Thursday, 31 March 2016

Bloody Big Battles! Borny-Colombey Hexoned

I'm not planning to fight this Bloody Big Battles! scenario just at the moment, but other players have referred to the difficulty of modelling the terrain for Borny-Colombey so I thought this would be the ultimate test for using Hexon.

Having established my basic approach and having played about in the drawing program with these maps and hexes for some time, it was actually extremely straightforward and quick (less than 20 minutes) to decide on and 'colour in' the hill hexes.

I used to do this by hand on a printout, but since completing these maps for the blog, I'm now finding it much easier to do it in the drawing program itself. Using a 50% transparent fill I can still see the original map detail underneath which helps me both to make and revise the hex definitions. The latest version of CorelDRAW (X7) works extremely smoothly and is a pleasure to use.

I would probably stagger the hexes to the north-north-east of Fort St-Julien to follow the original angle of the ridge and avoid encroaching on the river. A few villages need shifting slightly so they are on or off hill hexes in compliance with the original contour lines. Otherwise, everything is much as it falls under the grid.

All the high ground can be represented with Hexon - no non-hex features are required. One would be hard-pressed to reproduce the map as accurately with ready-made stand-alone hill pieces, and unlike bespoke scenery directly tracing the map, the Hexon tiles can be reused for completely different battles. Overall this proves to me that Hexon is an ideal solution for reproducing BBB scenario maps.

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