Beautiful Boards of Wargaming

December 20, 2022 12:58 AM

Wargames blog The Player's Aid has started a bi-weekly column on map-making and map design for tabletop war games. It provides a look into a very particular niche in graphical design. Examples of two different approaches shown are the lush area-based map of Britain in This War Without an Enemy about the English Civil War and the more subdued but very clear hex-based map in Holland '44 about Operation Market Garden, but there are up to now a total of five games featured.
posted by Harald74 (5 comments total)

There's also several lists of best looking board games in general out there, here's one. I own Wingspan, and can confirm that it's a beautiful game.
posted by Harald74 at 9:59 AM on December 20, 2022

I saw Grant say in a recent video on their YouTube that he was going to try harder on the blog, but didn't go and look. Thank you for the reminder!
posted by ob1quixote at 12:37 PM on December 20, 2022

Really appreciated this link! I occasionally look at The Player's Aid, but it's usually more in a "I need information about X" way than keeping up with what they're doing.

I've always appreciated the maps-and-gazetteers aspect of games, whether war, board, or roleplaying. I've wargamed very occasionally over the years, but beginning with the pandemic, I started doing it more heavily, and I've really appreciated the variation in maps. From hex to point-to-point, the way the designer is thinking is (to me) an inherently elegant directive about how we should consider the events behind the game. The more lush the map, the more I tend to assume the designer wanted players to attend to and think about geography.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:10 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

What a fine idea for a column. Thank you, Harald74, from this old grognard.
posted by doctornemo at 5:55 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

They put up another one, and covering a game in an under-explored setting in wargaming: Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 from Legion Wargames
posted by Harald74 at 5:19 AM on January 3, 2023