Sired's Map project - Updated- 4/16 - files available see first post

@GEN-MANSTEIN said in Huge maps:

Possible. I would perfer a slide out drawer of some sort. Then push back in under the dice box. You can make dice box smaller too and have same roll out drawer for sides.

Yes, that’s a good approach too.

Lompestein, thanks for the complements, pretty much everybody else was underwhelmed. I mounted a 5 ft version on press board I cut into a circle and mounted on a lazy susan so you could spin it. Played twice on it but the guys I played with were interested in the regular maps.

I made this after injuring my leg at work and was immobile for a while. It took a long time, about a couple of months of daily tinkering. I enjoyed it, kept me busy.

What I had to do was cut the map into about 16 to 20 horizontal strips. I didn’t keep the original files they died with an old computer I used. I used the polar function in gimp under distorts to spin the map into a circle.

I would then individually stretch vertically the strips to account for distortions at the outer and inner extremes. Spin unspin adjust, spin unspin adjust.

All the graphics had to be erased before doing this.

Repair all the borders. I also had to tweak individual land masses and continents by cutting them out and pasting them on new clear layers stretch and pull trial and error.

I believe the xcf file still has the graphics on a transparent layer over the map.

Feel free to do whatever you want to it and send me a pic of your results.

My motivation was the Gleason New Standard Map of 1892
https://www.amazon.com/Flat-Earth-Map-Gleasons-Rowbotham/dp/B01GQUW6PO?th=1

There was also a similar map used in WW 2 for people to track the progress of the war at home.

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.

Make up your own House Rule……here are some ideas

Recruitment Center (this one just happens to be a Nazi)
-The ability to build Reg. Infantry at non-factory territories
-Territories must have a value of (1)
-Only (1) Center per Territory
-Cost: 9
-Movement: N/A
-Build of (1) Reg. Infantry
-Can be Burned, or removed round before capture
-Can be Captured and be used
-Can be Bomb and unable to produce Infantry till repaired.  Cost of Repair is (3)IPC

These will be on my Shapeways Store Soon
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/war-game-miniature

IMG_20170410_205109.jpg
IMG_20170410_205127.jpg

I posted this last year, but in case anyone didn’t see it or wants to find it again (wish there was a stickie that appeared each year after Thanksgiving and disappeared after Christmas), here is a World War 2 Christmas themed playlist to play as a background to your A&A games:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHdtjQ501JyX4TbHlIOfjfYjzD11CVhtQ

I’ve also found it to be a neat thing to play in the background while hanging around the house, though my wife’s not too fond of it.  Enjoy!

@jwo1984:

Yeah that’s understandable. I’m the same too with the bulk of pieces already painted it really takes a new HBG expansion set to get my brushes out again. Or right now my buddy and I are trying out Guadalcanal for the first time. And I noticed the US start out with a generous amount of b17 fortresses so I wanted to repaint some for the game. Well whenever you get inspired again I will look forward to more showcases from you.

I hope I can get to it… maybe after a few things clear out of my schedule in the coming weeks. I always feel the need to paint when I see the cool stuff you guys are working on.

Sounds like a fun project.  The fundamental problem you’d have to solve, however, is the fact that the country names and – even more problematically – the country borders that existed historically in WWI were in some cases quite different from what they were in WWII.If you make them accurate for WWI, you’ll eventually end up in an alternate-history situation in which you’re fighting WWII on a WWI map with WWI powers as players.  It can also be argued that the political extremism of the 1920s and 1930s that eventually led to WWII was a direct result of the way WWI ended (specifically, the Versailles Treaty), and that if you alter the end of WWI then you alter the situation that eventually led to WWII.  That’s fine if working in an alternate-history environment is something you’re comfortable with; you simply have to be aware that you’re dealing with alternate history.

In terms of the map problem, perhaps the only option that would cover all the bases accurately, regardless of the political situation at any given moment, would be to use a simple map that is purely topographical rather than political in its territorial divisions.  A supplementary element could be to add overlays (drawn on large acetate sheets, or something similar) that provide political borders which can be adjusted from decade to decade.

Hello everyone,

I have been getting some requests for the air base & naval base icons I used for my custom map, so here they are…