Hexed up

Finally sat down today to sketch out some full-sized hexes on paper to see how my toys look. I sketched out hexes 12cm across the flats.

Unit of 4 troops. OK Space wise.

Battalia of foot. Still OK on space.

Horse in 'Dutch' order

Double-sized horse unit (8 troops) - looking too crowded

Now with added buildings - apart from the cottage, top left, these are the biggest toy buildings in my stock. The hexes are distinctly crowded.  H&R 6mm SYW infantry top right and bottom left; Pendraken ECW foot bottom right.

Famous historical buildings from Prague, Leuthen, Borodino and err...Grimsby (card model of Victoria Mills bought from the Fishing Heritage Centre about 10 years ago).

So hexagons 12cm across the flats are probably a tad too small for my toys if I want to add built up areas. A similar picture emerges with my woods. So I reverted to the Super-Fantastisch Hexagon Calculator mentioned in the last post. I found that hexagons slightly under 13cm across the flats were 15cm point-to-point (or 15cm along the long diamter). That'll do. It means slightly fewer hexes deep on my table top, but this will do for a few trials. I'll probably get some bigger boards.

I set-to mapping out a grid on my green felt cloth. This proved to be tricky. Partly because I'm an idiot who didn't use his brain so made a few errors, but also because it is a difficult thing to work with. I laid the cloth out on the living room floor rug which kept the cloth in place. When I got to 3/4 of the way through I had to move the cloth along but I don't think I had it so securely in place, so some of the hexes look a bit smaller. Ne'er mind. The great thing about hexes is they are just meant to represent the relative postion of playing pieces to each other so they don't have to be spot on. A properly accurate grid would look better (no pictures) but it does the job.

I'll crack on and convert my ECW rules first and have a trial game next Sunday as football beckons again - the Mighty [sic.] Mariners are at Stevenage, which is within my self-imposed travel-time limit of 2 hours. I will also have a re-read of Monsieur Foy's ECW Variant of Command and Colors, with a view to trying them out.

Before I go, I'll leave you with a face on shot of the Prague buildings (name escapes me) I bought on a work trip there a few years back. I love this model. Early Modern Mittel Europa at its finest. Just begging for a siege game.

H&R 6mm Jägers in front; Pendraken 10mm ECW foot to the right.

A bientot!