I have been playing around with different configurations for a custom table and wanted to note some things I’ve landed on that I really like. A main one thing is having the map mounted so that it can slide around as needed on top of a bigger playing area. My table is 65” x 95” in total with a 5.5” arm rest around the outside and the middle is a recessed neoprene surface. I have the OOB Global map mounted on 1/2” rigid foam with a 1/2” aluminum frame around it. This allows the map to slide up close to whoever’s turn it is, but then be in the middle so both players can roll dice In front of them without disturbing the map and in easy view of the other player. (Plus we like lots of room to roll the bones). This ability to adjust the surface along with a standing height, makes it comfortable for long uses because you can move around more and don’t feel as tied down.
Things I’ve learned and changed from original design - I originally used too big of a frame for the map and mounted it on too high of a foam block (you can see these pictures at the bottom) - it made it hard to see the other player’s dice and the big frame took up too much real estate. My global map is mounted on much thinner foam (the framing is bad, you can see if you look closely) but I also used much thinner aluminum angle for the frame. This gives just enough grip when needing to move the map around (I use furniture slides on the bottom, which glide very nicely on the neoprene) but doesn’t make the whole thing too bulky. Having it an inch or so off the surface keeps the dice off, but isn’t so heigh that you can’t see the other player’s dice rolls. When playing other versions (such as Zombies) the board is much smaller, but it can easily swap in and out on the same table since it can move around where ever it is needed or be pushed aside.
I originally made it normal table height, but found long reaches while sitting were harder and it just felt cramped. Standing height with a bar stool is a great way to have the best of both worlds.
The 5.5” rim around the table itself gives you a nice arm rest that doesn’t interfere with the gaming surface. I’m playing with how to best add some cushion to this part - open to suggestions. Sometimes I just lay a piece of leftover neoprene on it.
Dice bounce nice on the neoprene and stay off the floor. It also feels nice and has enough give to allow things to slide but be picked up easily. Wouldn’t definitely go with neoprene again as a surface covering.
I made the drawers open to the inside of the table so you can stay hunched over the action while accessing and stowing stuff away. 50/50 on whether I would keep this if I were to do it again. If I were doing it again, I might try to build customer drawers form scratch using actual drawer glides, but that was beyond my ability when I first did this, so I just used clear plexiglass boxes with aluminum pulls mounted on them. It’s nice having them clear, and I was happy with how the pulls came out, but without glides they can be a little fussy sliding in and out of their slots.
I originally designed the table so that I could put a cover surface back on top when not in use, but find I don’t really ever do that, so if I were to do it again, I might not mess with that part (I never even finished staining those as you can see in the pictures).
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Buying a Very Large World Map
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Just like the title says, I would like to buy a very large, fold-out world map to try some variations for Axis & Allies.
After browsing the Internet for similar ventures, I found that a fair number of designers have gone this route, purchasing detailed maps and inking their own borders in heavy felt-tipped marker.
The trick is that I can’t seem to find a seller. Barnes & Noble sells road atlases that are much too small, while gas stations sell only regional and not world maps. Online, very large maps mostly consist of wallpaper or wall-hangings. Any ideas?
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Before you spend a lot of money on a large world map, I think it would be prudent for you to start with a small map and to test your planned modifications on it as a proof-of-concept. You may find that the geography of the real world is too problematic for direct use in an A&A game. To pick just two examples: Europe, a major battlefield of WWII, is actually quite tiny in real-world size, so it may turn out to be impossibly tight in terms of working space; and the Pacific Ocean – which consists mostly of empty space – occupies a disproportionately large area of the world (about one-third of its surface, as I recall) and thus eats up map space that could more usefully be allocated to other areas (like Europe) by adopting a less accurate but more practical map layout.
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What Marc says… most of WWII takes place in Europe, and that’s a proportionately small space on any map of the world. So much of your map real-estate will be taken up by places that rarely if ever see combat… most of Africa, a ton of central Asia, the Indian and Pacific Ocean, and of course the entire Western Hemisphere… most of those places that dont see combat (especially the new world) are shrunk-down on AA maps, while Europe is enlarged, precisely for this reason.
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And on a related point: if you look at an online map of the world and place a rectangular sheet of paper on it so that one of its long edges lies on the equator (alternately covering, for purposes of comparison, the bottom half and the top half), you’ll notice that most of the world’s land masses are in the northern hemisphere. All of North America, all of Europe, virtually all of Asia, and much of Africa are located there. The main land masses in the southern hemisphere are South America, the lower part of Africa, Australia, and Antarctica; the rest of the southern hemisphere is mainly water, which means that for A&A map purposes it’s mostly wasted space. Oceania, a.k.a. the Pacific Islands, including Australia and New Zealand, did see significant action in WWII, so its inclusion on an A&A map is quite relavant…but by the same token Antarctica is a land mass that’s traditionally (and with good reason) omitted from A&A maps.
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