It’s been a little while since I posted anything much here. It’s been a case of too many projects on the go and I’ve not knuckled down and actually done much with any single one. That and I was demoing games at PAX Australia last weekend, which pretty much knocked me out.
jbarton11
E-7A Wedgetail – The start
Mentioned elsewhere in this blog was my the start of my latest Hind Commander strike group. I’ve found my E-8C JSTARS enormously useful in my USMC task force and so I’d like to include another AEW&C asset in this force. They are also not typically available as retail models so provide a nice little conversion opportunity. My next task force is going to be an ultra-modern Australian Defence Force (ADF) strike group based on the Recon doctrine. The current AEW&C used by the ADF (operated by the Royal Australian Airforce – RAAF) is the E-7A Wedgetail which is based on a 737-700.
Australian Hind Commander Strike Group
Now that my USMC strike group is nicely put together, I’m thinking about my next Hind Commander project. The USMC strike group is a pretty blunt instrument: it’s based heavily around the AWACs lighting everything up and the Vipers come in to destroy what needs destroying. The Venoms are there in case I need a transport and the Kiowa to call in the airplanes.
5mm Dice Frames Review
Much to my surprise my 90mm hexes arrived after less than a week from ordering them. Maybe I’ve got low expectations provided by a life time of Australian retail, but I wasn’t expecting them for another week or two. Any way, I’m not going to talk about the hexes, because I threw something else random in with the order: 5mm dice frames.
Developed Terrain Hexes – Layouts
My plan is to build some developed sectors using Brigade Models’ 2mm buildings. These will be perfect for any Hind Commander games and also any other 2/3/6mm Microarmour I end up playing with. One of the games I’m thinking of trying is Modern Spearhead, which uses 3″ square urban sectors. Now, in my last post I discussed my distaste with squares so it’s going to be hexagons. After some playing around I also found 3″ (75mm) to be a little small for what I wanted to do. So I ended up going with 90mm hexagons. I think 3″ squares to 90mm hexes is a perfectly reasonable progression.
Street grids on hexagons
Hexagons are awesome: there one of only 3 regular polygons that tessellate (the others are triangle and squares). What makes them unique and awesome is that there are no diagonal neighbours. For example, each square has 8 neighbours: the 4 that share an edge and the 4 that share a corner. What makes the diagonals difficult is that there not the same distance away as the edge neighbours. If you’re trying to move around a square grid then you need to have rules that deal with diagonal movement and that’s messy. However for hexagons there’s no such issue: each hexagon is adjacent to 6 others and there are no diagonals.
