Bloody Big Battles! - Accuracy of Hexon terrain at 2/3 scale

Gravelotte

Ideally one would create customised terrain for each battle directly tracing the contours in the scenario maps, and some people have done just that. Most people, however, probably use ready-made hills of one sort or another and I've been happy with Hexon tiles.

Recently, however, I've been thinking of reducing the maps by 2/3 so they will fit on a smaller table, i.e. 32" x 48", and using smaller base widths (20 mm). The issue that concerned me most was whether Hexon would still work at the reduced granularity.

The battleground in hexes would become 9 x 12 so I superimposed the hex grid on a sample map (Gravelotte) to see how well the contours could be represented. The illustration shows the original map next to my representation in hexes.

I personally think the representation is good enough and, more to the point, is likely to be at least as accurate if not better than using any other system of ready-made hill features.

I'm not now intending to adopt the 2/3 scale in general but it's a useful option and I'll write more about it in a future post.