I seem to have spent an awful lot of time lately thinking about terrain and trying to figure out the best way to play games of Commands & Colors using my 20mm collection. Every time I settle on an idea I seem to become dissatisfied with it a few days later. Most frustrating!
At the risk of sounding like the proverbial stuck record, the trouble is that I need a hex board that is small enough to be convenient and practical, but large enough to still be visually appealing. Although I can fit a reasonable number of 20mm figures on, say a 4-inch Hexon tile, when it comes to fitting buildings and other terrain on there as well, things get rather crowded and start to look odd.
I'm beginning to think that reconciling size with convenience is an impossible task, and that I'd be better off keeping the Hexon boards for use with my (still in progress) 10mm miniatures.
No doubt I'll change my mind another dozen times!
Anyway, in the meantime, I decided to crack on with building some more of the Terra-Former tiles from Sally 4th, and suddenly found myself wondering if I could somehow convert Commands & Colors into a game that uses squares rather than hexes. Nothing radical there - I'm sure other people have done it, but I haven't really searched around the web yet.
At the moment, I have enough tiles finished to make a 5 x 4 feet board, and I have another 4 tiles nearing completion.
Each 1-foot tile will represent four areas (ie. four 'hexes') in game terms, with one unit allowed in each area. This gives a game board that is 10 squares wide by 8 squares deep, which is obviously smaller that the 13 hex by 9 hex standard C&C board, but it's as big as I can make it at the moment. I could split each tile into 9 areas, but I think it would look a little cramped.
The middle section will be 4 areas wide, and the left and right sections will be 3 wide. Cards will be dealt and played as normal. Diagonal movement will be allowed, but will cost two movement, so only light infantry and cavalry will be able to move diagonally.
Beyond this, I haven't figured out what rules modifications will be required to get the game to work with squares rather than hexes, but the plan is to just play through a few games and see what works and what doesn't.
I've thrown down some miniatures in a fairly haphazard fashion, with the Prussians deployed along the far away table edge and having the more defensive position. They have a large hill on their left flank, and a smaller hill on their right which has an area of marshland and woods at the foot of it. There are no special rules for the road that winds across the board.
Those are my basic modifications to get me started, so I'll see how the game plays out. The Prussians have a slightly larger force and more defensive terrain, so I'll compensate by giving them fewer command cards. The French will move first. Rather than having a set victory point goal, I'll just keep playing until the battle reaches an obvious conclusion.
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| The view from the French left flank |
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| French centre |
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| The French right, looking towards the hills on the Prussian left |
I'm quite pleased with how the tiles from Sally 4th look. The joins aren't always completely clean, and I've found that the MDF can warp a bit once you apply glue, paint, modelling textures etc. However, with a bit of battlefield 'dressing' the tile edges can be masked a bit so they're not jarringly obvious.
I'll take a few photos during the game and share my thoughts and findings in the next post.
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