Terrain

3.1. The map is a raster of 10 m cells. Each cell has an elevation and one cover type.

Open ground is the baseline: nothing slows a tank, nothing hides a unit, nothing blocks a line of sight. Roads and tracks are faster than open ground. Scrub and cultivated land slow a tank a little; an olive grove, rock and a wadi bed slow it a great deal, a village more, and marsh most of all. Scrub, cultivated land, rock and marsh hide a unit somewhat; a wadi bed, a grove and a village hide it well, and a grove or a village stands high enough to block a line of sight through it. A wadi bed and marsh can bog a tank; cultivated land can bog one after rain; the rest cannot.

3.2. Concealment multiplies the chance of spotting a unit in that cell. The LOS height is added to the elevation when testing whether the cell blocks a line of sight passing through it. A unit standing in the cell is not blocked by its own cell.

3.3. Structures occupy cells and add to them. A stone building hides its occupants better than a mud-brick one and a pillbox better still; a stone wall gives some cover, a bridge none. Each stands some height above the ground for lines of sight. HE damages a structure and, with enough rounds, destroys it: mud-brick and timber quickly, stone slowly, a pillbox slowest of all. Occupant cover softens the effect of fire on infantry inside. A destroyed building collapses on its occupants: each team inside loses part of its strength and is heavily suppressed. A destroyed bridge’s cells revert to the underlying terrain, usually wadi bed or marsh.

3.4. Hull-down is never declared. For a tank and a bearing, the ground between the tank and a point some way out along that bearing is sampled. If the profile hides the hull but not the turret, the tank is hull-down against that bearing. The same test from an attacker decides whether the hull can be hit.

3.5. Real ground. A battle’s raster may be baked from elevation data and mapped features rather than drawn. Elevation is sampled at the cell centre from 30 m source data and stored to the decimetre. Cover comes from the features: orchards, vineyards and woods are grove; farmland and meadow are cultivated; scrub and heath are scrub; bare rock is rock; wetland is marsh; watercourses paint wadi along their line (river 30 m, stream 20 m, canal 12 m); primary and secondary roads paint road (12 and 8 m), tracks and unclassified roads paint track (6 m); settlement blocks and buildings paint village and stand as buildings. Anything else is open.