Photos of my 3D battlefield

Help,

I’m such a technophobe and I live on dial up.

Guys, I’ve held my first really big game and I need help getting the pictures to you.  They seem too big to load into the site from my data stick so a friend put them in photo bucket which is some shared site and sent me links.  But when I copy the links into the forum they lose the link status.  If any one wants the links, give me your email address and I’ll forward the email.  Then maybe one of you can figure out how to post these.

About the battle.  We fought the Moro River which was a huge Canadian affair in Dec '43 outside of Ortona Italy.  My own Regiment was a feint that after 6 days was the only unit successfully on the north shore of the river.

I built a 3 dimensional hex board (8 x 18) based on maps and my own visits to the valley on a battlefield tour.  I used styrofoam and a hot wire cutter.  Then painted it and added woods using scenic modeling materials.

The forces arrayed (that I picked) had 575 points on each side.  They were divided into Companies of 12 units each and each side had 5 players controlling the pieces. While mainly infantry I gave each side 4 tanks and two aircraft.  The Germans defending also had a lot of barriers.

This was Professional Development for the Junior Leaders of the Regiment.We started off with a history lesson on why we ended up at the valley in '43, followed by a reminder of the combat estimate (aim, factors, courses open and plan) and then had rules “battle school”.

I then let the Canadians conduct a recce of the actual model and conduct recce for fords (die roll) before they retired to plan their fight.  Then the Germans had a chance to view the terrain, counter roll to see if they knew about the fords and set up.  We covered their pieces with paper cups so that the Canucks couldn’t see them during their set up.  The Canadians got a final recce of lifting off ten cups prior to deployment.  The found an 88mm but also found some empty ground.

The game was interspersed with history of the battle and we broke for meals together.  With two of us being umpires to keep it moving, the game went 10 hours.  When one guy stepped up to move, another was there to roll his dice.  Planning was done while waiting to step up.  I had them recording the combat estimate thought process as well, complete with intended and actual outcomes.

It was a hugely successful day.

I’ve sent you the emails Dezrt.  If your unit wants to hire a consultant for this, I can travel. :-D

Thanks big time eh!

The first photo (with no miniatures) is looking from the SE corner from the hills that the Canadians started on.  During rainy December, they pushed their way up to the Northern hill to control the lateral roads.

the second photo that Dezrt put up is again from the Canadian lines looking north.

Look through the remaing ones that are linked.  There are some decent shots.

Audacity

How’s a tank get off the cliff?

The gravel pit on the north hill was treated as a Bluff that thanks couldn’t traverse and infantry needed a movement roll for.  The rest of the terrain was steep hills.  Vehicles were allowec to go down at no cost but going up was double movement costs.

Hexes that consistently changed height were essentially treated as flat terrain and a bit of string helped solve most issues.