This is my set-up for a scenario at Hir Moussa in late January 1943, a crossroads village in the Ousseltia Valley in Tunisia.
There are a combination of dirt roads and paved roads that come together in and around the village.
Here is the whole game table, seen from the opposite side from the image above.
The game-able area took up most of the ping-pong table in my garage.
Italian forces are moving up. I game with hidden units. Gamers use chits for their units until they are spotted, and also get a ration of blank chits to provide a measure of fog-of-war.
You probably won't need that in a solo game…
Italian recon forces try to "jump" the village across the ridgeline from the NW. They are met with a mortar barrage that disorganizes their attack. The French defenders in the village are as yet largely un-spotted.
A look at the village itself, with the dispositions of Italian and French forces at the end of the game.
Elevations were made of layers of cut corrugated cardboard (box sides), placed on the table under a canvas cloth. Roads were drawn on with pastels. Terrain features such as slopes and plateaus were highlighted with pastels as well. Crop fields are largely small cloth pieces with foliage glued in for periphery hedges and crop rows. These have then been mounted on the cloth with sewing-shop spray adhesive (temporary type). A small scattering of lichen bits as a last step gave some sense of sage or cactus spread about.
All pieces are entirely re-usable, and can be set up to create almost any desert map you can imagine.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
has a tip to help with your paint storage (and recognition).
