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Hexagons have been a well known feature in game design as much as squares are, the main virtue they have is the wider choice in selecting facing, but lately I see them been used in games were facing is not important, do you think hexagons make more interesting board design and offer hidden potential I am missing over the simplicity of squares? are there other reasons you would choose hexagons over squares?

Please let me know your experiences with such board layouts.

My rule of thumb is simple: use squares if the scale is such that the map is dominated by rectangles, otherwise use hexagons.

Hexagons are naturally better, but if 1 unit equals 1 city block, 1 building, 1 room or 1/Nth of a room (like XCOM), then you want to use squares so that walls or roads on the North-South axis and walls or roads on the East-West axis are functionally identical.

Great question. I am also excited that someone started a game design discussion topic!

From some childhood trauma I have some irrational dislike of Hex-based games, even though I fully concede that Hex is superior in many ways. By preference I prefer square but I am also a fan of assymetrical shaped areas.

Assymetrical is like looking at the board for Risk. Different countries have different shapes and points where armies from other countries can possibly attack. That means no square is the same and may require a different approach to dealing with it.

However, that leads to greater challenge for the game designer.

This is a tough one to answer. I think hexes are more "accurate" than squares. Facing is easier to manage; a unit can only be surrounded by 6 other units (as opposed to 4 or 8 for squares); there's less problems with diagonal measuring than squares. That said, squares are far simpler to work with when it comes to map/board design, which is extremely important when it comes to board games.

I think if hexes were easier to design maps with, then I'd prefer them in most cases.

So hexagons will create a better designed board but will be a problem (or pointless) for game design if I do not try to utilize facing?

Square, where each row is offset by half a square length to its neighbours, are totally equivalent to hexagons, if you use hex counting to determine ranges rather than measuring.

Think of a simple brick wall:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickwork#/media/File:Brickwork_in_heading_bond.svg

That might give you the best of both worlds; six directions of movement, but allows you to use rectilinear features on the map without it looking odd.

Alternatively, you could use a hexagonal grid of points rather than lines. you move from point to point rather than from hex to hex, and treat the terrain as whatever's under the point. You can then have total freedom of imagery, without needing rules about a hex counts as the terrain that covers 50% of its area or whatever. I think 1st edition Heavy Gear did this.

Like the ninja all stars Sodapop did? that would be interesting.

PsychoticStorm wrote:So hexagons will create a better designed board but will be a problem (or pointless) for game design if I do not try to utilize facing?

Accurate facing is probably the biggest draw of hexes, and if you have no need of facing, the awkwardness of designing a map/board for hexes probably outweighs any other benefits It has.

AndrewGPaul wrote:Square, where each row is offset by half a square length to its neighbours, are totally equivalent to hexagons, if you use hex counting to determine ranges rather than measuring.

This might be an interesting thing to try.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So hexagons will create a better designed board but will be a problem (or pointless) for game design if I do not try to utilize facing?

No, not pointless. The advantage of hexagons is that each hexagon has six adjacencies which are functionally identical. A square has either four identical adjacencies, or eight adjacencies divided into two types.

One way to minimise this effect is to count orthogonal movement differently than diagonal movement. The way I do it is to use range "points" rather than a strict number of squares, with orthogonal movement costing 2 points and diagonals costing 3 points.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Square, where each row is offset by half a square length to its neighbours, are totally equivalent to hexagons, if you use hex counting to determine ranges rather than measuring.

Think of a simple brick wall:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickwork#/media/File:Brickwork_in_heading_bond.svg

That might give you the best of both worlds; six directions of movement, but allows you to use rectilinear features on the map without it looking odd.

Yes, this is true. This is a very handy tool if you're writing a computer program, since it means you can create a rectangular array and just treat one diagonal as if it was an adjacency (either NW-SE or NE-SW). Your rectangular array becomes effectively the same as a parallelogram of hexagons.

From an aesthetic point of view hexes strike me as functional but ugly. And it might just be a result of having played years of board and chit games, but when I see hexes I immediately assume the game is going to be heavy going. I don’t know if that’s true of everyone, or true of anyone born in the last 25 years, but it’s worth considering.

Squares look cleaner, but still don’t look at nice as a board with asymmetric spaces, or better yet a board with no kind of tiles at all.

Obviously there’s lots of mechanical considerations as well, but the aesthetic shouldn’t be forgotten about.

@ Sebster I agree Hexes have a lot of bad baggage from ASL and similar games (I am bot saying ASL is bad, I am saying its complex, complicated and hexes reminds most of us these games) I am not sure if the new generation of games carries this baggage though.

I am interested in the variable space map like Zombiecide or Konan, but I am a bit worried in modularity.

Neither! Free-form movement is best!

Just include a measuring ruler of sorts.

