Recently, a year ago, some friends and I decided to get into, back into for myself, tabletop gamin. They are Star Wars Tie Fighter, Warhammer 40K, D&D, and various board and Video game players and I’m board games and video games. Many, many moons ago I was playing the very challenging Challenger 200 war games. We settled on the GHQ Fulda Scenario as it had the vehicle types and a map. We decided to use Sabre Squadron as our rules and data. When we first started it was a green mat with various very basic terrain and roads. It took up a lot of space in my kitchen and I eventually had to move it and my OCD kicked in and I decided to make one a bit more realistic.
I started with 4x6x1/2 piece of plywood and foam sheets from Wallyworld. Found it that wasn’t the best idea and used Styrofoam and a heat knife instead. I used 12x48x1 Styrofoam sheets cut to 5 in sq, this was the biggest for the table knife, 3m ultra spray glue, flooring underlayment, nails, dog resistant mesh screen, modeling clay, expansion foam, and some really thick yarn.
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The plan was to draw the contour lines and cut accordingly, nope was a failure. The modification was using the maps I used to draw on the tiles to get close to the actual terrain and numbering them. After cutting and glueing each numbered tile to the base, I filled in the major gaps with expansion foam and cut that according to the terrain. After base was complete I covered the whole map with flooring underlayment.
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Using Google Earth and Open Topographic maps, I did the base color in tan and used dark green spray paint to get the general outlines of the forested area. I then painted the roads with foam brushes trimmed to the road type. Using 16p nails, I stuck them into the scrap foam pieces and sprayed them brown for tree trunks. This actually worked well for the tree cover to follow the terrain. After placing the nails around the forested area and the roads/trails, I spray painted the screen in various colors for tree tops and hot glued it to the nail heads.
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After cutting the roads/trails of the forest I took the heavy duty yarn, I realized I should have done this beforehand, and super glued it to the upper portion of the nails to represent dense brush.
I used some modeling clay to make artillery/mortar craters and some armor hull down defensive points. I found some 6mm paper buildings and some 6mm civilian vehicles to have some obstacles.
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The next one I make will be a bit easier or complicated depending on perspective. I found a couple of blogs that explain a couple of techniques.
https://www.allhellletloose.co.uk/2021/ ... ts-of.html
https://6mm.wargaming.info/page35.shtml
The next map will be from the Scheda area of Germany about 60km east of Bonn. The one after that will be in Arzberg, Saxony Germany, the irony of it is that is near the locations where the Allies and USSR met up in WWII.
I have the GHQ rules, FFT2 and 3, and a copy of Challenger 2K. After reading them I kind of like a hybrid of them all, except challenger 2K it’s a bit unwieldy, aspects of them all.
A bit about me. I’m retired from the US Army after 34 yrs as a jack of all trades for MOS’s Arty, Grunt, Radar Tech, and PSYOP.
