Hexes, Spaces, or Squares?

It’s sort of funny. Somehow, somewhere along the way, squares became an anathema to wargamers. Hasn’t always been that way. The game that kickstarted the hobby, Tactics II, had squares. Folks didn’t mind them back them, at least not if the game’s sales were indicative of customers' approval.  But soon, wargamer’s fancy turned to the ubiquitous hex. Uniform movement, uniform measurement of distance, and a more realistic mapping of the underlying terrain are a few of reasons why.  I, however, have used squares for three of my games, Day of Heroes, Night of Man, and the Dark War Roleplaying and Skirmish game. How come and which is better?

That isn’t an easy question to answer, it just depends on the game. Night of Man uses squares because, with the big footprint counters, I wanted to maximize the movement space on each board. Squares also work best with buildings. It's why I used them in Day of Heroes, which depicts city blocks in Mogadishu, and the Dark War RPG, which can simulate fights inside buildings.

The Others -odd board, great game.

And to further confuse the matter, squares and hexes aren’t the only useable shapes. Offset rectangles function exactly like hexes and I use them in a unique, company-level, war game that I've designed, but not published. Any shape works fine in area movement games, but often I find area-movement combat dull and frequently unbalanced.

Some games, such as Zombicide and The Others, use dissimilar, varying shapes in what are skirmish-level games. It works "okay" in Zombicide, spectacularly in The Others. 

Bottom line, there is no one shape that works for all strategy and wargames. It’s up to the designer to puzzle out not only what best captures the feel he is looking for, but also recreates the events—historical or not—that he or she wishes to recreate.

Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games as well as Tiny Battle Publishing the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the Communists invade South Vietnam game, '65, paranormal-crap in World War III RPG, Dark War, publisher of Old School Tactical, and the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military science fiction novel with a twist, with plenty of damn science fiction in it despite what any candy-ass reviewer says, as well as World at War-Dark War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing, Everyone Dies in the End, and numerous short stories. All the books and stories are available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell?