May / June 2015 Lite Challenge: Ambush of the Teutoburg Forest

[Chick]

You are right chick, it's maybe more a "german thing", i just imagine the face of my old history teacher, if i'd tell him that the "Battle of Helm's Deep" seems to be better known nowadays (at least in this forum ) than the "most significant ambush in the history of ambushes"

Since you spoke of "real history", i have only one remark on the latest WIP, which is linked to the comment i made before:
The coat of arms seems to be anachronistic in a "mythifying" way that i pointed out above. The black eagle on golden ground (the coat of arms of the holy roman empire and later of Germany, allegedly first used by charlemagne) derived ultimately from the Aquila or eagle standard, of the Roman army. So it looks as if there were a "german" army (with the "first german" Arminius as the leader) involved in the battle, instead of a bunch of tribes, living in a region which much later became a nation-state called "Germany". I just wanted to say that this is exactly the "myth of origin" that gives me stomachache, especially having in mind those proclaiming it very loudly in the not too distant past...

I appreciate your feelings about this. I suspect the actual Germanic warriors didn't carry any kind of flag or standard in this battle. They were six of approximately fifty independent Germanic tribes, banded together by Arminius just for the purpose of trashing the Romans. Afterward, Varus's head was sent to another of the more powerful Germanic leaders to try to convince him to join their alliance, and that leader refused and sent Varus's head to Rome for burial. Arminius was raised as a Roman and was a Roman citizen, and was never able to significantly unite the Germanic tribes beyond this point and, although they were never totally conquered, the hegemony of Rome continued for more hundreds of years, so it doesn't surprise me that later German symbols had a strong Roman influence.

For the purposes of this map, I needed a standard to mark the Germanic positions, so I searched the internet for "Germanic tribes" symbols, standards, and flags, and found that all of them were some form of a black rising eagle. I chose one that I liked and put it on a contrasting color for this map. I hope it doesn't offend you or any other German historians we have around here If you know of a symbol that would serve the purpose and be less anachronistic, please point me to it

[JefBT]

That's a nice style to make a map. I'll try something that way on the future.

This is getting really good!

[Chick]

The Fortified Camp (the first night)

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[Abu Lafia]

I appreciate your feelings about this. I suspect the actual Germanic warriors didn't carry any kind of flag or standard in this battle. [...]
For the purposes of this map, I needed a standard to mark the Germanic positions, so I searched the internet for "Germanic tribes" symbols, standards, and flags, and found that all of them were some form of a black rising eagle. I chose one that I liked and put it on a contrasting color for this map. I hope it doesn't offend you or any other German historians we have around here If you know of a symbol that would serve the purpose and be less anachronistic, please point me to it

No worries chick, it doesn't offend me at all, i just wanted to highlight the (potential) ideological dimension of the battle and maybe it sounded a bit too dramatic, especially for people not too familiar with the history of the "fabrication" of german history for political ends.

But now to the coat of arms of the "germanic tribes": It really seems, that there is practically no evidence of any field-signs (as of many other "germanic" things imagined) from this era. So ofc one has to "invent" something, and just to make that clear, i totally like that necessary creative part in working with historical data myself a lot (maybe because i'm not a --properly trained-- historian)! It gets only problematic if this speculative elements are represented as "real history".

Leaving the ideological worries aside, in my view the style of the black eagle looks just to "new" (more like a medieval depiction) and might be a bit more "tribaly". Also it's maybe nice to have not the same animal in the coat of arms of the both sides. So one could just go for another typical "coat of arms animal" (aurochs, boar, stag, raven, etc.) or a more abstract (celtic-style) ornament or something. But in the end, if you like it how it is, ofc its totally fine, it's just a suggestion.

As i wrote, i really like your map and i think you captured the atmosphere of the "story" of the ambush very nice in the descriptions and the map itself.
I'm sorry that i might have "hijacked" the thread a bit, but the blood soaked history of germany sometimes pushes me to not keeping my mouth shut
Cheers,
AL

[Chick]

No worries AL, it's nice to have someone who actually knows or cares about the subject of the map. As I said earlier, I doubt very much that the Germanic warriors even carried a flag or standard, it just doesn't sound like they were any kind of organized army, just a lot of warriors recruited to help ambush the Romans out of anger, so there was never any intention to portray that "flag" as anything historical. The "real history" is the ambush, and the rest is quite a long story, counting the prequel Roman conquests into the Germanic area, and the later conquests back there years after the ambush, so this is just one little snapshot of a long period of Roman hegemony and Germanic resistance. So please consider the marker as just that -- something to mark the Germanic positions on the map, and not intended as real history.

[Chick]

The Regroup Camp (the second night)

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Thanks to everyone who has commented on this ambush and the history of it, but the one thing few have done is comment on the map itself. This is the first time I've tried doing true top down, and the first time trying to draw top down forested hills, so I'd sure love some good critical feedback on the map itself.

[Abu Lafia]

Thanks to everyone who has commented on this ambush and the history of it, but the one thing few have done is comment on the map itself. This is the first time I've tried doing true top down, and the first time trying to draw top down forested hills, so I'd sure love some good critical feedback on the map itself.

You are right, after my ideology-critical textwalls i feel i owe you a detailed feedback on the map itself, since it's the centerpiece of this work:
I think the wooded hills look excellent. With the shading one can clearly see the hills coming through and the linework is very good. The only nitpick would be the "bog" (I didn't know the term till now and typing it into the internet dictionary gave some interesting results ). The texture itself is very intersting, although for me it doesnt look that swampy. I'd like to point out two further things.
1. The blue color contrasts very strong with the rest of the map, as does the green. Also it gives more an impression of clean deep water than a mudded swamp.
2. The style contrasts too a bit, since it lacks the (wonderful) linework u did on the wooded hills.
I hope it's somewhat helpul. Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
AL

[Chick]

The Second Ambush and Massacre

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This is the rest of the story. I may do more work on the map itself, based on AL's comments and any others that anyone may kindly post. Critique is always welcome.

There are a couple of pieces of artwork depicting the massacre that are worth viewing if you are interested in what this actually may have looked like:

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/cho...1364444983.jpg

http://www.ancient.eu/uploads/images...g?v=1431031154

[ChickPea]

I'd have to second some of Abu's comments about the map. I'm not 100% sold on the bog. When you first posted your map, before the labels were added, I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at in that area. The blue is very dark and I feel that vegetation in a swamp would be more of a yellowish tone, whereas you have it pretty much same vivid green as the trees. It didn't say 'bog' to me. The forests are very nice though and I like the layout otherwise. I'm on coffee break at work and haven't time to read the text right now, so can't comment on that.

[Bogie]

Map comments: Overall it looks good, I like the layout and the forests are nice. I'm OK with the blue for the bog water because it is a convention, blue = water. The only thing that I'm not crazy about is the transition from land to water. This looks like the edge of a lake, in a park. A bog probably would have a blended transition with no clear edge and the bog plants would grow up onto the land further blurring the dividing line.