Tarawa - New Years Day 2012

It is New Year's Eve and as a follow up to the Christmas day map of Christmas Island I have done another map for 1:1200 scale wargaming:

This is Betio. One of the two dozen or so islets that constitute the Atoll known as Tarawa. This version is somewhat based on a map of Tarawa as it was in 1943 when the USMC took it from the Imperial Japanese Army. The airfield, dock, and compass arrow are as faithful to the source map as possible. The various symbols around the edges of the island represent different 1:1200 scale buildings available from Spartan Games. The grid squares are 12x12 inches (or 1200 scale feet square). The sea squares are filled with two different shades of blue to show that two 4x6 foot tables are needed to model the entire island at a scale of 1:1200.

Merry Christmas

To celebrate Christmas Day a little map of Christmas Island.

Christmas Island — Scale: 1:18000

The graphic corresponds to a 48 x 72 inch (4x6 ft) tabletop. To fit on a 4x6 ft table the island has been drawn at a scale of 1:18000. This is 1/15th of the size it would be if it had been drawn at a scale of 1:1200. However the buildings and ships near the airstrip do represent 1:1200 scale models.

The little rectangular inset positioned over the anchorage (northern end of the island; opposite side from the airstrip) is the size of a 4x6 foot table IF the island was modeled at 1:1200.

Battlecruiser

This is a notional design for a battlecruiser (BC) converted from a Spartan Games  Nakatsu Class cruiser model (top) added to a scratch built section (middle). The bottom-most view is what it would hopefully look like. I need to find some small round things to make turrets from....

The inspiration for this was a thread over on the Spartan Games Forum titled: "Cruisers: what are they good for?" A lot of the netizans posting in the thread believed that Cruiser models were not much use in the game for various reasons. So, I thought what about converting the model to represent something else?

Deception Island

This is a map of Deception Island. It is a volcanic Caldera located in the South Shetland Islands. The South Shetland Islands are North of the Antarctic peninsula and South of the Falklands. It is the only place in the world where a sea-going ship can steam into an active volcanic caldera. What if this interesting place were modeled for war gaming purposes?

The various rectangles (red, white, medium blue and also the pale inset area) represent 4x6 ft (48x72 inch) standard gaming tables if the island was modeled at a scale of 1:1200. Note that the whole map is 10x10 tables. Therefore, if the entire map was considered one 4x6 ft table, Deception Island could be modeled on that single table IF the island was modeled at a  scale of 1:12000 (that's twelve-thousand) instead of 1:1200.

The triangles mark various summit locations and the tiny red dot in the entrance channel marks a submerged  hazard to navigation. The white/royal blue scale bars are (top to bottom) 7200 feet and 2000 meters long.