(Parts of this article originally appeared in the Fifth Column, the newsletter of Big Muddy HGA in the St. Louis area) Part One - The Hex Grid Pattern Several years ago I became interested in World War Two air combat using the "Blue Sky" rules by John Stanock after playing a game with those rules at Historicon. The rules require a mat that has a grid system to regulate movement (although there is now an option to use a gridless system). I purchased one of the 4x6 foot "sea" terrain felt mats with a hex grid from a company at the con and used it for a while. Eventually, as my "air force" approached 300 planes I came to realize that the mat was much too small to do what I wanted, which was bomber and torpedo plane attacks on shipping in the Pacific, with fighter escort and CAP. In some games over 80 planes were in play... I started looking around and played with the idea of joining four of the felt mats together, but that would run to $140. 00 or more and I needed spare cash to buy more planes (B-17s at that time) With this "need" in mind I started looking at stuff in stores that I usually ignored. I looked at stamp manufacturing companies, figuring I could get a hex shaped stamp and stamp hexes onto a mat... With my skill as a painter, though, I knew that this would quickly lead to an irregular effect which would work but looks really ugly. And pretty is the name of the game in wargaming (at least to me). Eventually I came across something my mother used quite a bit: "Plastic Canvas." Most craft stores, including such stellar shops as Walmart sell "Plastic Canvas" under a variety of names. This is designed for needlepoint projects and may be familiar to many folks as the basis of napkin holders, cloth Santa Clauses, and other items too cute to mention. It comes in a variety of sizes, up to 13" by 22" (cost about $1.50), which is the size I use. The interesting aspect of this plastic canvas is that it is a grid much like graph paper. It is completely composed of equally spaced holes To create a hex template I take the canvas and mark those holes that trace out the corners of a hex shape. I do this over the whole canvas so when done the plastic canvas has a series of marks on it - each mark being one of the six corners of a hex. Don't try to draw out the whole hex on this plastic canvas, it doesn't work - the square pattern of holes do not allow the sides of the hex to be drawn. You will fill in the sides later on. Using this stuff you can create hexes of pretty much any size from about one half inch to, well, something really big, like a foot across... The following is a template for creating hexes of about one inch. The OS represent holes in the plastic canvas, and the Xs represent the holes that are marked to create the grid. The pattern looks a little funny because the typed width and height don't match, but count the holes if you try this to get the proper pattern. With the whole sheet of plastic canvas marked following the above or a similar pattern (the template) it is time (maybe) to start marking out your grid. I say maybe because for some applications you should grid out the surface you'll use first, in other applications you need to prepare the surface before you grid it out. See part two of this article. To begin, place the template over one corner of the surface to be gridded and, using a fine point permanent ink pen make a mark on the surface through every one of the holes you have marked out on the template. Once you have finished marking these, move the template so that it overlaps the surface you've already marked by two or three holes, line up the marked holes with those in the template, and continue marking through the template onto the surface. You need to be very careful here - being off a quarter inch will mean that a couple feet down the surface you will be way off pattern. Once one complete row is marked across the surface, start the second row and overlap on two sides if possible to make sure that the marks line up properly. Continue this until the entire surface is covered with "dots." Once the surface is completely marked off it is time to fill in the hexes. With a permanent magic marker (test this if you use a non porous surface such vinyl - or you may end up with colored hands each time you use it!) simply "connect the dots" using dots or dashes. Don't try to draw lines between your original marks because errors and small variations become REAL obvious if you do, I use two or three marks between each corner, which seems to work well with the one inch grid. The size of the "dot" can vary based on your tastes, but generally speaking the smaller the better. Be warned that all phases of this gridding system can consume significant amounts of time. If you want to grid out a 9 foot by 5 foot surface you will have about 6500 one inch hexes, which adds up to over 50,000 "dots." The last mat I did (9x5) took about eight or nine hours to do the complete grid. The grid system can, of course, be used for any game that needs hexes to regulate movement. Once you have completed this arid you can add a "wash" to the surface - making some areas lighter and some darker. The first mat I created used this technique, I gridded out a dark blue vinyl mat (9x5 feet) then put broad "swipes" of white and black acrylic paint (wash technique) over the surface to make the mat look more "sea like," This worked quite well. Total cost for supplies for the entire project was about $25.00. If you want to have more detailed terrain under the grid, take a look at Part Two. Part Two - Painting the World After sinking many ships in the Pacific and feeding any number of fish with sailors and pilots, my interests turned to destroying larger objects - such factories and cities... So I started buying planes to game the bombing of European cities by all involved in that conflict. Then I realized that cities and factories were normally not found in the sea... It took me a while but I eventually figured that out... Anyhow, my wonderful sea mat wouldn't work... My first step in this creation of a painted terrain mat was to try to find an aerial photograph or a topographic map of "somewhere in Germany." I couldn't find one that I was happy with, so I ended up buying a fairly detailed road map. This gave me the basic