When I decided to do a 25th Anniversary Edition of Silver Bayonet, I knew that I had to commit to doing a MAJOR revision of the game map. There are artistic reasons to want a new map because the maps that Mark and Charlie are capable of creating today dwarf what we were able to create in the pre-digital-game-map days of 1990. But as a designer, the biggest reason I wanted a new map is because I was a little embarrassed by that original Silver Bayonet map. I knew that the original map was my “best attempt,” based on very limited map resources back then, but frankly, it wasn’t a very good representation of the operational area southwest of Pleiku in the Republic of Vietnam. I knew that we could now get access  at least to 1:250,000 Topo maps of the region (most were still Classified back in 1990), which should get us a much better base game map than the one that was in the original game.

At left is the 1990 map. To the right is a cobbled-together shrunk-down version of nine 1:50,000 base maps I was using to test size and scale. (I ended up using only those top six; that’s the Chu Pong Massif – which defines the bottom left of our game map – at the bottom of the middle map on the left.)

I thought this was something I was going to have to research and create mostly by myself, as the designer, because at the end of the day you only get one chance to do a 25th Anniversary Edition, it’s my name on the box, and I want to be really happy with the new map. I wasn’t totally out on a limb, though. I knew I could get design support from Mitch and art help from Mark or Charlie or Rodger if I got stuck. But I don’t think I understood in the beginning the MAGNITUDE of the map changes or how much work they would require. As it turns out,  the deeper I got into the research, the more hoops I decided to jump through for the sake of accuracy.

Decision #1 was “What do we do with the original map? Do we use it as a base and make changes?” That’s definitely the easiest way to go. Unfortunately, that original map wasn’t very accurate, so I decided to set it aside and make an entirely new map “from scratch.” This decision had ramifications throughout the game. For example, a new map meant that all the scenarios had to be reworked and hex numbers updated, but I thought a better map would be worth the extra work.

That brought me to Decision #2: “What am I going to use for a base map, and am I going to commit to doing a completely new terrain analysis of the region?” My first attempt was to use a 1:250,000 topo map and lay a hex grid over it and see what happens – the scale was close to what I needed and I did get a decent base map of the area. I was ALMOST happy with that approach, but the problem with the 250s is you just don’t get a lot of terrain differentiation (which is why they gave them to aviators while ground unit platoon leaders got 1:50,000s (or better) with all kinds of terrain differentiation including villages, streams, trails, etc.). So I was dissatisfied with the detail on the 1:250,000 sample map, but didn’t really have any better base maps to work from.

Enter Mitch Land, my partner on the 25th Anniversary Edition project. Our division of labor was that I was going to do the new terrain analysis for the game map, and he was going to work on counters and scenarios, and we’d work together wherever we needed to. So the map was my baby, but I was stuck on finding good new base maps when Mitch came to the rescue! One day I got an email from Mitch entitled “Treasure Trove.” He found us a cache of online 1:50,000 Topo maps circa 1964-1970 covering the entire area of operations covered in Silver Bayonet!!!! (Yay, Mitch!) THAT was a very happy day. So I had some base maps. Now I needed a plan to transform them into an actual game map – or at least something that Mark and Charlie could use to create the new map.

One of the six base 1:50,000 scale maps that made up the base map set I used to do the Terrain Analysis. Near bottom right is the Catecka Tea Plantation.

I still faced a couple of major hurdles. The first was  SIZE and SCALE. If you linked all the 1:50,000 topos together to get the full area of operations, you’d have four to six full topo maps – equivalent to roughly three 22 x 34″ wargame maps for a ONE MAP GAME! So I clearly needed to scale the topo maps, which is a lot harder than just dropping a hexgrid over a 1:250,000 map, but I thought it would be worth it in terms of accuracy and a vastly better depiction of the actual terrain of the Ia Drang Valley and the surrounding area. Using Adobe Illustrator, with some Photoshop support from my daughter Rachel, I scaled the maps down to the point where together they would fit onto about 3/4 of a 34″ x 22″ game map at a scale of roughly 1 mile per hex (which was the scale in the original game). Then I stitched them all together into one big Illustrator file, rotated the file a bit to get it to fit better on a game map, and put that base terrain on one Illustrator layer, and locked that layer (so the terrain wouldn’t move as I added hexes, etc.)

