Grids?

[Norm]

A current post caused me to wonder whether the 'mood' towards hexes is changing with the popularity of To the Strongest and the Commands and Colors and Square Bashing  type games that seem to be getting more mainstream coverage on forums and blogs these days.

The grids are particularly suited to the smaller scales, as you can have a smaller grid, so can play in a smaller space or have a bigger battlefield.

Are gamers here using hexes / squares or at least warming to them or are we tethered to the open table, which in most cases is at least aesthetically more pleasing and less mechanical looking (I say that as a hex fan!)

[Steve J]

To the Strongest and For King & Parliament have converted me to this type of gaming. I did try PBI years ago at an old club, but never really warmed to it. I think they work best for quite linear styles of warfare.

[Nick the Lemming]

I'm still not keen on them. Rommel is the only game I'd play that has a grid, and even that one is low down on my list of gaming preferences.

[Wulf]

The only grid-based games with 3d terrain I play are Mars Attack! and the Firefly minis game. Both are boardgames that still use proper LoS calculations (and both use squares, not hexes). I don't mind that, but I would actually prefer changing the movement rates to distances & doing away with the grids...

I quite like the look of the modular 3d terrain hex systems, but haven't actually played any games with those.

[FierceKitty]

I dislike the look. Don't think that'll be changing.

[SV52]

A current post caused me to wonder whether the 'mood' towards hexes is changing with the popularity of To the Strongest and the Commands and Colors and Square Bashing  type games that seem to be getting more mainstream coverage on forums and blogs these days.

The grids are particularly suited to the smaller scales, as you can have a smaller grid, so can play in a smaller space or have a bigger battlefield.

Are gamers here using hexes / squares or at least warming to them or are we tethered to the open table, which in most cases is at least aesthetically more pleasing and less mechanical looking (I say that as a hex fan!)

Absolutely, likely to be the 'go to' for 10 and 15mm gaming for me.  So far 'Hordes and Heroes' and Commands and Colors are the rulesets I'm getting familiar with.  The type of table makes no difference to me, after 30-odd years of open table, time for a change 

If I can get a streamlined set of hex rules for horse and musket and WW2, even better (haven't delved into C&C H&M yet or Memoir 44).  Looking like all my armies above 15mm could get archived; having said that I'm experimenting with Hordes and Heroes for 28mm.  Always good to have something other than painting to mess about with!

[mollinary]

Hi FK. I understand your viewpoint, but they are not always very intrusive. If that nice man Mr Leon helps me overcome my technical incompetence and posts a photo here then I think you can see they can be quite tricky to spot. This is a 15mm (sorry, Leon!) game of Chotusitz 1742, where I am trying out some amendments to For King and Parliament. The mat has a 4" square grid, marked only by little crosses at the corners of the squares.  I am now a complete convert to grids, having started with To the Strongest, and then gone on to co-author FK&P, and finally playing C&C in its Ancient, Napoleonic and AWI variants with figures on hex boards. I now find it hard to remember why I ever gamed without them!

[Steve J]

I agree that the grids do not need to be intrusive. I've trialed dots to mark the corners etc and I barely notice them once the gaming gets going.

[Leman]

Well I like grids and currently own four different gridded cloths, plus my massive ungridded fleece cloth. It very much depends on the game I am playing. Square Bashing (and Walter Schnaffs), To the Strongest and Tin Soldiers in Action are three of the ones I currently play. However I also find the grids very helpful when laying out scenarios for games which use rulers, particularly Honours of War, They Died for Glory and Longstreet. Don't use them at all for BBB, but likely to use for laying out Alter of Freedom scenarios. I don't find the grids I use the least bit intrusive.

[Ithoriel]

Although I use hexes for Ancient and Armada period naval, for WW1 air games and for combat in RPGs, for some reason gridded land games leave me cold.

Except Heroes of Normandie ... I love Heroes of Normandie.

Inconsistent? Moi!?

[Leman]

Oui!

[Norm]

Having been a life long boardgamer, my brain simply does not see the hex during play, but does read the table in a sort of positional and familiar manner .i.e. it doesn't see the hex but reads the table in a hexed way. I don't see zig-zags and do see zones of control wherever they are. In contrast, Squares, which are not common to most board wargames (I mean going right back to 1957 here), throw me, I do see them and I see their diagonals - I find that odd, though the effect is real enough. This must surely be an eye to brain thing that has evolved over years. It's a bit like rolling dice, you don't need anything as laborious as actually seeing the numbers as numbers and then adding them up in our head to get a score, rather, regular players are more likely to see shapes, recognise combinations of shapes and their resultant values. So two shapes that look like squares (two fours) will be 8, if you see how fast you can roll two dice, sum them and then re-roll and sum them ..... repeat, the result is surprising.

Taking that further, if I set up my Hexon terrain simply to get a terrain contour effect, say of a very long ridge, but then play the game without any regard for the hexes, as an open game, my brain doesn't seem to cope, the hexes stick right out and its as though I can't rationalise why the units are not exactly fitting the hexes and moving by hex count .... it's just all wrong! yet an open board for figures I find increasingl aesthetically pleasing, which to this mind is of course form over function with the regulation and the precision of the hex abandoned to a fancy

I am now laying down in a very dark room after all of that :-)

[steve_holmes_11]

They've found rather more acceptance in traditional air and naval games.

I'm quite a fan, but think they become relevant when representing larger battles.
In fact I'm working (on and off) on a set for Napoleonics, and the gridded genre poses some interesting questions for the designer.

If you have 3 to 8 manoeuvre units, you'll be more interested in details like formation, skirmishers, flanks and support form adjacent units.
Analogue movement, terrain and rangefinding work well here.

Once you're representing a larger army, issues like continuity of lines and locations of reserves take precedence.
Grids - whether squares or hex - work rather better in this context.
Rules like Battle Cry, Square Bashing, To the last gaiter button, To the Strongest and the Sabin ancients rules take advantage of that.

PBI is something of an exception since it represents a small-ish battle with a lot of free movement possibilities.

[petercooman]

I'm actuallly looking at getting some of my games converted to hexes. I have a spare memoir board and am toying with making it a "travel set" for when i go on holidays.

Been trying to get it to work with 2mm troops. Need more research  

[fred.]

We've played gridded games quite a bit in the last year or so. Firstly Rommel (operational level WWII) and more recently For King and Parliament (ECW). I think to our group's surprise they play really well.

Our first game of Rommel took a bit of adapting, I think we were all over-thinking it a bit. But after that they just work. It does really speed up big parts of the game, no faffing measuring, and re-measuring, then adjusting the angle of the unit, so its just right, etc.

As shown on some of the photos the grid can be very subtle, just marked at the corners, or with some of the printed mats, the grid lines are so fine, they disappear at any distance. One thing we have found when using grit or bushes to mark the corners, is that if they move a bit it doesn't really matter, as its still clear whats in one square or another.

The only bit we have struggled a bit with is working out LoS for long range shooting in FKaP - but its not too much of a problem as long range shooting for artillery is so ineffectual no-one is too bothered if a unit is targeted.