contours of an area -- hills, rivers, towns, open areas and woods. I had to extrapolate a bit back to the 1940s, but I wasn't looking for any exact place. A generic "European" countryside would be fine. It was important that the area I was going to create had a river - these served guides for many bombing runs Planes would use them as landmarks that pointed to the target. Secondly, I went and looked for some fabric. A light canvas or other fairly heavy fabric seemed to be best suited to the needs of a terrain mat, so that is what I got. It took some looking to find fabric that was five feet wide (most is 48 or 54 inches wide), but its out there. I purchased a four yard (12 feet) piece for my first mat. I then washed and dried it, and got it as flat as I could. Even ironed parts of it that were a bit wrinkly. Finally, I cut off one yard to make a 9x5 surface. At this point a hard decision has to be made. What scale will the mat be? At 30,000 feet a 9x5 mat would contain a lot of territory, and all features would be very small. I opted for an arbitrary height which turned out to be around 7500 feet. Large buildings would be about one inch wide, and roads would be about 1/4 inch in width. Individual trees could actually be seen as well, and shading would be effective. This though, is up to your tastes and artistic ability. Once the fabric was prepared and the terrain decided on I penciled in the broad outline of the landscape. River, roads, rail roads, towns, and edges of the woods were the most critical. The rest could be filled in later. I then used acrylic paints and painted these features - River in blue, roads in a tan, rail roads in a light gray, houses in gray and terra cotta (roofs anyhow). After these broad outlines were set I started filling in the blanks. I used a half inch brush with a dark green acrylic paint and "spun" the brush along the wood edge, making individual trees. The idea here is to make a rough circle that could be mistaken for a tree. I enclosed all wood edges with this technique, then filled in the rest of the woods with these dark green swirls spaced irregularly. If a road went through the wood I covered much of it with the trees as well, leaving some parts visible from above. After the woods were done I went for the fields. I gathered many bottles of acrylic paint in "natural" colors - greens, yellows, tans, browns and other earth tones, and started painting in the fields. I'd use one color and put in irregular rectangles that seems about the right size all over the open spaces, conforming to the features already painted in. After I had enough of one color I would go for a second and so on until all of the open area was filled in with field colors. I like to have solid colors, but an argument can be made to go sparingly on the paint and allow some of the actual fabric color to show through. It all depends on your tastes. Both look OK This gives a useable map, but it is rather stark. The second painting phase is to try to make things look more "real." Here I put in individual trees - near the buildings, along the river, in the corner of fields. Everywhere that looked like it needed a tree I stuck one in - again the "spun" tree shapes. I also put in a couple of hedges (small green circles connected together), bushes and the like. Also "creeks" winding through the fields breaks up the regularity well. Also, on some fields, I put "plow marks." Then comes the fun stuff -- shading. Figure where you want the sun to be! On every tree put a semicircle of a tighter green on the edge of the tree that faces that direction. Then, for everything that has height or depth, put a shadow on the side away from where your sun is located. A dark side behind each tree, behind each house, next to the roads in places, between the fields (fence shadows), and on the river - but here put the shading toward the sun (the river would be lower than the land around it). Some of this should be done with paint, but much can be done with permanent pens of various tip sizes. Shading is also useful to show hills, with a light wash on the sides of the hills away from the sun. Once all of this is done you are ready to put on the hex grid. But wait, there's more! Where are the factories? Where are the cities? What I did to give targets to the bombers was take some of that extra cloth (remember I bought four yards) and draw in a city or a factory. Do this after you have done the grid on the large mat, Grid out (the edges at least) the size you want your factory complex or city to be then cut it out along the hex sides. Place this cut out on you completed mat and pencil in where roads, rivers, rail lines or the like intersect the blank cutout, Then paint in your factory complex, workers quarters, or whatever you want as a target. After it is painted you can put your grid on top, then lay this piece on the larger map as the bombers approach their target... Finally, if you haven't gone insane by now, there is a last step. You need to "fix" the acrylic paint in place or your hard work may crack and peel. This is done by heating the fabric, either by putting it in a dryer for an hour or so, or by ironing the whole piece several times. This should reduce the amount of cracking that occurs. For storage I always roll my mats on a cardboard carpet roll, again to reduce cracking and chipping. I continue to experiment with this technique. I've seen large scale planning maps (on paper) hung up in various governmental offices. While in black and white, these would serve as a wonderful terrain map, and you could bomb your own home town! I've thought of painting the terrain of Gettysburg in the scale of 1" to fifty yards for my Johnny Reb games, then placing foam under the mat for the hills. This might be a good way to do terrain for 1/285 games of microarmor as well. Much less storage space required than terrain boards and easily transported. If you have any ideas or suggestions about this technique, or would like to share ideas, please get in touch. I moved to Lynchburg, VA this summer and have played ONE wargame since July. I need my wargaming fix or I might become too involved in family and work... After all, we must keep our priorities straight. Back to MWAN #109 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com