A Terrain Selection Technique Applied to the Western Desert

A few months ago, Peter's rules, descriptions of campaign moves and after action reports posted at Grid Based Wargaming, inspired me to dig out some old WWII Western Desert 1:300 Heroics and Ros models. Peter had developed rules for battle from 'Tank on Tank' from Lock 'n Load Publishing.

Peter also developed rules for selection of terrain for each battle. Selection was influenced by the location of the battle on the campaign map.

In simplified summary, Peter shuffles 18 cards and deals 9 on a 3 by 3 grid. Each card represents one of 8 different terrain types. Rules determine battle objectives, which are terrain features.

The technique works well but during games where it had been used, I encountered an issue previously experienced with English Civil War (ECW) battles also fought on battlefields with relatively few hexes; namely, the edge of a battlefield can appear to be an artificial barrier. This can be a particular issue when an objective is close to the edge of a battlefield. Generally, to regard the the side of the battlefield to be adjacent to an abyss is inappropriate. For ECW, a river works as a good boundary but a river on both sides of a battlefield would be unlikely for every battle.

One solution I'm about to trial uses the same 18 cards as Peter to determine terrain in an inner grid of 9. Peter's technique is used to determine:

• The side of the battlefield occupied by each force
• Defender and attacker adjustments to the terrain
• Battle objectives
• Initial deployment of units

Quantities of each type of terrain 
card for inner and outer grid

This is supplemented by another set of 32 cards with 4 different terrain types. This deck is shuffled and cards are dealt to determine terrain immediately around the inner grid of 9 - this results in a 5 x 5 grid of terrain features. 

The quantities of terrain cards in each deck is shown in the adjacent table. The deck for the outer grid excludes potential objective cards and a road card because only one road is permitted on the battlefield.

An example of Peter's table-top
terrain for the Western Desert

Whilst Peter battles across  impressive 'cloth' table top terrain (see the adjacent picture, which was pinched from here), I aspire to a 3-dimensional modular terrain system with a look similar to that pictured below; however, with the experience documented here, I intend to use simplified 2-dimensional terrain for now; namely, interchangeable map modules. 

Illustrative look for aspirational terrain

First use of terrain cards with outer surround

An 'open' terrain module

Each terrain card represents a module of hexes. The reason I like hexes is explained here.

Each hex has the dimensions listed below; these are a comfortable fit with units mounted on stands of 30mm square: 

• Length of face - 31mm
• Distance between opposite faces - 52mm
• Distance between opposite angles - 62mm

All modules, bar the 'open' module, contain terrain features. Terrain modules are 4 hexes wide by 3 hexes deep; they measure approx 7 1/8" (182mm) wide by 6 1/8" (157mm) deep so a 5 x 5 grid is slightly less than 3' x 3' (1m x 1m) so occupies a reasonably small part of a table-top.

Shown below is the battlefield generated by the set of cards pictured above. Note that whilst the escarpment runs the width of the battlefield, each module has a pass so that there isn't only one pass to form a bottleneck between levels (such as Halfaya Pass).

Interim terrain modules that represent the battlefield
generated by the cards shown above

Seven types of interim terrain module - absent is 'road with village'

My gut feeling is that the quantities of cards should be tweaked. I suspect that the ratio of 'open' cards to the total quantity should be greater and the ratio of soft sand and wadi should be reduced but I intend to play a few battles with the current ratios to gain experience.