Up until I read this thread I've always been anti-grids, mainly because they remind me of boardgames which I am not a great favourite of. However, the old Greek naval rules Trireme used an offset grid if memory serves and that seemed to work okay. Now I may even give them a go. Looking at that pic has made me think again.

I think hexes can look unobtrusive and if done with some decent art, can have some advantages as Norm said. See the GNW battle map on the below link:

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/2081519/fields-battle-volume-1-great-northern-war?size=large

Quote from: fred. on 22 June 2018, 06:36:37 AM
I think it's the lack of depth when on the diagonal that makes what appears to be a clear shot, not a shot when you look at the square space carefully.

I'll try and find some photos to give a better example.

I did take a photo of the game at the point in question (or at least close to it)



The artillery is just out of shot nearest the camera (the edge of its movement tray can just be seen). I was trying to shoot at the enemy cavalry to the left of the T junction, or the foot unit on the T junction

This is a sketch of the situation



Ignore the hedges around unit b - that was my careless drawing.
So drawing a line centre of box to centre of box, unit 2 seems to be a valid target, with the merest touch of the box unit b is in.
Unit 3 was the one we were least sure of, there is a slight clip of unit e's box, but I'm not sure we noticed that in the game. The problem was unit 4, this is clearly in front of 3 so blocking shooting 3. But 4 isn't a valid target due to my unit c. But it hardly seems likely that my gunners would worry that unit 4 is partially blocking unit 3. This is where it felt a bit odd. And took a long time to work out what was going on. Having sketched it out this morning, its a bit clearer, but even then is quite marginal.

Fred, thanks for putting up the picture and the diagram, very useful for understanding what is going on.

I like squares (or hexes) since, in mind at least, they elimate many of the problems that arise in discussions about what is possible. I use a very rigid, all or nothing interpretation. The actual placement of unit(s) in the square (save their relative position to each other) is irrelevant. Likewise area terrain is homogeneous within the square. It's the square, the whole square and nothing but the square. I think all of this has been said in one way or the other. This interpretation is admittedly more boardgame-like but it's a matter of what you want to spend time doing when you play a game.

Using a rigid interpretation, I don't thing either 2 or 3 are allowable targets. e blocks LOS to 3 and b blocks LOS to 2 (by a very thin slice).
In any event, looking at the picture, taking a shot would require greater precision then the field gun had (plus one or more of the COs of your forward foot units would likely come back and give your gunner a thrashing if he took the shot!  )

BTW - I like the way you sabot your units.

Thanks Fred, that makes it much clearer. Dealing with the easiest first - unt 3 cannot be a target because the centre to centre line crosses the box containing unit 4, which blocks line of sight. Unit 4 itself cannot be a target because it is in the ZoC of unit c.  I would say Unit 2 cannot be a target because the centre to centre line goes through the corner of the box containing unit b.. As a general rule I would propose that if it is really close, it is not allowed, for exactly the reasons d'Guy puts forward, hurling around large lumps of iron with windage and inexact ranging is a dangerous business, and not to be engaged in if friendly units are close to the line of fire. Long range artillery fire does not seem to have been a feature of ECW battles, apart from before they advance to combat, when both sides are quite happy to engage in an ineffectual bombardment until they get tired. After that, they only seem to appear when the enemy is directly attacking them, when they seem to have a mixed record at best!

Thanks both. That's very helpful. Both to understand from a game perspective and the history. As a group most of our gaming is fantasy or Sci fi, and it tends to be if there is a gap to see an enemy it will get shot at !

It's good to understand the limitations of historical artillery.

As I said above this is the only bit of the game that we have struggled with, the rest has flowed very well, and become instinctive quickly.

D_guy glad you like the basing, I discovered that I had lots of bases that already worked for FKaP.

Thanks Fred for putting the time in to draw this up & d_Guy & Mollinary for thoughtful comments

A good looking game Fred

The hexes are obvious and so is the terrain, but some may not like that. There is a certain mechanical nature to the board.

This is McPhersons Ridge, opening scene to Gettysburg.

 

Fred, in cases like that, i would suggest agreeing on a "minimum gap" before the game.

Say for example half the width of a suare. guessing a square is about 10 cm, make that a 5 cm gap. Keep a spare 5cm wide base handy. When in doubt, see if the base can fit through the gap you are shooting through. If you can fit it, you can ake the shot, if you can't the shot is impossible.

This is off course after you checked for things blocking line of sight as usual. only for those 'when in doubt' moments.


And why half the width of the square? if you are shooting at a regiment of 600 men, i think you have a viable target if you can see half of it. solid cannonballs just needed to hit a point of a regiment/battalion/troop/whatever.

Quote from: paulr on 24 June 2018, 12:43:50 AM

+1 I for one rather like the "mechanical" look, Norm. Clean and precise! 

The point about grids is that nothing should be open to interpretation or misunderstanding. If it is, then there is something lacking in the rules. :-)

I agree Norm. So nice to think where I want to move my troops to, without having to worry about being a few millimetres in or out of a zone of control, or in base contact etc.

Hi

I must admit to having been anti grids on a wargames table for a long time, believing that they should only be used in board games. Then I came across 'To the Strongest!' rules last year.

For along time I prevaricated over buying them and giving them a go, mainly for similar reasons in other posts above. Anyway I eventually purchased them and gave them a go, making my own gridded cloth (easy peasy).