Another option that Sebster alluded to without describing the detail is assymetrical areas. These have been used on games like Avalon Hill's "Storm Over Arnhem" and allow the designer to split real world maps into areas that are functional for game use. For example, in SOA the areas near the middle of the city were smaller and followed major roads, while the ones around the edge were larger. This allowed a unit to move quickly around the outside of the city where it would have good visibility and less cover, while in the centre it would need to move cautiously through the built up terrain.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Neither! Free-form movement is best!

Just include a measuring ruler of sorts.

For boardgames? sure.

I don't think anybody using something other than wings of glory will manage to pull it off and I am not sure how they did so, boardgamers in general show a dislike in the imprecise nature of free from movement.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
Another option that Sebster alluded to without describing the detail is assymetrical areas. These have been used on games like Avalon Hill's "Storm Over Arnhem" and allow the designer to split real world maps into areas that are functional for game use. For example, in SOA the areas near the middle of the city were smaller and followed major roads, while the ones around the edge were larger. This allowed a unit to move quickly around the outside of the city where it would have good visibility and less cover, while in the centre it would need to move cautiously through the built up terrain.

Yes, but these work great on static maps, then again it might be possible to work in modular maps if said areas are tiles placed on the map.

I think the production difficulty of making irregular polygon tiles would preclude their use in a modular map or tile laying game.

It would be do-able if you construct all the tiles by hand, but it would be prohibitively expensive as a commercial produt.

For boardgames with spaces there are three options not two:
Hexagons, squares and irregular regions.

This excludes exotic choices like triangles and using intercese, as in the game Go. The former is just a cut down hexagon and is only of use in abstract gaming, the latter are actually just squares. Likewise circles are just fancy hexes.

All three of the main choices have their advantages.

Hexagons - Traditional for ground scale maps as it allows even movement in each allowed direction. Also plots blast radii evenly. However hexes do not allow movement in main cardinal directions, you can choose one axis and have to forfit the other.

Squares - Best for internal corridor and architectural map based games. Also has the advantage it allows movement in the compass point directions and allows eight axes of movement rather than six.
The main disadvatage is that terrain maps can look less natural as each space has four sides rather than six, making terrain blocky. Also movement along diagonals doesn't tally with movement along horizontal and vertical.

Regions - Movement along each bordered zone in sequence. Good for historical province maps and abstract regional movement. Regions can have almost any number of borders allowing for natural chokepoints and travel hubs in the map that work as strategic foci.

Hexes vs Squares.

I prefer squares for almost all uses. Squares can be given a 'makeover' by using diamond pattern mapping for a flase isometric perspective, but that only works when viewed from one direction.
An altermnate is to use 'dirty squares'. Dirty squares are squares with uneven lines and even sizes and sometimes have short joined corners while still forming a visible square grid. This is great for making maps look natural and iregular, it just requests players to see the square grid beneath for movement purposes. So for example if a dirty square has a connecting diagonal then the opposite diagonal isnt connecting at all, yet movement can still 'jump' between the two. It helps if the central half of each square is clearly inviolate in its position, playing pieces or counters move between these fields.

The more pressing problem with squares is diagonal movement. there are two solutions. the first is to change movement rates to cost different amounts for lateral and diagonal movement. The easiest extraction is 2pts for a lateralm move and 3pts for a diagonal.
There are simplified alternatives which perserves one movement point moved per spaced move. The first is to allow one diagonal move for free in a turn (1pt to move to adjacent square) and then charge 1pt extra for subsequent diagonal moves, or alternate diagonal moves.
Note 1pt extra rather than double as you may have to pay extra movement points for terrain.
This option does work at reigning in diagonal movement while allowing 1pt per space moved as the basic cost and allowin g the advantagers of eight directions of movement and the inclusion of all cardinal points.

Hexes are simpler than this, but with the above suggestions squares offer superior map making and gameplay.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Neither! Free-form movement is best!

Just include a measuring ruler of sorts.

For boardgames? sure.

I don't think anybody using something other than wings of glory will manage to pull it off and I am not sure how they did so, boardgamers in general show a dislike in the imprecise nature of free from movement.

I dunno. X-wing and Armada seem to have done fine with it. I think X-wing did OK, sales-wise, but I may be wrong.

Free movement like that works fine on tabletops with no underlying topography. For land battles you always have to consider the messy components of rivers, forests, mountains and so on that persist in placing themselves almost at random all around the map. This is where a grid is a good shortcut to impose some kind of order and structure on the situation.

It also depends on whether you want the map to be of a specific area (Risk, Battle of the Little Bighorn, etc) or if you want to be more generic (Battletech, Command and Colours/Memoir '44/Battlelore, etc); If it's the former, then irregular spaces are easy to implement, and may be preferable (using small spaces in difficult terrain is an easier way to implement reduced movement than increasing MP costs, for example).

