"The art of markers" Topic

In our game we need to depict a situation where troops on the basic table area have found a very small fold in the ground (Circa 2ft to 3ft) high they can lie down behind to shelter them from direct rifle fire. Nominally its a small ridge 15mm wide and 45mm long 6mm high on table. There is some logic in making them absolutely identical for ease of identification they are after all a marker OR for artistic reasons they could be made to vary by say 5 to 10% in dimension to make them look a bit less artificial. In either case they will be flocked by the same material as the Hexon II tiles to stop them being too obtrusive.
What is your opinion?

Steady, that seems dangerously close to WARPAINTING

I'm going to make a long and wide hill to reflect this by carving out the middle area where a path would run through it. So, it would be not observed from a distance. The only problem is as we use hidden movement, I would need to get a couple of observers up the dlope to keep an eye on the opposition.

Make them out of thin cloth so that they have some flexibility. You could even overlap them onto the unit's base edge to show that it is in cover. Being flocked, you can leave them on the table (in case units use that area again.)

A neat idea.

I like both the fabric one, and the variable size and footprint ones for your use. I see no reason why the latter should be confusing.

I've been considering doing something similar for my tank battles, where on a 6 on 1D6 a tank driver may be able to find a wrinkle in the ground to attain a hull down position each turn. Obviously, depending upon your ground and desires, as well as the skill of the tankers, and time to search for these, the percentage chances to find these can be increased or decreased as desired.

Units on defense should have a much better chance of finding and occupying positions like these, since they have more time to locate them before their opponents arrive.

Thresher01 – our rules do something similar. Beacuas the Hull down position marker is much more obvious, it slightly laps round the position, I have done a few variations, it takes no time to create such variations when 3D modelling for a 3D print.

We do allow defenders to engineered or select positions and alternate positions with prep-surveyed tracks between them so a rapid re-deployment is possible. This was mentioned by a retired tank man.

Zephyr1 great idea but proably too fiddley at 1/144 which is the scale I play serious games.

Robert Johnson- NAA! only takes seconds to bend a line on a CADDS drawing, perish the thought I would take more than a very trivual amount of time to do it ;-).

ME WARPAINTER NEVER – I hate having to flock the stuff. Lately gave that up on infantry bases too much faff for not enough gain.

The Battlefront rules allows a unit to adopt a hull down position. The rules contain a template for a small marker to represent hull down.

I put what I call crestlines on the table. They are made from flocked string. They block LOS but have no other effect. They represent these small folds and slopes.

 Extra Crispy - what height do they represent, 3ft,6ft,or higher?

UsaCha, whatever would be needed to block LoS.

Saber 6 – so that is about 8ft, that we represent as a physical hill using Hexon II terrain which is 18mm high so not quite the same thing as our 3ft high fold that would not block sight to a standing man, interesting nontheless how folk depict their terrain.

Saber 6
Do you differentiate between the 1ft fold needed to hide a man and the 4ft needed to get a tank hull down and the 7-8 ft needed to get it turret down and if so how.

I see elevation and terrain as these types for my micro and 1/144 scale games:

Ridges that block LOS and cannot be crossed. Physical marker of pink foam.

Elevation of about 3 feet for various undulation and folds in the ground that blocks LOS for infantry that is Hunkered Down and gives partial hull-down protection to vehicles. Physical marker of pink foam.

Elevation of about 5 feet high that gives complete Hull-Down protection and blocks the LOS of moving infantry. Like an elevated road or rail line. These can be gentle slopes that allow a vehicle to be turret down and observe and then move into a hull-down position. Physical marker of pink foam.

I use a painted drop cloth as my basic terrain mat. That way I can use pastel chalks of different colors to represent the depressions and terrain contours like on a map or a physical marker. Also for small depressions, ponds, roads, and streams. The chalk is erasable too.

I tried using clear transparency with the depression contour lines printed on it but it is too reflective.

I use pipe cleaners for hedges and small rectangular plastic sprues for small walls.

Using chalk has the advantage of not interfering with movement, is cheaper, and is easier to set up but I'm sure some will call it heresy.

I also have an extensive collection of Hexon terrain too.

Wolfhag

Mark J Wilson -yes quite critical in modern day.

Though it failed the American's were supposed to bomb their sections of the Normandy beach to give the troops cover as they advanced up it, that's how important it is in the moderen world. In the old days when shows, to us at least, had a wider spread of attendees we met a guy who did training and said the hard bit was getting newbies to recognise cover less than 6". Now we dont go that far but 1 ft we see as important.
Wolfhag, while mot being Herasy that all seems a bit too like a map so far harder for me to visulise the tactical situation. Typicaly our terrain pieces are inscake (well close) to model scale. hedges are typicaly 2 hights, 4 ft is and 8ft Min (hides a vehicle). Roads are thin sprayed grey card, eonded at one end. Mlkes a very flexible length system with not too inaccurate bends but again it would not work for smaller than 1/144. We do ude coloured transparent plastic to indicate water features. The link has some of our terrain including "applique terrain" Hull down and making terrain as we portray it. It also shows derails of our crude road system. some pics are posed but the one with lots of smake and very busy is an actual serious game.

TMP link

I like how you did the elevations and hull-down markers.

Here is my painted drop cloth layout I use for 1/144 scale:

These are the Hexons I use mostly for micro armor because it is all in proper scale:

Wolfhag

wolfhag -First link of the linked TMP thread. Right hand side of the picture, there are tanks in hull down positions in the markers and one empty one to the rear of the top tank. Close in view of the hull down marker in the link under "Suppression, reaction and Hull down markers" line.

Move several pictures using the Right Hand arrow from this picture and you will see a large smoke screen, in front of the bridge i.e towards the bottom of the picture you will see two small ridges one either side of the road with infantry behind them. These are the original Masking terrain markers, the new ones are less uniform.

All the markers are 3D printed and then painted and flocked.