Friday, March 6, 2009

Maps on Post-It's

As is the way with the blogosphere (aka: the best thing to happen to wargaming since the dice) I’ve been kindly directed to a device that blows my own home-made effort away (courtesy of Snickering Corpses’ recommendation to Muster The Troops.)  However, I’ll see through the battle with my home-made version, not least because I can edit the terrain as required and prevent mountains appearing in a generally level river-valley province.

 I’ve used my generator as described above, and here’s the result in all it’s post-it-note scribble glory!

Awesome, I know.  So, here’s the tidied up version with MS Paint.


I generated the terrain a few times until it looked right (ie, no seven squares of marsh all side-by-side) and then drew in the road lengthwise through the map, generally avoiding bad terrain where possible and trying to go within 1 square of all towns, farms and villages.  One area which I noticed about ¾ along the route seemed a bit risky – where the road curves southward towards the anticipated Aschenbach attack and runs adjacent to three boxes of heavy woods.  As any attack here would come virtually without warning, I pondered revising it, but then decided on another solution.  I’ve got some modelling gear ready to be put to use, so I decided I fancied the idea of some protecting bastion (or revetment, as I believe that’s more technically accurate phrase) thrown up in haste to cover this obvious blind-spot. 

 Oh, and one last discovery on the blogosphere:  The site called Miniature Wars has a personality generator, which could well provide a bit of character in future for new individuals to turn up in the game.  Worth a look!


4 comments:

Fitz-Badger said...

Well, I still think there's something to be said for the old school charm of hand-drawn maps.
:-)
I draw mine by hand and then refine them digitally.
Of course there's no "one true way" to do any of this. I like your maps, too, and the way you worked out to create mostly random maps for games.

A J said...

I agree, drawing up maps is part of the ImagiNations charm. It's tempting to put "here be dragons..." in some foresaken deep forest. ;)

CWT said...

Damn - you've both convinced me. Ah well, back to the drawing board...

There's nothing like a blog to keep you honest!

:-)

Fitz-Badger said...

I didn't mean to convince you of anything. :-) Just meant I enjoy drawing maps by hand myself and enjoy those of others. We see so many digital products these days hand-made has a charm of it's own, the human touch, the personal touch.
Do whatever works for you and whatever you enjoy! :-)