The only difficulty I ran into there was that it turned out those 1:50,000 topo maps were all the same scale but they were NOT the same size. So I lost a little fidelity on a few of the maps that required the most scaling. Still, all in all, it was progress. Mark Simonitch sent me a 5/8″ map hex grid to drop into another layer in the Illustrator file. Here’s a peek at what it looked like at that point:

The last hurdle – and by far the most difficult part for me – was actually doing the TERRAIN ANALYSIS. Once I got those base topos scaled, I needed to classify the base terrain into a fixed number of terrain types that we could translate to a wargame hexgrid and into actual game terrain effects. So first I went back and did a bunch of re-reading of the AARs from the campaign, looked at hundreds of pictures of the area, and even looked at Google Earth, all to make sure I had a good handle on the different terrain types in the area and how they impacted military operations in 1965. Then, with some help from Mitch, I decided on what to call the various terrain types we needed in the game. Then one Saturday, I sat down with the Illustrator map file and all of the original 1:50,000 topos and did a hex-by-hex analysis of every hex on the game map. I wanted to do the analysis all at once, because classifying an entire one mile hex into just one terrain type is not an exact science, and it’s most accurate if you do the analysis all at once so you can be as consistent as possible in the terrain evaluations. I added a layer to the Illustrator file and put a two-letter code on that layer that identified the terrain in that hex as I evaluated each hex (DJ for Dense Jungle, LJ for Light Jungle, H for Jungled Hills, TP for Tea Plantation, etc). I hoped those terrain codes would make Charlie Kibler’s job easier when it came time to hand the map off to him to create the final map.

Here’s the area around the Catecka Tea Plantation with the first-pass terrain analysis codes in place

By the way, if any of you are interested in using Illustrator to create your own game maps, here’s how I organized the map layers in Illustrator, with the base map on Layer 1 and all the layers locked as I entered the Terrain Codes on the top layer:

Where We Are Now:

While I was doing the terrain analysis, I sent Mitch a copy of the Illustrator file and asked him to make an excel file for Charlie listing each village hex and the name of each village, because those village names are really hard to see on the base maps. This was a big job, but Mitch handled it flawlessly. With the Terrain Analysis complete and the village list ready, and after making a few modifications and improvements based on Mitch’s suggestions, it was time to pass the map to Charlie Kibler, so Charlie could begin to work his magic and create our test map. Charlie had a few suggestions of his own, one of which was to add the streams to the map (they have no effect on play so I was going to leave them off). Those streams really add character to the map. Attaboy, Charlie, and thanks! The maps you see below should be VERY close to the final map we’ll use in the game, although certainly we’ll make a tweak here and there as needed. So here are a few samples of what Charlie created. Needless to say, Mitch and I are thrilled with the results!

This is an image that Mitch created. There’s the old Silver Bayonet map on the left and Charlie’s initial sample map proof (for us to comment on his terrain types, etc) on the right. Quite a difference!

The Playtest Map for the 25th Edition of Silver Bayonet. (Not final, but getting close)

Here’s a closer look at the area around the Chu Pong Massif, before Charlie added map labels for rivers and LZs. That’s the Ia Drang River north of the mountains. LZ X-Ray, where the largest battle of the campaign was fought, is in hex 1925.

We’re now using Charlie’s most recent map version to create a Vassal Module so we can test the scenarios on the new map. We’ll tell you more about that process, as well as about a couple of new scenarios we’re adding, in our next InsideGMT post about the project.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this look inside the process of creating the new game map for Silver Bayonet! Enjoy the games!
– Gene

Author: Gene Billingsley