"Wagram map water color" Topic

I'm not sure how I'm going to use this, but it was fun anyway. Much more fun than doing endless battle mats. The picture is 24" x 24". The idea with this is that it will go into a picture frame and the units will move around on top of the plastic. It's slightly…. off…. geographically, but it will make do for generic battles. Also, I didn't add the elevation hash marks of the ridge along the Russbach, because I wanted it to have a bit more play-over value. You can zoom on in the picture to see more of the details.

I started making 2mm infantry strips out of styrene sheets of different types, so I can now make custom-sized units. Here, if I wanted to play Grande Armee, I'd have to make up some 10mm wide units to represent brigades. A bit on the small side, and probably more fiddly that it needs to be. For this project it would make more sense to have 15mm units and count them as divisions instead. Only strong artillery positions would be represented. Any game played on here would would be more like a chit-based game than a traditional war-game.

Next map I do will probably be a bit larger, and probably more "inspired by" than an attempt at faithful recreation. It was loads of fun though, and very cheap to do. I have a week and half before my next semester starts, so I'm going to try to do a few more. These will all be used to experiment with some rules I toyed around with a few years ago. We'll see where it goes.

I think that's lovely!

If you want to add elevations, draw/paint them on transparencies and just sandwich them in between the map and the plastic cover. This also gives you the flexibility to make new scenarios by changing the configuration of hills and valley, or adding woods, forests, swamps, tributaries to the river, etc. I suppose you could add roads and towns too, but I have no idea where you'd fit any more. :-)

I had an idea to do a set of maps very much like this for playing out "staff exercise" style battles with wooden blocks, but I never got serious enough to finish. I bought Blücher to use as the rules, because it's basically a perfect hybrid of boardgame and miniatures game mechanics to work with blocks and hand-drawn maps.

- Ix

Thanks!
I got the idea from this guy:
YouTube link

Next one I do will probably be a bit simpler like his Antietam. Also, I want to go back to the art store and buy some better water colors and proper water-color paper. I purchased all the materials for the above at a second hand art store (the Bay Area is lousy with such places). Other than the pen, which was a brown Pilot Japan 04 pen. I now wish I bought a lot more pens in Japan; they're way better than pens here in the US. The same Pilot pen here, for instance, is nowhere near as good.

He uses kriegspiel blocks, but I'll be using my 2mm plastic infantry. Since they're only going to be on 15mm frontage, I'll have to write the unit ID on the bottom.

The transparency idea is a good one; I tried to find some yesterday but they didn't have any. I may pick some up later today. I want to go get a cheap picture frame before something happens to this painting, and I can probably get transparencies while I'm out.

Eventually I'm going to try to do much larger water colors, which can be rolled up like scrolls when not in use, and placed beneath large pieces of plexiglass for games. My Katzbach game from a few months back would have worked very well on a map, for instance.

Here are some of my Austrian brigade blocks. The flags are only printed on the front side, and on the back is a roster number that will correspond to a unit. This keeps all the detail work off the board, allowing me to use smaller pieces. These guys are 15mm in frontage, which is a good size for gaming piece. They're the 2.2 x 1.5 styrene strips you get in hobby store, and the officer is a regimental commander piece from my online store, as are the cav and the artillery. By doing away with the square base, one could easily use these to play Grande Armee or Blucher on a map like this. Generally, you could never play at so reduced a scale without using chits, but it looks like this might work…

My next project, clearly, is to make both armies for Wagram and play it on a 24" x 24" board. : )

Wagram for under $20 USD!!

Eventually I'm going to try to do much larger water colors, which can be rolled up like scrolls when not in use, and placed beneath large pieces of plexiglass for games.

Go for 6'x4'. :-)

- Ix

Nice job!