Weather and fields

Yesterday I quickly made up a weather barometer as described in "With Pike and Musket" and "Practical Wargaming" both by C.F Wesencraft. I plan to introduce the effects of weather into the English Civil War games I am currently playing. A piece of wood was drilled so a matchstick can be held to show the current weather situation. A lick of paint was applied to show from the top: fog, light rain, fine, light rain, heavy rain, and stormy.

At the start or a game two D6 are rolled to decide the starting weather. Then each turn one D6 is rolled to decide if the weather stay as is or moves up of down. A change in weather may impact both movement and combat.

The wargaming weather barometer, starting at the top with fog, light rain, fair, light rain again, heavy rain, and finally stormy weather. 

I have in the past created a few fields for the tabletop, but I will need a few more so the ECW dragoons have some more areas which provide cover. I use a combination of material for creating fields, either a sandy yellow felt or a brown corduroy. This time I went with corduroy for the ploughed field look.

Corduroy material cut to shape.

The material is lightly brushed with a light sand colour.

Green dots are added to represent a crop (possibly cabbages) and also green is brushed on around the edges of the field.

I don't place hedges all around the field as this becomes awkward when fitting units into the space. If a unit is positioned on the field I consider it in cover. In the example above the dragoons would be considered to be using the fields for cover.