big hexes and big wee squares

Not posted in a while, but not from a shortage of games - just laziness. 

Recently a friend game me a loan of the GMT boardgame, No Retreat. This is a game on the Russian front in WW2.  The scale is German Armies and Russian fronts and as well as the standard stuff it also has a card deck to introduce 'events'. It's an interesting game, but the scale is just one level too high for me. However, it did promt me to drag many other Russian front games from the shelves including the venerable old Stalingrad, the excellent Russian Campaign and a personal favourite, Russian Front, all games from the sadly now defunct Avalon Hill.

All of these games are much more my preference in scale, with German Corps and Russian armies. I get more a sense of the size of Russia with these games - though some time in the future I'll post on the mighty Fire in the East and Scorched Earth, and maybe some other really big games.    

Both Russian Campaign and Russian Front are subjects for my double sized maps and counters project. I'll post Russian Campaign later, but here is Russian Front in progress. Maps are done. The new maps on the floor, it totals about 4 foot east / west and over 5 foot north / south. Just looks good spread out.

Here is the original mapboard to the side of the big version.

And the counters. Still a work in progress. All the counters have been printed and stuck to 3mm foamboard, and here I'm cutting them out. Each counter is about 1 inch square.  

And some original 1/2 inch counters placed alongside the new ones.

 More adventures with big maps and counters to come.