Pre-School helped me Wargame

Last night while hunched over my campaign map pondering how on earth I was going to get the detail accurately placed onto the foam board for me to start work on, I decided to crowd source some ideas so asked the wife.

All Rivers fully traced, I have marked bridges with a intersecting line so I can see when a river ends and when it is crossed by a bridge.

She got old school on me and grabbed some wax paper used in baking, a lead pencil and a picture book of a cat for our sons colouring-in book.  While I was explaining to her that Belgium does have a number of cats but the effect I was going for was a little higher up, maybe a pigeon or a Soviet Satellite would be better, she traced this.

Then flipped the paper over and drew with the lead pencil firmly over the traced lines.  Flipped it back over so the lead pencil markings were now face down on the foam board, grabbed the end of the pencil (rounded) and rubbed along the lines of the cat.

Its no Satellite but it will do nicely.

I grabbed some wax paper, enough to cover the A3 sheet I had to trace off, folding one end to form a perfect 90 degree fold, slipped the A3 page in and tapped.

This would enable me to trace the page with out concern of slight movements messing me about.

As I traced I found I still needed to hold the page flat but it was much easier with the page taped down.



I did this for both pages, focusing on the river systems first, I will paint the roads on free hand.


Now I can flip the page and retrace the rivers with Lead pencil and I will have copied the map onto my war game table perfectly to scale.

I am also going to test using my new Weller Hobby Tool to trace with a fine bit over the paper and see how much it impacts the foam beneath without destroying the wax paper.


Why flip the paper?
If you don't then you end up copying a mirror image of the map, try it and you will see why.