The 6-inch hex and its metric cousin

Having settled on 6-inch hexes as the best compromise between hex size and table size, I ended up shrinking this ever so slightly. I'll explain.

My new gaming area is going to be a spare room in the house which is big enough to accommodate an 8 x 4 foot table reasonably comfortably. I will be able to walk round both ends of the table and also have a decent amount of space along each side. As a maximum, I could extend this to 10 x 5, but for now I'm aiming for 8 x 4 as my ideal size.

I'm planning to use chipboard loft panels as my gaming surface. They measure 4 feet long by a little over 1 foot wide, and are tongued and grooved so they'll fit together fairly snugly. The room is used for other activities besides gaming, so I need to be able to dismantle my table and store it away somewhere, hence my idea to use the loft panels (on top of fold-away tables or trestles, probably).

After some quick calculations, however, I realised that using 6-inch hexes would be slightly too big to fit a standard Commands and Colors 13 x 9 hex area onto a 4-foot wide table. The ninth hex on the short side would be cut-off slightly, and if I ever wanted to increase the depth to 11 hexes in order to play an epic battle, then I'd need more than 5 feet of width, which would be too tight for the room.

Anyway, the short story is I reduced the hex size from 6 inches to 150mm, which is only about 2mm smaller but means I can just fit 9 hexes inside a 4-foot wide board.

So, with that decided, I started drawing out the hex grid onto the panels today (a job still in progress), and also spent some time pondering how best to cover the surface. Should I use flock or should I keep it simple and just use paint? I wasn't - and I'm still not - entirely sure, so I did a quick experiment first of all with making a flocked hex on one of the board's undersides. I like the look of it, and the colour of the board underneath helps to break up the green a bit.

Another advantage is that the flock will match my figure bases quite closely, and it'll provide a bit of friction to keep terrain tiles in place. But, one drawback is that the surface won't be completely flat, so any terrain tiles might sit on top of the flock slightly unevenly. There's also the added time involved in flocking the whole board, and the fact that the flock does tend to shed fibres somewhat.

I'll need to ponder this some more before I decide. I might need to order some hexes first and see how well they sit on top of the flock.

Back in the real world, it was not a bad day at all here in Stirling, if a little fresh, so my better half and I headed out for a walk around Bannockburn, starting off in Cambusbarron and heading up to Gillies Hill before working our way down to Bannockburn and the visitors' centre. It's a nice way to spend an hour or two if you've never walked that way before, and a good way to approach the battlefield site.

The heritage trail at Gillies Hill. You're on the west side of the battlefield at this point.

Crossing over the Bannock Burn. Still on the west side of the battlefield at this point, behind where Bruce's army would have been.