Battle of Charasiab commerative T-shirts

Preparations continue for the presentation -- hopefully -- of my Charasiab game at the approaching COLONIAL BARRACKS V convention in Metarie, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans, on the weekend of this coming November 6th-8th.  I don't know yet exactly when it will run but I'll try for a Saturday morning slot, so I can set up the terrain on Friday in advance and have the chance to run the game once or ever-so-possibly twice (if I go full gonzo-maniac-masochist style GM).

When I did my big "Maiwand Day" game, my friend Nick Stern -- with help from his talented girlfriend, Joyce -- created a commemorative t-shirt that looked great.  This inspired me to do the same a few years later when I held a big game on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Camerone, fought during the French Intervention in Mexico, the t-shirts for which also turned out nicely.  So it's only natural I felt compelled to create a similar t-shirt for the Charasiab game.

I used what I consider to be the best image from the battle, a sketch made by a "Military Correspondent" present at the battle, then colored for presentation in a contemporary newspaper or magazine (perhaps the ubiquitous "Illustrated London News" but I don't know for sure).

I've posted the picture once before here on this blog, to show the green crop-fields that covered a good portion of the battlefield.  The only problem with the image is that it had a prominently visible line down its center, left over from where the original magazine pages had been folded, as visible below in this "before" pic...

BEFORE...

I really liked the image and wanted to use it for the shirt, but was unable to locate a better quality version anywhere on the internet, so... I asked my 15 year-old daughter to put her computer and Photoshop skills to use for my benefit... which she did, with great success, as visible below in this "after" pic...

AFTER...

With the image in good shape, I visited uberprints.com -- an excellent website I used to make the Camerone shirts in 2013 -- tried to figure out what to write and eventually came up with the following...

FRONT:

CLOSER VIEW FRONT:

BACK:

CLOSER VIEW BACK:

I shared the design with a couple of Colonial gamer friends and got some positive feedback, so I'm just about ready to pull the metaphorical trigger and order a bunch.  The question is... exactly how many?  The last two times I did something like this I knew exactly who was coming to play in the game and what size t-shirt would fit them.  In this case... I may order a few for myself and my handful of Colonial gamer friends, and add some more "L" and "XL" for anyone who plays the game at Colonial Barracks and is up for paying the actual cost of a shirt, which will probably wind up being somewhere between $16 and $22, depending on exactly how many I order and what the shipping cost is.  On the other hand, I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to make money off the players participating in my game, which is most definitely not the case.  It's just something I think at least some of them might get a kick out of, so to speak, and which I think could provide a nice memento of the occasion.  

I'll see how things go with play-testing the scenario, and if it goes well and I think the game is in shape for the convention, I'll try to use TMP and this blog to let prospective players know about the shirts and ask if they'd want one enough to pay approx. twenty bucks -- maybe a little more or less -- for one.

Meanwhile, if you have an opinion on the design, be it pro or con, please feel free to share it in the comments section below!