All Things Must Pass

Zorndorf no more

After having a long run on the gaming table of nearly five months, the Zorndorf battlefield passes into the annals of the Palouse Wargaming Journal.  No more long lines of red-coated Russians and blue-coated Prussians at attention waiting to greet me every time I walk down into the game room.  There may be a brief period of mourning with no Zorndorf on the table but a new interest is sure to take its place.  With a backlog of games waiting for some table space to open up, it was time to take down the battle and put away the figures.  Jake will be happy to see the return of his fine Russian Army away on campaign for so long.  A return engagement is not out of the question at a later date.  For now, though, time to move on.

Having cleared the table and carefully put away the troops, my first thoughts were focused on grid-based gaming.  With an empty table, now would be the perfect opportunity to create a gridded mat.  Who knows when the gaming table will be barren again?

Italian Wars troops deployed for battle on the grid

With two, six feet by four feet flocked felt mats by MKP stored under the gaming table, I unrolled them on the table and began formulating a plan.

ECW troops deployed for battle on the grid

To the Strongest! (TtS!) was the main driver for the pull toward gaming on a grid on a large scale.  Given that, the first question to arise was the size of the rectangular grid to plot out on the mats.  While getting the basics of TtS! under my belt in Scott's recent 15mm Ancients games, I really needed a gridded game mat for my own rules' study to advance my understanding of the system.

ECW BMU spacing looks good.

Several of the 28mm collections use Impetvs basing with a 120mm frontage.  For 120mm frontage, TtS! suggests a grid size of 150mm squares.  For the 32mm ECW collection, which is not based for Impetvs, cavalry has a frontage of 180mm and infantry maintains a frontage of 140mm; both too large for a 150mm grid.  

Italian Wars battle line from behind

Wanting to use both 4'x6' mats together to form a 6'x8' playing area, only one grid pattern could be chosen.  In the end, I decided upon a 200mm grid and set to work laying out the grid.  200mm grid is the suggested size for "large" unit sizes as defined in TtS!  Out of the 8' x 6' playing area, a grid of 9 boxes by 12 boxes can be produced.  Perfect size for a TtS! battlefield.

Angle view of two pike blocks and supports

The result?  After laying out the grid, I pulled a handful of ECW units and Italian Wars units from their storage boxes and deployed them upon their new battle mat.  While half intervals exist especially between the 120mm frontage Impetvs units, the appearance does not look too spaced-out to my eye.  Others may disagree but there it is.  A grid box of 200mm is perfect to accommodate the depth of a pike block three stands deep (180mm).  The grid is in place and ready for a test.  

Scottish foot arrayed for battle

One advantage of the recommended battle mat size of 12 grids by 9 is that a four foot by six foot portion of the gaming table remains open when TtS! is on the table.  I could have more than one game in play at a time!

Seeing the Italian Wars troops out on the table reminds me that I have a small stack of flags to distribute to the lads.  Another task to address.