Monday 10 March 2014

Silhouette Scenery

I have followed Bob's recent posts re scenery /built up areas for gridded games with interest.Musing on the way home from work whilst on the train I came up with what I thought was a simple yet elegant idea-
I have done it very quickly in black card,others might want to try a full coloured version with paint or crayons although I do find the silhouette rather pleasing.It is here with my 15mm Napoleonic Danes.I am sure it would work for any scale and size of built up area. I will try the same with a wood/forest done in similar style... Finally a top down picture-
Let me know what you think and any ideas where we could take it...

16 comments:

  1. I like that a lot. I'm looking at a solution on those lines to the problem of built up areas in Maurice, which tend to be the same footprint as the units that occupy them. So I want some way of showing the buildings that takes up, effectively, zero space.

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  2. A view more in 'elevation' (i.e. a lower angle) would have shown, I think, just how good a concept this is. Done as a hollow square (I appreciate this is a prototype) might lead to storage issues, but a paired L-shapes you have something versatile, handy and practical.

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  3. An excellent example of what I was trying to achieve!

    I think that a coloured version would look more realistic. Had you thought of using old line drawings of buildings from the period as a basis for your design? If I find something suitable, I will send you a link.

    All the best,

    Bob

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    1. I've been wondering about using period drawings to create the building flats as well, with this vague idea that the finished product will look like a contemporary print or illustration.

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  4. Excellent idea. I would stick with black as it's only the suggestion of a building that you need rather than realism. To go 2 dimensional is another step that saves space, but with these perhaps a combination of 2d and L shaped buildings would work well.

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  5. The sort of image I was think about can be found here: http://www.copenhagenet.dk/images/Copenhagen-Map-1618.jpg

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  6. I agree that the black silhouette works nicely. A stylized color version, along the lines of a "sketch" or the kind of engraved images in panoramas like Bob suggested, could also be worth trying out to see how it looks. Seems like you could make them in such a way that they can be packed flat for storage. Depending on the material I could think of a few options. For example, with paper or thin card it might be enough to be able to just flatten them out. The trick might be to get them to stay open when you unpack them. With thicker card or plastic or thin wood or mdf, maybe interlocking slots could be used to lock them together in play, and then could be easily pulled apart into flat pieces for storage.

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  7. The ones I tried to describe to Bob Cordrey were a cross between yours and Bobs. I used a hollow block using complex shapes like your silhouettes but painted and with added card detail roof shapes like Bobs. I got the idea from model railway half relief buildings. For more eye candy effect i also used a complex city block of shapes and towers (not scaled) that sat inside the hollow blocks and could be removed when troops entered the block. I think I saw the idea for the complex city block either in a wargamers newsletter or possibly the original version of "charge" that had scenery and conversion suggestions. (or did I imagine that because the new versions don't have them)

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  8. I've done something similar but for 25mm. In our games we have a town that is a hollows square which can hold a designated number of troops. You can see an example in this old battle report. The best view of the town is in the penultimate picture.

    http://www.angelfire.com/games3/jacksongamer/napgame_july05.htm

    Jim

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  10. Is there any chance of a side on picture at table top height, please?

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