Spring 1942 1. Ed. Map

I just wanted to say that I printed out a very large map size at 2440mm x 1118mm ( roughly 8 foot x 4 foot) on a digital printed transparency with a matt laminate and it has turned out fantastic. The quality was amazing. I searched everywhere to see if it could upscale and could not find the answers. Hopefully this will help someone who is thinking of doing the same.
I have built a custom table with magnets sunken into the table to hold the map in place. I wanted to use the table to play other games so the map had to roll up.
I also wanted to use the table for Global War 1936 and the magnets work well

I’m curious as to how many people use Airfix/Italerie/Revell/etc 1/72 infantry units in their games. I used to be against this preferring the OOB units, but I have spent a small fortune over the last week buying different sets on eBay to add “spice” to the game. Bottom line is I’m having fun researching the sets and also learning more WW2 history as I go. It’s amazing the detail some of these infantry pieces have! Has anyone else been bit by this bug?

Nice work @ari236

@Playing-Kid said in My First Custom Map:

You can use Gimp as a great free software to make your maps

And I agree with Gimp. That’s the tool I used for working on my map files.

Part 4: Starting the ships, adding decals to the tanks, skin tones on the soldiers

Today spent some time adding paint to the sprayed ships, including painting the water jettisons on the subs black (this was very tricky and ended up looking a little sloppy). Advice for painting the jettisons: toothpicks are not small enough! If you do use toothpicks, you’ll have to dab a dot of black for each tiny jettison.

The battleships were a bit easier, and painting the decks, bridge, and smoke stacks were all done in silver. I plan on adding the final grey coat last after the deck and stacks/bridge dry. I experimented with how to add the national emblem, and will probably opt for a white background with a red dot on the bow of the ship. In the future I may do that with the rear end of the ship.

I painted the tranny smoke stacks silver and added a white background for the emblem on the destroyers. All in all, the Japanese navy is coming along nicely.

The armor is pretty much done. I added a white flag to the front side of the armor and will be adding the red dots later. For the aircraft, I’ll be adding a red band around the rear part of the plane. I was debating between sky blue and red and may alternate just for some variety.

The soldiers got some skin! And I just want to say that adding the paint alone brings out the contours of their facial features in an excellent manner on their own. I may add a touch of black to certain areas of the face but that will be a last step. The next step will be panting their uniforms, rifles, and helmets.

After all this is done, I will be spray painting the japanese bombers white, the aircraft carrier black, and then will add the details to those. The Japanese are about 55% done all in all and I’m pleased with the results so far even if they do look a bit amateurish. Stay tuned.

IMG_6405.JPG IMG_6404.JPG IMG_6403.JPG IMG_6402.JPG

Well done! Thanks for sharing your work.

In the Amerika board game, there are a few rules when attacking city territories. The first is that artillery fires first in the opening round of combat and casualties are removed before continuing. The second is each city has it’s own Anti-aircraft guns which fire before combat begins and casualties are removed. This is not like the AA guns on factories, these are for ground assault. Lastly, the attacker can only use one round of combat to simulate the difficulty and length of time it takes to capture a city. I don’t know if this would transfer well to A&A though because there is also a stacking limit in Amerka. You would never be able to capture a capital in A&A if you stacked 20-30 units on it. You could make a limit of 2 or 3 rounds or something like that though.

Your collection and set up is truly awesome.