Bloody Big Battles! with lighter-coloured hills

It was pointed out in the Bloody Big Battles! Groups.io group that the hills in my last post ought to appear lighter than the lower ground, and certainly not darker. So I've set about correcting this with a new approach. The green felt patches are a clever solution if placed on top of a gaming mat, but not worth the effort if placed underneath. I will keep them as an option if not using a plastic tablecloth.

First step in the new approach is to lay down some foamcore. I'm just using odd offcuts in the photo above but I intend to cut more regular shapes. The foamcore is 5mm thick. A single layer (5mm) is hardly noticeable. Three layers (15mm) is unnecessarily high. Two layers (10mm) seems about right.

The foamcore is laid inside - not to the edge - of the hill's footprint. It doesn't have to be exact and the shapes can be rectangular. The closer it follows the hill the better, but the important thing is to leave a gap between the edge of the foamcore and the contour on the map. 

 

Next step is to soften the edges of the foamcore by laying some white felt. These are 1ft/30cm squares. They don't have to match the hills. They just have to cover them. (This photo is from an earlier experiment with larger pieces of foamcore.)

 

The finished hill with the top (tablecloth) layer back in place. 18mm WoFun standees are able to sit on it without falling over or sliding off, hence the decision to make them 10mm high. The hill is subtle and continuously sloped. The game edge is defined by the traced contour lines. If using multiple-level hills, I could add more layers of foamcore, but height is still demarcated by the drawn contours. 

Bloody Big Battles! on a tablecloth

 

A replay of the Bloody Big Battles! Vimeiro scenario gave me the opportunity to test the disposable tabelcloth approach to terrain. I thought I was buying paper tablecloths but they turned out to be plastic and semi-transparent. This actually turned out to be an advantage.

By placing the tablecloth over the printout of the scenario map, I was able to see exactly where the river, streams and roads were and to easily replicate their courses with masking tape. I didn't need to grid the tablecloth or draw on it, though I did choose to outline the hills with an indelible OHP pen to give them a distinct edge. This will be especially useful with multiple-level gradients.

Before applying the tape, I had stapled the tablecloth to the printout along one side to anchor it in place. On the night I just had to unfold the whole thing and everything was in place except the hills. 

Printout, felt hill and peeled-back roads layer.

I then peeled back the cloth, placed my pieces of felt onto the printout for the hills, and then put the tablecloth layer back with the roads etc neatly running over the top of everything. The terrain was completed with felt for the sea and village templates, and 3D buildings and bridges.

Thanks to the full-size printout, it was quick, accurate and easy both to produce the tablecloth layer in advance and to lay the hills on the night. Set-up time immediately before the game was reduced from 50 minutes to probably less than 20. 

This approach works well for me. The aesthetics could be better, but they could also be a lot worse! Of course, it increases the amount of pre-game preparation, but I should be able to cope with this if I limit new battles to one a month.

Terrain for Bloody Big Battles!

Vimeiro from Matt Bradley's draft scenario in the Groups.io B3 group.
Armies are 18mm WoFun Peninsular War Napoleonics.

It's about ten years since I last played Chris Pringle's Bloody Big Battles! which is a shame. So returning to it is a voyage of rediscovery. Happily I was able to recruit a crack team of players to get to grips with the navigation. The rules are not long or complicated but my comrades collectively described them as "very nuanced". BBB/B3 is excellent fun as a multiplayer game, and I am grateful that having provided and set the game up, Ian, Kim, Simon and Bob took the lead.

My main part was providing the scenery and that's what I'm going to write about first. Recreating the topography in the scenario maps is foundational to B3. When playing the game the first time round, I used Hexon II to recreate the complex and 'continuous' terrain. This rendered the maps accurately and was quite magnificent once you got used to the aesthetic of hexification. 

But the battles using Hexon were played at home with unlimited set-up time, and it is totally unrealistic for me to transport and construct terrain of that sort for a club night game. After some initial attempts to revisit my original options a scan of the B3 group on Groups.io brought me to a video by Konstantinos Travlos.

