After the disaster that attended my attempts to get the Commands & Colors game mat I ordered from Tiny Wargames delivered, I gave up and decided to make one myself, using a ground-coloured curtain I'd brought back from Japan.
I decided to go with offset squares rather than hexes so that I could use cork coasters for hills without needing to do any cutting. Fine in theory, but I did not properly consider the way that hexes use space more efficiently, and that the height-to-width ratio of hexes vs offset squares therefore makes the battlefield look more populated.
What I have now is this (Ilipa scenario):
As opposed to what I'd made before in Japan (Ipsus scenario):
And what didn't arrive from Tiny Wargames:
I am not finding my new version very appealing in its current state. The question is what to do. My choices are to beautify the mat with some spray paint and bulk up the number of figures used in each unit to give a heftier appearance, or to scrap it and either make or buy a new hex mat.
It does look a little better when you get in a bit closer (and with better light!), as below:
And it will certainly be handier for representing terrain, which is a problem I never properly overcame with the hex mat I made in Japan.
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| Terrain concepts - cork hills (to be flocked), woods, streams (to be cut from desktop mats). |
Aaron, the home made one that you did in Japan looks beautiful - you are going to spend hours playing over your surface of choice, with lovely figures, I would go with that sort of thing. for hex tiles, most suppliers will do a bespoke size for you.
ReplyDeleteAs for hex Vs square …… There is a reason why for 60 years boardgame producers have stayed with the hex! 🙂
It's a good colour Aaron and does the job! Another option is what Professor Sabin does for some of his hex games by using a spot to denote the centre of the hex?
ReplyDeleteStill can't believe Tiny Wargames haven't sorted you out very poor on their part!
The board you made in Japan looks very good. I tend to echo Norm’s comments as your figures look very nice.
ReplyDeleteI have made (and prefer) an offset gridded mat for similar systems (mine are home brew). I find that the grids are actually better and more efficient for figure stands and terrain within them. If you look at my "Portable Wargame" resource page on my blog, I detail how I produced that particular grid. I have another for my Baroque Battles game--on that one, the grids are not square, but rectangular to suit the system (one big advantage of the offset grid pattern, if done yourself, over hexes, is that you can play with the dimensions of the grids). Your preferences, of course, may vary.
ReplyDeleteThanks gents, appreciate your thoughts! A bit for me to mull over.
ReplyDelete