by sgbeal
This isn't an ideal workaround, but it's a workaround:1) Buy the digital versions of the Y2K editions released on Warehouse 23:
http://www.warehouse23.com/products?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search%5B...
Specifically, the Ogre Reinforcements Pack contains the two "classic" GEV maps (dubbed G1 and S2) and Battlefields contains maps G2, G3, S2, and S3.
2) Extract the maps from the PDFs. If you have a Unix-like system, it's easy to use the Imagemagick "convert" tool to extract the map pages from the SJG PDF to a local graphics file. Here's the script i used for doing so:
#!/bin/bash
# Quick hack to rip the large-format maps from the Y2K-edition Ogre PDFs.
function exportOne(){
local pdf="$1"
test -e "$pdf" || {
echo "Missing file: $pdf" 1>&2
exit 127
}
local mapName=$2
local pageNum0=$3
local ofile=map-${mapName}.png
echo -n $pdf "==>" $ofile
convert -density 300 "${pdf}[${pageNum0}]" ${ofile} || {
rc=$?
echo "'convert' failed: rc=$rc"
exit $rc
}
echo
}
pdf=Ogre_Reinforcement_Pack.pdf
exportOne $pdf g1 8
exportOne $pdf s1 9
pdf=Ogre_Battlefields.pdf
exportOne $pdf g2 6
exportOne $pdf g3 7
exportOne $pdf s2 8
exportOne $pdf s3 9
(i have no idea how one would do that on a commercial desktop OS.)
3) Create a document (one per map) with poster-sized paper (e.g. DIN AO, or whatever the US equivalent is), scaling the maps such that the hexes come out to approximately the right size. (My apologies, i don't have concrete measurements for that scaling, but the 6E hex size is 1.5 inches edge-to-edge.) If using Inkscape, or a similar graphics editor, it should be fairly simple to get right size using the measurement and scaling tools.
4) Export that document to a PDF (one per map) and send it to an online printing service. (i've heard that print shops in the US can/will refuse to print things if they can't verify that you have the "right" (ha!) to print it. Thankfully, that is not the case here in Germany.)
As i said, it's not an ideal way go to about it, but it's a way.