PowerPoint Battle Reports

Slide for move 1

It has been a busy week working on the PowerPoint project.  

I have changed the sequence of photographs to make it easier to follow the narrative of the battle.  

There is still one slide to introduce the video, with the name of the battle and the total strength of each army.

There is now also one slide to introduce each game move.   This gives a very brief description of what happens during that move.   I had to avoid making the description too long because it has to be read quite quickly.

Overview move 1

There are then three photographs of each move.   First an overall view of the whole table, then one from the French and one from the Russian side

French move 1

I have found a way of making the photographs larger, and to fit the screen.   This avoids the wide and uneven framing of the first attempt, and I think looks much better

Russians move 1

I have still used labels for each corps, and arrows to show direction of movement.   In addition I have used a white star to show combat and rout.  

Not sure that I have got it quite right yet, but I am pleased that it is an improvement on last week’s first attempt.   You will find the second version of the battle report here

https://youtu.be/9SA1mYWUE64

At present I have only gamed and recorded eight moves.   A game can last up to twelve moves, and that would mean 36 photos plus 13 slides.  Each is on the screen for 5 seconds, making a total of 4 minutes.  That does not sound very long, but it can feel long when watching a slide show.

I will complete the game using the present style, and see how it looks.   If it does feel too long I may have to rethink the whole thing.

All in all I am more pleased than I was last week.  But I am still not sure that it will replace the previous battle reports.   But it is an interesting project and will be very useful for my walking blogs even if I do not use it for the wargame blogs.