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Hi everyone!

I have played a few games in the past which utilise hex-grids to control movement, range etc., and they are always on quite a small scale - the boards are typically quite small. Whilst brainstorming the game I'm designing, which also uses a hex-grid on a fairly small board, I came to wondering whether the hex-grid pattern has ever been used on a 6'x4' type board size. Has anyone ever seen a game with this?

I thought that it could be implemented in 40k type game, to get rid of the ambiguity of analogue measurement (IE there is no 5.8" distance, you're either 5" away or 6" away).

This would work well, I think, with a game which relies more on movement and uses short-range attacks, as counting out more than 12 tiles or so would become something of a chore. Scenery would have to be custom designed to integrate with the grid.

The only issue I have found is that models are physically closer if they are not along a straight path. This might balance, as said model would also move slower in this direction, so 2 models who have to move 7 tiles to you are the same distance away, even if they are (in a straight line) closer - abstract as that might seem!

I think, once people get their head around this, it could work... Has anyone encountered any such games with massive hex-grids to play on, or are they all on small boards?

I used a traditional square grid for Titanomachina. In retrospect, and possibly before production, I should have used tessellated octogons as there's eight directions of movement. Which does have the effect of shrinking distances diagonally, but it's something I'm happy to swallow.

Some games, like Monsterpocalypse, do this and monsters can occupy multiple squares.

Something pointed out to me recently is that offset rectangular tiles function in the same way as hexes, as they connect to six other tiles instead of the eight that squares on grids do.

Battletech. I've seen some ridiculously large Battletech boards and games over the years, and most of the rule-sets have rules for going from hexes (the default) to inches.

Even back in the FASA days, I want to say their standard hex maps were about 18"x24" (actually I checked, they were 18"x22"). We'd often use 4 in a rectangular shape, for a 44"x 36" battlefield. 6 for 66"x54" (5.5'x4.5') wasn't uncommon.

I think the largest BT game I ever played was at a Con, and it was on something like an 8'x10' board. No hexes, and I really missed them, as the whole thing was a huge team game and something of a mess.

 Nurglitch wrote:
I used a traditional square grid for Titanomachina. In retrospect, and possibly before production, I should have used tessellated octogons as there's eight directions of movement. Which does have the effect of shrinking distances diagonally, but it's something I'm happy to swallow.

Some games, like Monsterpocalypse, do this and monsters can occupy multiple squares.

Something pointed out to me recently is that offset rectangular tiles function in the same way as hexes, as they connect to six other tiles instead of the eight that squares on grids do.

How do you tessellate octagons? Do you have an image for that?

Amusingly, tossing 'tessellated octagons' into google mostly produces images of hexagons.

Just arranges them in a traditional grid, I'm afraid, so there's these perhaps unsightly small squares where the corners of squares would meet.

To The Strongest is an Ancients wargame that uses grid based movement.

Deadzone and the old version of Dust also use Grid based boards.

While they aren't miniatures games you may want to check out GMT's Great Battles of History series as well as the various Command & Colors games (Command & Colors covers a lot of time periods from Ancients to a space ship version). For modern warfare take a look at either Squad Leader (fairly simple) or Advanced Squad Leader (as complex as it gets). These are all army vs army scale engagements and may give you some ideas. For example in Great Battles of History units have facing but they face vertexes when in line and hex sides when in a column. A lot of ideas in hex & counter wargames could easily be adapted to miniatures and there are of course many more than the few I have listed here.

 some bloke wrote:
Has anyone encountered any such games with massive hex-grids to play on, or are they all on small boards?

Ogre Designer Edition has large mounted hex-grid map boards. Ogre Miniatures is directly compatible with those hex maps.

Heroes of Normandie (and its off-shoot games Shadows over Normandie, Heroes of Stalingrad and Heroes of Black Reach) use square grid maps.

You can basically build as large map as you want from the map tiles (altough 2x3 tiles is the normal size for games)

The game is basically a miniatures game that doesn't use miniatures.

The Commands and Colours boardgames (and Great War, Battlelore and memoir '44 which use the same basic rules) are played on a board of roughly 2" hexes. I've seen that converted to a miniatures game by replacing the blocks with stands of miniatures and using larger hexes - the 6" Kallistra Hexxon terrain seems to be popular for that sort of thing.

Dust used a board made up of 3" squares, as did mantic's Deadzone (well, 3" cubes since it was a 3D game).

 Nurglitch wrote:
I used a traditional square grid for Titanomachina. In retrospect, and possibly before production, I should have used tessellated octogons as there's eight directions of movement. Which does have the effect of shrinking distances diagonally, but it's something I'm happy to swallow.

Some games, like Monsterpocalypse, do this and monsters can occupy multiple squares.

Something pointed out to me recently is that offset rectangular tiles function in the same way as hexes, as they connect to six other tiles instead of the eight that squares on grids do.

Hex grids generally even out movement better, but create problems because they don't do right angles or straight lines as well as people would like. The board you form wants to be more of a triangle than two parallel lines.

Square grids just have the problem of diagonal movement and the way it warps space depending on how you allow for it. Tessellated octogons aren't a bad compromise; it doesn't shrink distance nearly as much as a pure square grid. I think MonPoc has it right though, using the square grid, but limiting diagonal movement to once per move action. You need to grant an additional diagonal move to faster units to maintain the circular nature, but it works pretty well.

In either case, the primary problem tends to be the inability to move in a straight line outside of overly restrictive directions. If that's a limit you want in your rules, a grid can really complicate or limit things. Also, they've not traditionally been popular because its hard to print a grid that size, though obviously in the age of mousepad mats that's not the issue it used to be.

I think quite a few napoloenic ship era battle games have massive hex boards as standard, but there it makes more sense to not be concerned with turning right angles.

I prefer square for small scale games- the warped movement doe not have as much of an affect.

Using a pattern of squares, but offsetting each row by half a square-width from the previous one is exactly equivalent to a hex grid (each space is surrounded by six others), but the 90degree patterns might be more visually appealing for terrain and the like.