"Quick WW1 gaming board on my blog" Topic

I have just posted a blog post about the very quick terrain sheet I have made for my current WW1 project in 20mm. Please take a look here:

link

Thanks for looking!

So do you drape the sheet over things to make hills? I use a large piece of green felt for my game table for most games. I have a sand colored, old blanket for desert terrain. In each case I use my children's old, worn out clothes for making hills out of. I place the clothes to suit, drape the cloth over these, then use a staple gun to tack the cloth down in place. Oh, I added a piece of particle board on top of an old dining table for my game table. So stapling into it does no harm.
I like your sheet idea, but in the photos it seems to look more grey than brown.

Thanks Rrobby, I will probably not even have hills in this case. Through the Mud and the Blood is a 1 to1 skirmish game, so at this level hills are not very noticeable, especially the area that I will be re-fghting: Northern France and Belgium. Both areas are pretty flat. I have a few shattered woods for WW1 that I will use over the top of the sheet. Yeah, the colour is a slightly greyish brown rather than the dark brown I really wanted!

Careful about Northern France and Belgium being 'flat' ;-). The German line was positioned along every possible elevation, no matter how slight. When you stand on the front line and support line areas, it is possible to appreciate the enormous advantages this gave the Germans.

Robert

Yes, you are correct, I meant the hills are rolling, rather than the typical sharp hills you see on wargames boards. At the scale I am gaming the slope wouldn't be so apparent, although in many cases the Germans have the advantage. If that makes sense?

I bought a couple sheets at Salvation Army for about $3 USD each. They are soft, jersey sheets, not percale, which softness makes them drape over "hills" much more realistically. Mine I home dyed dark green, and being king size, filled up the washing machine. This folded crowding gave a very uneven coloring to the cloth. At first disappointed, I now realize the mottled coloring is just what I want underneath my troops.

Yes, it makes sense. In essence you are abstracting the advantage of the small but tactically meaningful slopes into another mechanism. The Germans will enjoy the benefit of this advantage without the need to represent the slope itself on table.

One of the difficulties is that the advantage will often accrue to off-table assets in a skirmish game. The terrain around Fromelles is a very good example. Here the German front line was at the same level or only slightly higher than the British and Dominion lines. The real advantage was in the second line positions that lay on the forward slope of Aubers ridge. MG positions and artillery observers in these areas had a clear view over the front lines and No Mans Land. Much of the damage in this battle was actually done by the limited number of MGs laid in enfilade hardened positions in the German front line. Mostly these will have been off-table too from an M&B perspective but there are mechanisms in the rules to cover this type of grazing MG fire by lanes. Any break-in, however, could be taken at distance by observed MG fire from the second line.

The other major advantage was the ability to spot where and when to apply counter-attacking forces. The British and Dominion forces were far more constrained in this respect, whereas German commanders could see the battle unfold below their observation positions. Having walked this and many other battlefields in French Flanders and Belgium, plus having studied the German accounts either first-hand or in collaboration with the translator for the Bavarian records relating to Fromelles, these are some of the insights that have been emerging in recent years FWIIW.

Robert

aye the Germans were very good at picking their ground, I too have walked and worked on the battlefields of the Somme and Ypres. One of the best places to see it is at the Newfoundland Memorial park where the German lines are below the British lines, so the attacking soldiers are silhouetted against the skyline. This is then augmented by no less than two support lines over looking the front lines.