"Squexes" Topic

I recently squexed a spare wargame surface to play Command and Colors miniatures games in our 2nd Punic Wars campaign.

link

Who else uses squexes and what for?

I haven't used them recently but I used them long ago with some ancient naval rules – back in the days when a hexed map had to be done by hand and this was easier.

Offset squares.

Gladiolus uses them.

Red Army – White Guards uses them

Greyhounds in the Slips uses them

I have also used them in a WWI aerial combat game which currently remains on the back burner ..

etc. etc.

Phil
Ancients on the Move

I use them for Axis and Allies War at Sea miniatures. My 8x5 table has them painted on the top surface, I use 6 inch squares. Works very well.

I first came across them in Diekplus (ancient naval).

P.S. The map is one I made up for a imagi-crusades campaign a couple of years back. I find that squexes are easier to make maps with.

Ooooh I like that. Looks relatively easy to make and much easier to add terrain. What did you cover them with? You might have mentioned it on your blog, but I was too busy dribbling over your paint jobs!

Cool. Never seen that before.

(What seems like) 1.5 billion years ago, I wrote a paper on "near hexes":

If your "main grid" is the black lines, the grey lines are a "half grid" and the red lines are hexes superimposed on the "half grid".

These aren't equilateral hexes, like we're used to, but these hexes (yes, they still are hexagons!) have some very nice properties, like:

* The corners of the hexes line up with the half grid. Nice if you want to run computer programs without irrational numbers (rounding error compounding) and if you want to hand draw a hex grid over a sheet of rectilinear grid paper.

* The area of the hex is exactly three square "main grid" units. Nice for going back and forth between rectilinear area and hex area without irrational numbers or cutting paper in weird shapes.

* The "count distortion" is low. We all know how to count near-polar coordinate range on a hex grid. This grid is only off a couple percent from an equilateral hex grid over ten hexes. Meaning it takes something lie 150-200 hexes to be off by a whole hex. (Can't remember exactly … I did the math for the paper.)

Basically it allows you to operate in hexes while adhering to the constraints of a rectilinear world (right angles, whole numbers, etc.).

Ooooh I like that. Looks relatively easy to make and much easier to add terrain. What did you cover them with? You might have mentioned it on your blog, but I was too busy dribbling over your paint jobs!

Not sure I understand the question. The tiles are commercially available polystyrene tiles (600mm x 600mm) that come static grassed – pretty much as you see above without the 'elbow made' (happens in use) dimples. These are old ones (10+ years old) made by TSS / PMC. The lines were drawn on with a medium nibbed permanent (spirit, not water based) felt tipped marker pen.

BTW: The 'arid' surfaced tiles in the foreground of the picture are the plain (unflocked) reverse side painted with household emulsion for the desert – which saves on storage space, and the table top is painted blue for naval games.

Etotheipi, That's an interesting solution.

I did think about making a template and drawing around it, but I've tried that before and ended up with a dodgy shaped hex here and there because of small compounding errors in the 'by hand' process.

Your solution would be easier to do, provided the surface was 'solid' and you could rub out the 'working grid'. Unfortunately I was working on a static grass surface which wouldn't allow this.

The near-hexes are a good idea. One observation, though, is that they would limit physical near-hexes, as laid out on a table, to up to two orientations.

Olicana's squexes, on the other hand, would allow for up to four orientations, depending on how well any terrain features on neighbouring squexes might match-up.

The tiles are commercially available polystyrene tiles (600mm x 600mm) that come static grassed – pretty much as you see above without the 'elbow made' (happens in use) dimples.

I like the dimples, at least theoretically.

Haven't people been using half-displaced squares for decades?

I didn't say it was new. In fact, I said I first came across them in about 1980 in Diekplus rules. But I don't see them very often these days because of hexes. My question was:

Who else uses squexes and what for?

The rules I used them for were by Richard Nelson (I think) and Diekplus possibly got the idea from there or they both used the same source. In the rules I used a rectangle 5x4 was suggested as the nearest simple dimension to a true hex grid – it is actually quite close.

One observation, though, is that they would limit physical near-hexes, as laid out on a table, to up to two orientations

I'm not sure what you mean by that. The "near hexes" are hexagons (though not equilateral ones), so they allow six orientations – one facing to each side.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant they look to be easier to add terrain features on top than hex tiles.
I didn't realise they were bought flocked. I like the look of the dimples, looks more natural than perfectly flat grassed tiles. If the modelling skill required is a good pair of elbows, I reckon I could do that!
Lovely work!

Oh, OK. I get it.

Yes, hexes have challenges with terrain pieces, but so do rectangles (including squares). Generally, natural terrain looks "better" on hexes and man-made terrain works better in a rectilinear grid.

Etothepi's non-equilateral hexs

North-south centre to centre is 4 squares

To the side it is 2 vertical, 4 sideways

By Pythagoras

2^2 + 3^2 = z^2

4 + 9 = z^2

15 = z^2

z=3.872983346

That makes the distortion 96% of normal