Battlemat in action: Kapolna (1849)

With the help of Nathan aka toxicpixie from the BBB Yahoo group, I have been exploring ways for BBB players to be able to create their own battlemats: custom printed 2D battlefields for Bloody Big Battles historical scenarios, to make setting up a game quick and easy. Our current favourite approach is to get custom-made PVC banners from Pixart. I got two experimental mats from them, both 6'x4' battlefields, for under £20 each including delivery. (I have some other ideas that may enable even cheaper mats.) We used one for the first time this week to fight the battle of Kápolna (1849), from the Hungarian War of Independence.

Winter battle at Kápolna on Pixart PVC battlemat.

Light grey dot-shading = hills, dark green scatter pattern = woods, blue dash-hatching = marshes, etc.

Austrian column approaches Hungarians in vineyards on the heights in front of Kápolna and the River Tarna.  

This was a seasonally-appropriate game as the battle took place in February and was fought in the snow, hence the white mat and blue-grey hills. As you can see from the photo, once buildings, trees, vineyards, bridges and troops have been added, it looks less like a boardgame and you get a good 3D effect (or at least, 2.5D). I don't have any white wintery hills, so I didn't use any for this game, but the other mat I got is a more usual grass-green and I will probably put some hills on that one when its turn comes.

The major advantage of the battlemat approach is the sheer saving in set-up and take-down time. Most of my games are fought at the club in a short evening between 6:30-9:30/10. Those 20 minutes at the start spent measuring out where all the terrain features need to go relative to each other, carefully laying out road and river networks, and trying to construct a 'polystyrene jigsaw' of awkwardly shaped hills - those are 20+ extra minutes we can spend playing instead. This will be especially valuable for more complex mountainous battlefields. I'm thinking in particular of the fine set of scenarios Konstantinos Travlos has created for the Second and Third Balkan Wars.

Another advantage is the accuracy the battlemat gives. The hills and woods are all exactly as shown on the map, not just the nearest approximation that my terrain box can provide. And they are all precisely the right distances apart, rather than relying on how careful my hasty measuring is on the night.

In designing the mats, there are some important aesthetic decisions to be made. Nathan wanted mats with placenames, so for our first trials, I retained these. Having seen a couple of examples now, and shown them to the club, the consensus there and my preference too is to omit the placenames. Instead, I may just put an initial letter on key locations, which will help players to get oriented but without being too obtrusive.

I will also probably omit the gridlines from most mats, or, where they are important for deployment etc, make them much fainter and less obtrusive.

Anyway, the experiment so far is very promising, and I expect to pursue it and to enable BBB players (or anyone else for whom a historical battlemat at the given scale would be useful) to get their own mats in due course.

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And what of the Kápolna game? Since you ask, yes, it was most excellent fun, thank you. Kápolna starts with a Hungarian force being surprised by Austrian columns pouncing on a consequently dislocated Hungarian defence along a river line. It's a two-day battle. If the Austrians can get close enough to enough crossings, it is bad news for the Hungarians who will then have to fall back before Day 2. However, Dave and I as the Hungarian players had fortified ourselves first with a shot of Unicum (the 'Hungarian hand-grenade'), and our dice were full of Hungarian courage and held the Austrians at bay.

Day 2 arrived, and with it, another Austrian corps on our right flank. Mark manoeuvred this expertly to envelop our flank guard division - which delivered more Unicum-fuelled volleys. Dave rolled 11 and 12, and bounced the Austrians off.

The luck wasn't all one way, of course, and with a turn to go, the Austrians had taken one objective and were threatening three others, looking to take one more for a win or two for a draw - the usual BBB tense climax. But Klapka's gallant hussars detained them on one flank, the honvéds did just enough on the other, and my artillery saw off the Austrian grenadiers in the centre. Victory for Hungary!

Both winners and losers really enjoyed it. There are several different ways the Austrians can tackle the problem, and we chatted for quite a while afterwards about the various possible options. This is a game that is full of replay value, and one that will - literally - be rolled out again!

Scenario in the files of the BBB Yahoo group as usual, and in Flickr.