Great War Maps Online

Tonight I am off to fight an early First World War action using the Great War “Spearhead” rules.  These rules require  commands to be  planned and  written on a map in advance of  your deployment  on  the table. Then you simply follow your written orders   until  you bump into the enemy and all hell breaks loose.

This system has allowed me to utilise a cool resource I recently came across, the World War I Maps and Aerial Photography  archive at  McMaster University Library. This fantastic resource has a wide selection of trench maps and aerial photographs from France and Belgium  for the period. Aside from being a really interesting primary research source it is very handy for WWI wargaming,  they offer a huge range of  map and photographic  material  to  base  terrain on.  With some maps you could   recreate a every detail of  a section of  the western front for your battle.  

In the case of tonight’s game I have selected a section of map north west of Beaumont-Hemel for the encounter from  a 1917 1:40000 map of the region around Albert. 

Will try  to let you know how I get  on...