, woods or marsh.

When I designed this map system about ten years ago we had a large collection of commercial buildings, both north European and Spanish.   All of them were stand alone and would be placed on 6x6 inch felt squares to represent villages or farms.

We also had sufficient trees to create a maximum of four wooded squares.

Over the years I had collected sufficient walls and hedges to create a maximum of three farms.   I quickly found that these were not quite the right size to form the walls and hedges on the standard felt squares.

About six years ago we began to make our own buildings and walls to populate our towns, villages and farms.   They were all designed to fit on the standard felt squares.

Our custom built buildings and walls are now complete.   Our commercial walls and hedges have been cut to size and based on stands to fit the felt squares

North European Scenery

The next phase is to standardise all of the buildings and scenery, in order to ensure that it is all used in sequence.  Or at least maximise the use of each item.

We require a maximum of one large town/city of four felt squares.   We also need a maximum of two villages, walled farms or open farms, all to fit on one felt square each.

I have now numbered these as shown on the photo of the table above.

The city and town buildings are all free standing buildings.   There are sufficient spare buildings to add variety.   The walled farms are single units, with all of the walls permanent.   The stone wall and hedges are two L shaped sections.   There are sufficient for three different types of wall and hedge.

Spanish and Portuguese Scenery

All of the buildings are duplicated for Southern Europe.   The large town/cities are natural stone.   The farms and villages are whitewash.   The same trees are used for both north and south.