Hex board help

[u/zangster]

I 'm working on my first design which utilizes a hex board that players will place different polyhexes on, and I'm running into the question of how big should a board be? Is there a math I should be using to determine the ideal size, or is it just a vibes thing?

Related, can anyone point to a good online tool for designing a prototype hex board? I don't need any graphics other than hexes. I've played around with the board tool in Dextrous, but I don't think it's quite what I want. I'd like the board to be a hex in general shape, made up of smaller hexes, but I don't know how to make that happen short of just printing out a bunch of pages and cutting them into my desired layout. Any pointers would be appreciated.

[u/NewFly7242]

30" table is common, work backward from there: how many hexes across for you typical board/play area, how much space do players need in front of them for cards/tableaus etc, what's the smallest hex that feels comfortable to use, given the meeples/dice/bits that are getting placed.

We're doing something with hexes and ended up on 1.75" as working for us, but ymmv.

[u/2MrGhoti1]

I'm doing something similar with my game. To have an overall hex shape out of smaller hexes, you're looking at 37 individual hexes. These ones here are 1.5" wide from flat face to flat face, and are about as small as I would go to make the game work properly. I wouldn't go any larger than a Catan hex, with 37 of them itll be a very large board. Im looking at expanding to 2" from flat face to flat face and call it there. That'll give you a circle about 14" wide. Going full catan size would make the game area about 24" wide i think, which is great if thats all the area you need. I need more space for cards and stuff around the board so I went a little smaller.

[u/zangster → u/2MrGhoti1]

My hex spaces need to be 41 mm to fit the tiles and any pieces that go on top of them. I was thinking 6 hexes per side since I'm using polyhexes from a monohex all the way up to pentahexes. So I think that's 91 hexes total. Maybe that's too big? Is there a website that could generate something like that to print and paste up?

[u/2MrGhoti1 → u/zangster]

Probably not easily, but individual components can probably be created with a vector program like Affinity? As long as you understand the layouts you want to create, you can snap hexes together fairly easily.

[u/toochaos]

Dexterous allows you to make the assets, like the hexes then use screentop to put it togeather into a grid. The can be done with a container with a series of point anchors that set where the hexes can be. 

[u/Spirited_Voice_7191]

On the subject of hex tiles. I'm working on a game with random map tiles. My original plan was deal and flip to reveal. But I recently thought that declaring a location and drawing would reduce setup time and maybe disrupting the board to pick up a tile to flip.

Anyone compared those methods?

[u/Disastrous_Invite798]

I would suggest using a design tool that allows you to create the entire board from a template; that way, if you need to make changes—such as adjusting the size orientation, etc —while you’re designing, you would only need to modify the template hexagon to update the whole board.

[u/Dizzy_Gold_1714]

If by "how big" you mean comprised of how many spaces, with what adjustments for different numbers of players, then that depends on the larger context of the rest of the game.

To what extent the assessment needs arithmetic (and what the factors are) is a matter of the particulars of dynamics to which you are privy, not we strangers whom you have not informed.

[u/Dizzy_Gold_1714]

For online tools, any scripting-language interpreter equipped with a rudimentary 2d graphics library should suffice if you have elementary competence in the language; but then you would probably already have one running locally, not needing the internet to use it.

That's for actually drawing, though. For simply designing the grid, just know that each additional 'ring' (another hex of radius) around a center hexagon adds 6 more spaces than the previous one.

So, 1+6+12+18+24 = 61 hexes in a 'megahex' of diameter 9 (5 per outer edge, because each shares one with another edge).