Konstantinos (author of Bloody Big Balkan Battles!) simply puts down variously-sized felt shapes to build up the hilly areas. This approach also allows great accuracy. Combined with a gridded mat, I thought it would be very straightforward to recreate any scenario map, and everything is reusable. But in the heat of the moment it actually took the best part of an hour to set up, and that is just too long to keep players waiting. The felt hills worked well enough but the felt roads and rivers were too flimsy and easy to displace.

My next plan is to draw each map onto a disposable tablecloth so most of the work can be prepared in advance and the battlefield can simply be unrolled on the night. This doesn't require or preclude the addition of 3D elements - BUAs and woods on top and a token indication of elevations underneath. Feature edges like contour lines will be drawn and precisely demarcated so there won't be any ambiguity. Roads and waterways will be indicated with masking tape. These are all solutions I've seen other users apply.

As an interim measure, if I don't get time to prepare a cloth, I will simply use a paper printout of the map. I discovered that my veteran version of CorelDraw is nonetheless capable of printing an image to tiles, so it's possible to blow the maps up to 4' x 6' and then print them as a set of A3 pages which can be taped together. I know from previous experience that paper is unappealing and has its problems, but it's a quick and easy solution.

Using larger bases with Bloody Big Battles!

Half-base 10mm lead 'singles' for BBB: more
problematical with WoFun standees.

I might have been a little hasty in dismissing the use of WoFun 10mm stands for Bloody Big Battles! My thinking was that as they're 40mm-wide I could use them as double bases, but I'd still need singles, and that presents some challenges.

I could commission WoFun to create half-width bases and fill them up with individual skirmish figures. Or I could go a step further and commission 50mm x 25mm and 25mm x 25mm bases made to exactly replicate BBB size recommendations. But cavalry might remain problematical.

Using larger bases has been discussed on the Groups.io BBB group, and this simply involves using strength counters. One could even use a single Volley & Bayonet style base but BBB author Chris Pringle suggested 2-base units as this allows you to physically represent the difference between Line and In Depth formations. The suggestion of 2-base units was a lightbulb moment that completely simplifies the organisation and collecting of armies, so this is what I'm planning to go with as and when WoFun produce their 10mm Franco-Prussians.

Rather than actually using 2-base units throughout, I'd probably maintain more granularity by using 1 large base for 2-base units, 2 large bases for 3-5 base units, and 3 large bases for 6-7 base units. Artillery units would use 1 large base. 2-base units can't use In Depth so only need one large base. Skirmishers wouldn't be represented, but I'd know from the combination of ID label and strength counter if they were originally present or had been lost. 

I prefer the 18mm WoFun figures, but 10mm, as ever, has more mass appeal, is arguably better for grand-tactical games, and is a closer match for the later 19thC 6mm buildings I've already accumulated.

All I need now is for WoFun to produce the standees.

2026 Plans

My re-labelled mahjong blocks

My plans for 2026 are centred on three sets of rules:

1. Maurice.
2. Bloody Big Battles! (B3)
3. For King & Parliament!

For Maurice I have the WoFun 18mm War of Spanish Succession armies, though I also remain interested in gettng WoFun '45 Jacobite Rebellion ones.

For B3 I've started to collect WoFun 18mm Peninsular War forces. A B3 Peninsular War campaign book is due out this year. In the meantime there are already some scenarios available on the B3 group at Groups.io. These armies might also be used with General d'Armee 2 if I get round to something more tactical.

For later 19thC B3 battles I have the Kriegspiel-style blocks, though I'd be very happy to use 18mm WoFun Peter Dennis standees if they were to appear. WoFun have mentioned doing Franco-Prussian War in 10mm but these would be on 40mm bases, too wide for B3. 40mm bases could be counted as doubles, but I would still need singles, especially for skirmishers. If using lead figures I could create singles, but cutting WoFun figure groups in half is not an option! An alternative would be to go with 40mm bases and increase typical table size to 8’ x 5’ but that runs contrary to my general preference for more compact and manageable games.

My For King & Parliament! Forces are all ready to go. I just need to arrange some games.

If I exhaust these three areas, a return to the various Rampant rule sets is next on my to-do list.