Topographical Maps of Taman Peninsula and Soviet Marines

[MrSpkr]

I have been doing quite a bit of research into the battles in this area, hoping to do some detailed, historical scenarios when CMBB is released. I have two questions:

(1) Any ideas where I can get a decent set of topographical maps of this area?

(2) Will Soviet marines be modeled separately in CMBB? They participated heavliy in the fighting on this peninsula.

Thanks!

Steve

[Kingfish]

I can't answer #2, but as for #1... Try here

[kipanderson]

Hi,

These guys have maps of the Soviet Union in any scale you want, but at a very steep price!

http://www.eastview.com

All the best,

Kip.

[Speedy]

I've never seen topographical maps of Soviet Marines.

What does it look like?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Kingfish:

I can't answer #2, but as for #1... Try here

Holy cow, there are some 1:50 000 maps there, and some 1:20,000. The 1:100 000 et al would be useless, but that is the first link I've seen with one or two smaller scale maps, with topo markings, at an affordable price. Thanks!

Has anyone ordered from these guys yet?

[Scott B]

I've ordered from them - customer service is good, but if they don't have a map in stock, it can take weeks to backorder it from the supplier. It took them about two months to come up with a 1:25,000 of Aachen for me, but they warned me it was going to take that long in advance and the customer service types never took longer than a day or two to reply to inquiries.

Not bad, overall, though my experience is only with ordering French and German maps. No idea how quick the Russian stuff ships, although I intend to find out sometime in the next month or two.

Scott

[Michael Dorosh]

Thanks Scott. And as the for map itself - how was it? Worth the wait and expense?

[Scott B]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Thanks Scott. And as the for map itself - how was it? Worth the wait and expense?

Well, I have two on hand of the three I ordered. I'm still waiting on the third.

For the French ones at least, there is some information directly from Omnimaps here.

The first map I ordered was the Series Green (1:100,000) Caen-Alencon map from IGN that I basically use as a reference because it's just a tad big for low-tactical stuff like Combat Mission. It has Caen in the upper right hand corner and Alencon in the bottom center, and Falaise/Argentan right in the middle, if that helps (it's also a great scale to examine the Falaise battles, too). Like all the maps that they sell that I'm aware of, it is a modern day map so it is primarily of use for topography, but it gives the locations of the towns in most accounts and has 20m contour intervals.

The second one is a 1:25,000 of Aachen, specifically purchased for a CM project and I've been mostly satisfied with it. The only problem I have with it is that there aren't contour lines in the city itself, but I didn't really expect that there would be (and some of the dominating terrain like Observatory Hill has them, so it's basically fine).

The first map was like seven bucks and the second was more like sixteen, but in both cases I thought they were worth the expense. The wait on backordered maps can be a pain-- I ordered the Aachen map on March 19th and it didn't arrive until last week, and a Series Blue (1:25,000) of a small piece of France that I ordered on March 15th still has not arrived. The Caen-Alencon map was in my hands not more than a week after I submitted the order, though, so a lot depends on whether they have it on hand.

Scott

[Michael Dorosh]

Awesome, Scott, I truly appreciate your taking the time to share that. Sounds like a good resource.

I have a reprint of the Michelin Normandy map, with all the overprints showing battles and cemeteries that hangs on my wall. Sounds similar to the map you have.

[Jeff Duquette]

I’d be very wary of ordering materials from OmniMaps. In my experience they can be excessively flakie. They dropped the ball on at least two occasions for me personally. I had ordered several 1:25,000 Topo maps of the Dom Butgenbach, Krinkelt, and St Vith, Belgium. They sent me several maps that were not even in the vicinity. When I emailed them with my invoicing numbers and orders, they failed to respond for over four weeks. This was in spite of 5 or 6 emails. OMNI did nothing regarding their errors in my orders and refused to respond to my emails. But the icing on the cake was when they began sending me email catalogues of OMNI’s latest map additions to their stock. Customer service is extremely important and OMNI doesn’t seem to have a clue in this regard.

I would recommend obtaining topo maps directly from national geologic services…ala the excellent French IGN service.

[Mr. Johnson--]

The best way seems to always be the most expensive.

We just gonna have to wait for the good stuff to get mass release.

[MrSpkr]

Wow. Looks like this little project I have is gonna cost me. I'll have to wait for CMBB to come out, then pinpoint the areas I want.

Thanks for the help, all.

Steve