"Three dimention hex grid" Topic

Has anyone used the 'Tumbling Block' grid to make a three dimensional grid for gaming?

While not perfect, the switching the color of the lines attached to alternating vertices, you can make offset hexagons that can be used as offset layers.

Not perfect, as no regular solid matches the filled spaces, it does look like the closest packing of spheres you can get.

For any answers, thanks!

Doug

PS Why do I have this bad feeling I've just rediscovered an Ad Astra design…

Interesting. I looked it differently… using the squares, one vertex could be considered 'high', connected to 3 'middle' vertices, connected to one 'low' vertex. using hexes, I see one hex, overlapping a lower hex, then a star pattern. Never looked at it for gaming though.

The Ad Astra hexmap isn't quite perfectly 3d like that. Your movement is still measured in straight-line hexes.

Not seeing 'squares'…

Ah, maybe Q'bert-esque? I almost always see point-on cubes if I'm not careful!

Doug

Edit: Don't you love posts within a minute? ;->=

Thanks, LitS! That's the way I remember, but I've been SO wrong before! However, still have the itch of having seen it used…

Has anyone used the 'Tumbling Block' grid to make a three dimensional grid for gaming?

Looks like what I did for a game design I put together back in the 70s. Wasn't able to sell it to a publisher…

Well, Bill, as I didn't see the offering, don't think that's what's put an 'itch' to the concept. ;->=

I put an image on LAF of how I tried to imagine the board. Still sounds like yours?

link

Doug

Still sounds like yours?

Yes, definitely the same. I don't claim ownership of the concept, though.

I get a headache just thinking about trying to play a game on that hex grid. Have you considered elevating a clear lexan sheet above your hex grid and actually having two levels instead of trying to represent them in one map? What about flight stands of different heights?

At this point, I was more interested if others had seen it elsewhere.

I'd originally taken a square grid bagatelle giveaway I made, and translated into a not-unusable game, and tried to imagine it in a hex version. As I said, never got it together.

I've done multi-layer clear sheets, and plenty of games with stands. This was just another exercise to see if it was 'doable concept'.

I've not given up, but it'll take some fancy accessories, indeed. Really warming to the facepalm moment of alternating colored die sides, for instance.

Doug

I can see that it would make my head hurt to try and game that way…

A staggered series of separate "squished" grids might be better, as in 3D Tic-Tac-Toe:

The problem becomes that you need a lot of such grids, and judging range from one grid to another is either a gross abstraction or head-bashing math. And I don't want to think about vector movement.
But my bigger objection would be that "it doesn't look like a space battle" when using a funky grid structure, because where the mini is on the table is not where it is in the battle, and it doesn't look like where it is, either.
Let's say you have a spaceship on your topmost grid. There's another spaceship located directly below it, but four grids away. So on the table, while the spaceships are only 4 units apart in the battle (whatever scale unit you're using), the minis are several feet apart on the table— the ships are close, but the figs don't look close— it just doesn't "look" right. That's fine for an abstract game, but not for the aesthetic purposes of a tabletop minis game (IMHO, YMMV).
*Sigh*
I've racked my brains to come up with a 3D concept that works with minis for space gaming and doesn't involve collapsible antennae or Ad Astra's blocks-and-angle-stackers approach. A solution may be less probable than the Alcubierre drive being invented.

Well, one idea i've thought of, but never seen used would be to have different scale minis for the same unit and use small minis to represent the unit on the lowest level of the map and progressively larger minis for the same unit as its Y position increases.

This probably has never been done for two reasons: cost and the confusion it would cause if the game also has different size class ships -- and what space combat game doesn't have different size classes? i.e. "Is that a big ship or a little ship higher on the Y axis?"

Some novel and cool ideas just don't translate well into usable mechanics for a wide audience. Your 3d hex grid probably falls into that category and will likely never appeal to any beyond a niche group of players who really enjoy exercising their spatial reasoning.

However, if you are having fun working on your concept, certainly don't let my criticism stop you. For all i know, you might invent the Space combat gaming equivalent of Monopoly.

Interesting.

Metagaming/TFG's Godsfire had a spiral of decreasing sized circles, and placing the game chit on which sized circle indicated 'height' on the board.

Same forced depth perspective as your minis idea. However, I'd probably go more for piles of chips under bases, or stacks of poles.

I've played with plenty of alternatives, even looked at the version of my first suggestion where there are three colors instead of two.

Brain still hurts, but intriguing…

Doug

Edit: Two points. One, my original idea uses 'chips' as well; otherwise two, or three, layers only.

Two, when you put the ships hex base in on the board, it, at least, helps you keep track of your current level color. My brain hurt slightly less when I actually tried it out.