Commands & Colors using Hexon - at last, some focus!

Some enjoyable time was spent this weekend putting down a few random pieces of Hexon terrain and looking again at the best way of making them work with my 20mm Napoleonics. Having abandoned the idea of my 6-inch hexes and chipboard table, I needed to come up with something that would be smaller and more convenient to set up and use.

I like Hexon. It's a great product, and although the hex sizes are probably best suited to 6 to 15mm figures, I think I can just about get away with squeezing my 20mm minis on them. The size of the units might not be as grand as what I had originally intended, but they still look fairly decent.

Figure-wise, I can fit four bases of infantry and four bases of cavalry on a hex quite comfortably. It's a bit more of a squeeze for hexes with buildings or trees, but still possible. The hills work well too. The slopes are high enough to give some reasonable elevation, but are also gentle enough for my bases not to fall off.

I have enough Hexon already for a standard C&C board, along with plenty of hills, but I need to add some river sections and get them finished up, as well as paint the buildings I bought from Total Battle Miniatures. Other features like bridges, redoubts, lakes etc, will also need to be considered.

Rather than using casualty markers, I can also use bases to represent blocks on a like-for-like basis, so I'll remove bases as they're lost throughout the game. Some players don't like figure removal in games, but it's always been my preferred way of playing. I like the table to be free of tokens or markers as much as possible. The only exception will be artillery, which I'll represent with a single base and use some sort of markers.

So, I'm happy that I've finally settled on a way forward for this project. I'll be back to more regular posts from now on, so I'll share more on this project soon.

Winter Warmer - TTC Challenge

The "Winter Warmer" hobby challenge is about to start over on Tabletop Commanders, so I've decided to get on board and pick a hobby project that's been languishing under the table for far too long.

It's unlikely I'll be doing anything except 20mm Napoleonics over the next few months, so rather than doing a painting challenge I thought I'd try to improve my collection of terrain, which at the moment is pretty woeful.

About two years ago I bought a couple of boxes of the Hexon terrain made by Kallistra. I got as far as covering the tiles with my homemade flock, but that was about it. Fine if I wanted to play a game on flat, featureless grassland, but not much good for anything else (and very uninspiring).

For the Winter Warmer,  I would like to finish what I started, which means adding various hex terrain features. I still need to come up with a list but it will include the usual things like hills, roads, river tiles etc. When it's finished, the whole setup should have a more unified appearance, so I'm going to go back and reflock most of the tiles and the few hills that I have previously made. Kallistra makes a good range of Hex terrain features, but I'm going to try to do this on a small budget, which means building my own features as far as possible and making use of the materials I already have lying around. If I do splurge money on anything it'll likely be a bridge or two, and maybe some buildings, so part of the time spent will be on painting up any resin terrain I buy.

I like the Hexon tiles. They are a good size for my 20mm figures, and even if I'm not playing hex-based rules, they should be a good modular system of terrain for playing any game. All going well, by the end of the year I should have a terrain system that will be practical for gaming but also look good on the table. At least, that's the plan...

So, challenge set. I'll write it up in more detail for the next post and like everyone else I'll share updates as I go along. I'm looking forward to seeing what the other TTCs are doing for their Winter Warmer.

Cheers,

K.