So, while enduring some mandatory but excruciating online training today at work, my mind wandered - for preservation of sanity - and landed with an understanding that I can recreate a pretty decent version of the Rosebud battlefield that was a week - actually 8 days - before the Little Big Horn battle.
I can take some of the terrain I created for my Pirates of the Carob Bean Sea game and use them to create four parallel contours with three valleys between. The valleys will be a bit narrow at only around 16" each and the two inner most ridges being too wide at around 4' each - the end ridges at around 2' each. I can also use some of the 'wedding cake' hills I have that match to the contours and the underlying mat to create a number of the key features, to a greater or lesser degree. And all that leaves the valley of the Rosebud in its more or less east west run before turning north. By making the east most 2' ridge only 3' in length versus the 4' of the other ridges, I can even represent a little bit of the waterway's turn north.
While all of the above isn't perfect - especially the valleys running too much true north instead of northwest - it does give a pretty playable recreation of the field. And since I do 15 mm figures and I am talking about a 5' x 16' table set-up, can really do a job on the battle somewhere near 1:4 ratio of figures to actual participants.
And I have enough figures - many still to paint, of course - to have all 20 companies, the 15 cavalry companies (or troops if you prefer) and the 5 mounted infantry companies that fought on foot - as did some of the cavalry at points of the battle. For that matter, some of the natives fought on foot at times. And I should have more than enough mounted and foot natives, too. A bit of a challenge to get the Girl Who Saved Her Brother figure, though, she who gave the Cheyenne name for the battle, just have to extemporize.
I have figures, too, for the Crow and Shoshone allies of the army and figures I can use for the civilians that participated.
My biggest challenge will be coming up with 16' and maybe a bit more for the turn north of waterway to represent Rosebud Creek. Just a terrain project and I love creating terrain so I guess I'll think of it more as an opportunity than as a challenge.