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Spoiler:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Neither! Free-form movement is best!

Just include a measuring ruler of sorts.

For boardgames? sure.

I don't think anybody using something other than wings of glory will manage to pull it off and I am not sure how they did so, boardgamers in general show a dislike in the imprecise nature of free from movement.

I dunno. X-wing and Armada seem to have done fine with it. I think X-wing did OK, sales-wise, but I may be wrong.

X-wing and armada both use the wings of glory movement mechanism, so does the DnD dragon boardgame.

Edit some examples of dirty squares, I have some difficulty visualizing them.

Well, as least Star Trek does it's own thing.

Star trek attack wing is the same system.

No, they're all different; they're all unique.

Star Wars has these cardboard movement sticks. Armada has that snake thing. Wings does something different from either of them.

The are completely different more fundamentally than hexes vs squares.

The flight path maneuver system of attack wing is licensed from FFG,

The flight path maneuver system is essentially a tweak of wings of glory card/ movement system.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Edit some examples of dirty squares, I have some difficulty visualizing them.

The board tiles in Of Mice and Mystics might be the sort of thing he's talking about?

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/1375340/mice-and-mystics

It's similar to how GW disguised the board squares in Space Hulk, Hero Quest and Space Crusade by making them part of the artwork rather than by simply overlaying a grid of lines (like Sedition Wars).

Maybe Zombicide tiles?
https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1517678_md.jpg

Definitely squares in Zombicide....

Zombiecide is definitely a regions game.

The regions in Zombiecide work nicely. The boards look great, but at the same time the regions are effective at making some areas slower to move through than others.

Space Crusade boards are a great design that I never really thought of before. Making the tile squares part of the art is really good design. I believe the rooms had hard black lines though, but I’m going off memory.

Both Zombiecide and Space Crusade use a small number of maps that can be broken apart and assembled in different ways to produce variety from game to game. That’s a really good system, and a mechanic that can be used to offset the weaknesses of systems like region based maps. It’s probably a system that works better in urban or spaceship maps, though, be a bit harder to have rural maps fit together.

The game board depends on the type of game and the mechanics. There are pro's and cons to each system so you have to determine what your goal in creating a game board combined with your mechanics of the game. Popular game boards right now is something that modular and dynamic. These boards provide the ability to constantly change the game scene adding twists to scenarios that would otherwise become repetitive using the same stale board. I'll use the most 2 known styles of games as examples Battletech and Zombicide.

Yes I know Zombicide is regions, but ultimately it is a square based game. The game board is a large area created by tiling square boards. You can't achieve that ease and modularity easily with hexes. When you use hexes you can't create a perfect square play area easily, it creates an odd shape, unless you create a border system for the hexes but even then lining them up with other pieces can be a pain. There are ways to make it work, but that means shrinking the tiles to a smaller size so if ultimately your final game board is 32"x32" then that is a lot of tiles to deal with vs simply having a few 12" or even 6-8" tiles. Another example is Super Dungeon Explorer, although also a region type game the boards itself is square based at the heart.

Battletech does have multiple map boards. If anyone remembers them they tend to be large 4x4 map sheets that connect. They don't exactly mesh well together. For example you are using Woodlands 1 connecting it to Cityscape 1. To make the square play area, the edge is comprised or half hexes or partial hexes, so when that map piece goes to another it looks odd. The game board flips over but there are only 2 options really. Another example is Dragon Tides board game if anyone has seen their board tiles? They utilized hexes to create a semi modular board but the boards are awkward and don't line up properly (walls between different tiles), unless you use them for their specific scenario setups.

If your game doesn't include or have reasons to deal with facing or directions other than forward, back, left and right then there is no benefit to utilizing hexes.

If you have firing arcs, want to provide some variety to movement and shooting then hexes are superior. You make the trade though on having to come up with ideas to create a dynamic game board that visually look odd or out of place. You can do a brick format with squares like suggested but it creates an issue with board layouts. Your east and west parts of the board can only properly fit with other east and west sides. North and south will only fit with north and south. Although you get benefits of a movement system close to hexes, you are still stuck with the same limitations that you encounter with hex boards.

Zombicide is definitely square tiles. And the streets, etc. are definitely laid out as squares as well.

Super Dungeon Explore (and Journey : Wrath of Demons) are movement squares on square tiles.

Edge half-hexes aren't a problem - simply disallow players from moving onto them.

Facing / Arcs can be done on squares as well - Journey: Wrath of Demons uses model-specific facing.

Ogre is hex maps, which have a specific N-S orientation, but are modular left-right and top-bottom - clearly inferior to modern tiled maps, but then the Ogre maps are roughly 30 years old...