Galleys Guns and Glory: Lepanto gaming map

 “I have an existential map, it has written, “you are here” all over it !”
- Stephen Wright

Have you got a map?! 

A week away from Pacificon game Expo as well as the Newark Show in the UK, I know that a lot of us out there in Blog land are working like shoemaker’s elves on our projects. I’m happy to report one big chunk of mine done- Behold the “Lepanto Map” upon which I’ll be running  a Galleys Guns and Glory Lepanto game This coming Sunday at Pacificon, with my friend Jay White. 

My inspiration.

I was inspired to make this game mat from sketches I took while visiting the Vatican back when I was a college student in ’87.  The wall frescoes and paintings of all the maps were a gamer’s and a cartophile’s dream come true; so very cool and inspiriting. 

NOTE: the images are a bit more contrasty than the actual map- shooting in full daylight wonked my cammera settings, in particular the red. It's actually more subtle and red oxidish..

A sense of Scale (children not included)

   The entire game mat measures in at approx 12 x 8.5 feet, with the playable space being 10ish x 7ish feet.  Hey, these old maps were never accurate

Cartography made easy!

For this project I used a painters tarp, 10 lb weight and a combination of regular acrylics, house paint and minis paints. Because of the size I couldn't make a stretcher bar to properly stretch it, so had to make due. This gave me more wrinkles than I wanted, but some of those helped make some happy accidents in texturing later. 

Yours truly putting down the first coat. more of a heavy wash then full layer.

second stage with land and border laid out.

At one point in the painting I was sweating so much that I pulled out the thermometer and set it on the canvas next to me- it stopped at the top at 112 degrees!  Needless to say I went inside for a while.

The land was sketched in first with chalk then reviewed and redone- twice! I wanted enough to give the map a map look and to be used for a good coast, but not so much that there wasn't enough ocean to play upon.

I used my laser cutter to make a compass rose template.

Miss P regaled me with "Frozen" songs while I painted a compass rose. Awesome!

Finshed Map?!

After getting the border finished, I was able to bring the map inside to work on sections and the details. I added in the compass rose, fort, castle and city icons, and of course, a sea monster.  I could keep going and going on this, but decided that this was shiny enough for the game. I'm really looking forward to seeing 60+ ships smashing into each other on this! 

compass rose with Skull and Crown.

Corsairs easily plot their course around the cape. 

Not just a drawing on the map...

Galleys Guns and Glory rules Layout complete!

Great news!  The layout for GGG! is complete, now we are just doing final checks and edits before it gets sent to the printers. The hope is to have copies available at Pacificon, then up on my Webs tore right after!  Very exciting (and freaking about time!). 

catching the fish!

Amazing that all that comes from this.