East Wickham Resistance Map

[jshoer]

This was my entry to the March 2021 Challenge, to map an alien invasion -- and it won me my first golden compass! Yayyyyyyyy!

It's a road/tourist map of a fictional town in coastal Maine. After alien craft burst down through the atmosphere and cracked into the ground, disgorging troops near major cities, blasting out EMPs to disrupt communications and computing, and exoforming the landscape around them, the people in this area dug out the old map to coordinate their resistance activity. They've had some failures...and some successes.



This map was born out of such a weird mix of inspirations: First, a blind resolution to do the next challenge, whatever the theme was. Second, my wife's tendency to make fun of New England town names ("Everything is Whatever-bridge and Something-ford!"). Third, a desire to use Sarah Bell's BellTopo Sans font, after finding out about it from one of KMAlexander's posts here. Fourth, trying to make the most out of my inherited Draftette (see post below). And, finally, my favorite computer game: XCOM!

I'm really glad that the combination worked so well.

[jshoer]

Here's a work in progress, showing the Draftette tool -- it's a folio with a drafting arm built in!

[Arimel]

Congratulations! This map is amazing and a very neat concept. I like how everything seems handwritten over the base map and how it seems like there are multiple people writing the notes with the different colors. Neat!

I may have to look into draftettes as well... That is a cool device.

[TimetoDraw]

Congrats again on the win. I'm digging the Xcom connection, I LOVE their later game where the aliens have conquered and are posing as humanities benefactors but... Advent burgers, where do they get the meat from? lol.

Great mix of traditional and digital.
They are very English sounding place names. For extra weird names, look where I live near. Ballyclare, Ballyeaston, Ballynure, Ballygally, Dunamuggy, Doagh, lol.

[jshoer]

Congratulations! This map is amazing and a very neat concept. I like how everything seems handwritten over the base map and how it seems like there are multiple people writing the notes with the different colors. Neat!

I may have to look into draftettes as well... That is a cool device.

Thanks! Of course, it looks handwritten because it is. One thing I wish I had done was try more carefully to really look like there were different handwriting styles involved. I wasn't always careful about that, so a lot of it looks like...mine.

My Draftette came from my grandfather. It came in really handy here on the borders, grids, and sections of the roads. I took my 9x12" Bristol pad and cut the backing cardboard a little to fit into the Draftette's slot (it's sized to take a legal-size pad). The company is now defunct but I see listings for them on eBay.

Congrats again on the win. I'm digging the Xcom connection, I LOVE their later game where the aliens have conquered and are posing as humanities benefactors but... Advent burgers, where do they get the meat from? lol.

Great mix of traditional and digital.
They are very English sounding place names. For extra weird names, look where I live near. Ballyclare, Ballyeaston, Ballynure, Ballygally, Dunamuggy, Doagh, lol.

Thank you! Yep, XCOM 2 is my favorite of the series! I loved the resistance-fighter feel and the way it combined stealth and tactical movement. There's nothing like triggering an effective ambush against a powerful group of aliens by blowing up something big! This map would be like some of the suburbs or hinterlands areas from the game, I suppose, rather than one of the big cities.

New England names tie closely to names in the British Isles for sure. Lots of -tons and -boroughs and -bridges, but I don't remember that many -clares or -gallys or -muggys, though!

[Ilanthar]

Excellent map! I could easily picture it in a game or a tv show .