The look of a wargame is important to me and any concerns I had about how a gridded table (I actually only put 'dots' on the cloth where the corners of each 'box' was) would look turned out to be a non-issue. With terrain pieces overlapping some of the box sides slightly, the grid seems to disappear; the only important thing is knowing exactly what each box terrain wise represents. What was a real eye opener for me was how smoothly the game ran compared with certain other rules sets and how quickly I picked up the rules. There didn't seem to be any of the problems of players having different interpretations of the rules and constantly having to refer to the rulebook. In a surprising way the use of grids seemed to be 'liberating'. Another plus, was not having to rebase any figures.

All that said, I do think the question of grids v non grids will depend on the rules used. If you have a set that work well for you without grids and you are not endlessly discussing different interpretations of what is written in the rules, then great. I think with me it was the balance between the apparent smoothness of how the rules worked (with the slightly constraining effect of the grid (e.g. limitations on facing of units)) with grids and the 'fiddlyness' of certain other rulesets.

Just one further thought, I am completely baffled by people using figures/AFV's etc. (rather than unit 'counters' as in a normal board game) for the Rommel WWII ruleset by Sam Mustafa which uses a square grid with each box representing 1 kilometre. I have not played them, but as I said above, the look of a game and the visual effect is important to me (I like my close order infantry to be based in close order, I like my WWII troops and AFV's to be spread out). I am sure the Rommel rules give a very good game (I am a big fan of Sam's Blücher Napoleonic rules) but using figures? I have seen some photos of a Rommel game where tanks in adjoining boxes appeared to be fencing with their gun barrels!

As usual, just my tuppence worth.

Cheers Paul

Quote from: T13A on 24 June 2018, 05:10:01 PM
...I must admit to having been anti grids on a wargames table for a long time, believing that they should only be used in board games...

The look of a wargame is important to me and any concerns I had about how a gridded table... would look turned out to be a non-issue...

What was a real eye opener for me was how smoothly the game ran compared with certain other rules sets and how quickly I picked up the rules...

In a surprising way the use of grids seemed to be 'liberating'...

I went through a very similar process, perhaps more 'not a fan' rather than anti-grid, my gateway was "For King and Parliament"

I've also had similar thoughts about Rommel, but to each their own

Grids seem to work well for linear warfare periods, but I wouldn't use them for WWII. I tried PBI many years ago, but it just didn't feel right to me.

Hexes work well for WWII tactical (there are significant hexed WWII tactical  boardgame designs around), but perhaps squares less so. I wrote my own WWII hexed rules, perhaps eased by my familiarity with the boardgame side of things, but when I tried my hand at doing the same with squares, I came across all sorts of problems that I couldn't adequately resolve to my own satisfaction.

The success of the hex based Commands and Colors type games from Ancient through to WWII, suggests that the hex is a universally useful device across the periods, but I wonder whether squares are by nature more suited to the movement of blocks of trooops within a linear style of fighting.

The fact that one has 4 sides and 90 degree angles and the other 6 sides and 60 degree angles, must have enough subltle differences to matter.

Interestingly, one can start to see shapes and grids in an open non-grided game from the point of view that a linear formation with front facing and flanks takes on all the attributes of a square, while firing arcs of directly ahead have attributes of a square and firing arcs of the typical 22 or 45 degrees, by putting down a fixed and definative pattern of fire, in effect create another grid of sorts. So a typical napoleonic open game is invisibly using a square grid for unit position and ahead movement, regardless of facing, while using a flexible 45 degree grid for firing and movement that is not directly ahead, its just that its all invisible and rather dynamic in nature.

I was, for a while, thinking of going Kallistra (ooh! I feel like I said a naughty word) and going all in for their hexed terrain offering.

However, when I saw in in "real life" I was somewhat put off. Didn't look right for me.

The only advantage that I can see that the square holds over the hex is that it is easy for gamers to make the grid themselves,  creating a hexed table is not easy, by the time I get to the last third of the board, the hexes are changing shape, just to keep the pattern semi going. So anyone producing a set of commercial grid rules, has always needed to use squares over hexes as the niche audience is then maximised.

Kallistra did at least give us the regularity and consistency needed (GHQ did the polystyrene hexes) and these days, mat printing is becoming pretty mainstream, so there is no real reason to favour squares over hexes unless you want to stay with a 'home made' playing surface.


I think there is a need for gamers who use hexes (me) to think of ways of making their tables look a bit prettier. Open games do not have the monopoly and nice looking tables as I have seen some pretty grim open tables and even at shows, you can still see a presentation that has a game cloth creased to death from storage folds and some undeserving terrain on it. That is not to say that such tables don't bring great games or that suddenly we should all become terrain snobs and forget the simple pleasures of the 'simple' table, but if we are going to judge hexes in terms  of aesthetics and do so against a ton of amazing eye candy on the internet (which few of us can actually aspire to as functionality often is preferable to form), then hexed tables themselves are going to need to up their game so they don't become a stereotype 'look' and get judged harshly simply because of that.

In the function over form argument, grids win absolutely outright. In the form over function argument open table win outright - getting that middle ground is probably something hex players have seldom been good at, where-as open table gamers do pretty much get it right. So perhaps the real challenge is grid gamers (hex players in particular) to think more about aesthetics.

Hi Norm

While I agree with you 100% about some grim looking 'open' tables, I have yet to see a commercial hex terrain system that looks any thing but awful to my eyes. At least with boxes you can 'blur' the edges so that they seem to disappear. That doesn't happen, for me at least, with hexes. Just my opinion of course.

Cheers Paul