""Maps" for Air Games" Topic

Having seen "maps" of open water for naval games I have been criticized for blue sky mats for aerial games.

"Where is the terrain?" "Even Space games have 'stars' or 'planets' in the background!"

Okay, depending on altitude/era (or even genre for aeronefs) what constitutes a "map" for a historical game from 1914 to today in your mind?

A) Blue sky (And how is this different from "open sea" blues/greens?)

B) Blue sky with white patches for clouds (I have one of those – Monday Knight I believe)

C) Blue sky with cotton ball clouds

D) A digital pattern to represent ground below (A fellow local has this for his modern games)

E) Aerial photos printed as a base

F) a printed ground surface seen from above (Now have three of those)

G) Actual 2mm/3mm 3D terrain on a 'ground colored' surface

H) Other

I) I don't think I have ever considered this aspect of aerial gaming

J) I stick to feet/wheels/treads/ships in my gaming so I am unqualified in answering

I do either – my default "air" mat is just a light blue sheet, but I do have a very nice 6x4 hex-gridded aerial photo of Hong Kong island which gets broken out when it's suitable. Aerial photos are definitely my favourite tabletop for an air game, but they're expensive to get printed and often hard to source something suitable for your needs, so I definitely view them as a luxury, and have no problem with the good old light blue sheet…. :-)

I like the high level look of farm pastures. I use this for my ww1 planes.

Cigar box is the company I buy from.

Matthew

A (it isn't different from my sea cloths), for air games over land I might use a green, sand or brown instead of blue, and at night I might use black. If clouds were important I'd use cotton wool or similar.

Ignore critics unless they can contribute something positive.

We use the terrain matts from Wings of Glory for our aerial games – or just the plain old table top

I would prefer vague land 'country' images, but light blue is fine.

Just for the record, I often play on 'just black' for space. I've never had a complaint, now that I think on it. Heck, I've driven starships on green-it-was-there.

Doug

A real map:

‌SE5 Flamed3! by Ceterman1, on Flickr

link
Peter

OMG, Ceterman1, that is incredible!

Jealous? Just a bit…

Probably perfect for WW1. Pretty damn good looking for anything low level I suspect.

Thanks Mute!
Yeah, we think it's lookin pretty damn good also. This is the board(with some improvements) I plan to take to H-Con next year in honor of 50 years since the release of "The Blue Max" movie. Still need to paint one more 7 lozenged Pfalz D3… that along with a million other projects! I plan on using something along the same line for my Battle of Britain games too. Jeeze, so much to paint so little time…
Thanks again & glad ya like it.

Really depends on what kind of scenario I'm playing. Modern fighters at high altitude, plain blue mat, I might add cotton-ball clouds.

Any game where there are ground targets, obviously gets a more detailed mat, which may also include cotton-ball clouds separate from the ground detail.

I also really like the stuff from Fight's On!, all the missiles and various ground items.

Due to the nature of our system we have to play on the floor, so our "map" is basic carpet or wood. For ground-attack scenarios we have top-views of buildings and use masking tape for roads and trenches, with scale top-views of trucks when needed.

Wouldn't take much to add a lot: few carpet samples of the right pattern for fields, for instance.

Of course, there are still some playing Blue Max on the floor with old Battlemasters vinyl game mats. ;->=

Doug

@Dom
Is your mat of 40's Hong Kong or a later image? Land reclamation and forest planting has changed the terrain significantly since then, as you know.

It's modern – WW2 aerial photography was invariably black and white, so colour means accepting anachronisms. Mind you, it's been used for jet age what-ifs too…. That said I stuck to just Hong Kong island itself, which at least doesn't look so overwhelmingly modernised as the environs.

My first idea that pops in my head is Google earth images printed out ( not very toner friendly) but shows anywhere on the planet.

My next idea is maps, (it's square gridded) but not life like coloured, and would have to do some maths to work out the altitude for it 1:25000 or 1:50000. ( World map could be used for low altitude space ships 😨)

My other idea is just a piece of green cloth.