Lestrades_Game

I've done a bit more mapping recently. My friends and sometime game opponents Pete and Matt are running a Megagame on Case Blue in June (see flyer below). I gone done them a map for it. 20km hexes over large swathes of southern Russia. This one was surprisingly quick, think I've spent about 5 hours and its 80% done. I need to do the Georgia area, and the area east of the Don as these were not covered in the source map I raided. The main challenge was projection. I used a google maps screen shot Pete provided as my base map for getting things in the right place, but given the size of the earth being mapped this leads to some distortion. All maps project a spherical bumpy world on to a 2 dimension flat surface, as such you cannot keep all things in perfect proportion. My map distorts the coast a bit different to say Mark Simonitch's map for the up coming Stalingrad 44 game. Most things look pretty good but If you measured the exact distance between the Don and Volga it

I generally hate it when people describe designs or ideas in games as dated, because many of the most innovative games  are older than I am. Equally it implies there is something innately good about new designs, which I don't think there is. Dune is arguably the best multiplayer 'war' boardgame and the 70s basic DnD is in my view still the best RPG. I wasn't born until the late 80s and didn't discover these things to the mid 2000s so this isn't nostalgia doing my thinking, its just that some old ideas are better than new ones, despite our apparent 'progress'. Back when Roger B MacGowan did cool art house covers But having said all this Red Star / White Eagle is a dated game design. And this matters if you are looking at popping £70 on a new reprint of it from Compass Games. I am a wary cheapskate so I picked up a second hand copy with a trashed box of ebay for £20. It was worth it, but only just. Poles have just been creamed on the south we