Using Photo-Editing Software as a Campaign Engine
I wanted to play a large-ish scenario in Form Line of Battle, big enough that I knew some ships would be off table at times, so I went off Googling for a map of the English Channel just to set the scene. I found this in the Library of Congress:
It's a gloriously high res scan - the version I downloaded is over 10,000 pixels wide - with sandbanks etc all depicted clearly. There's a scale on the right edge of the map in leagues (1 league = 3 nautical miles), which I cut out and turned into a ruler. From that I worked out that my 6'x4' table at 1cm=100yards is 3x2 leagues i.e. this size:
Added some squadron markers and a wind template:
Hey presto! Custom campaign system. I used Affinity Photo, but any Photo Editing/Illustration app that has layers and vector drawing tools will do the same thing, including GIMP which is free.
It's fairly easy to add a hex grid too:
Looks great!
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