Sunday 30 December 2012

More experiments with hexes!

Those who have been following this blog for some time will be aware of my quest for the perfect hexagonal grid playing surface. I said some time back that I wanted to produce a one dimensional 'portable' board along the lines of the actual C&C game board. I have been playing a round with various ideas ever since and having abandoned the idea of sticking printed graphics onto the hexes - it just did not look right aesthetically- I have tried a new approach. As I have a spare Citadel battlemat I decided to see how practical it would be to cut and stick this to individual 80mm hexes. It works really well, no edges lifting off so I'm now trying to find a method to create wood hexes and hills etc as well as town/village hexes, but all modeled in low relief so that figure bases sit on top without appearing too ridiculous! I don't think there is a perfect system, but if I can just get my head round the question of scale and think in terms of playability then I reckon this method should work. I have calculated that using the new 80mm hexes I can produce a single portable game board, framed up nicely with neat edging strips and very lightweight to a size of  just 25" x 41". The woods wont be perfect, but then the individual trees on my larger grid don't look much better really and I have to remove them when a base enters a wood hex anyway! Everything will be modeled down to this scale, probably more a 2mm scale. For hills I'm going to ask Tony at ERM if he is able to produce 80mm hexes in slightly thicker material.

Looking at the photos below I have to say I do like the look of it. I'll let you know how it goes.






6 comments:

  1. Hi Lee - looks very good indeed - I'm very interested to know whether ERM can do laser-cutting of thicker MDF. If they can do 15 or even 20mm thick I'll be knocking on their door straight away!

    Cheers - Tony

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  2. Looks quite good to me too. Are you thinking of painting up 2mm armies for the portable game?

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  3. Lee have you thought of vinal floor tiles, you can get them from HomeBase etc. Might be an option.

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  4. Great stuff yet again Lee.

    It could be an artefact of the digital photo, but it looks like the tiles surrounding the brush in the first photo have a mottled effect. Did you do any drybrushing or similar on them?

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  5. THanks for the comments chaps.

    Simon, the mottling is a result of the glueing process, it looks quite effective I agree.

    Tony, I'll let you know what he says re thicker hexes, would save me loads of cutting!

    Ross, that thought HAS crossed my mind! Infact I looked at 3mm scale!

    Cheers,
    Lee.

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