Project Stalingrad: A Super Exciting Administrative Task

 

Hex terrain has the wonderful aspect of modularity - you can assemble them in all sorts of ways to make just about any battlefield one wants.  It does take a little planning in design to ensure things like roads and streams match up but I really like the flexibility.

Except for one thing - if one is crazy enough (or stupid - its hard to tell) to use hexes to recreate an approximation of a historical event, for example the battle of Stalingrad, well that flexibility becomes problematic.  I discovered this fact when we were setting up the a section of the board up at the club for the recent test games.

I had help from both Ed to set up a 6x4 section and it took us way too long to do so.  I was working off a picture and trying to get the hexes in the right spots was a pain-in-the-, well you know where.

The Stalingrad table is a bit of an approximation but the street pattern and location of the main historical buildings is both accurate and specific.  The location of generic buildings and ruins within blocks created by the street grid is more an approximation but the set up needs to be consistent.  A consistent set up will also be important for how I'm planning to use an off table map for sewer movement and combat.  
 

The solution is as simple as it is tedious - mark each hex's back with its specific row and column location.  Borrowing from the late and great Redmond A Simonsen of SPI fame, I'm using a 4 digit hex numbering system where the first two digits are the column (north to south) and the second two digits are the rows (east to west).  My previous attempt at just marking the column wasn't all that helpful setting up at the club.

There are 30 columns and 18 rows for the 10x4 table and I'm about 75% done.  My home gaming table is 8x4 so I can only work on a section at time.

Just like a jigsaw puzzle, I will pack away the edge pieces in a smaller tub and set them out first and then use then fill in the rest.   The table consists of 540 hexes (30x18) and the goal is to be able to set it up in under 30 minutes.

Granted hex numbering really isn't the most exciting of war game game blog topics, but it is an example of the planning that is required to pull off a large participation game outside of your home.  You need to get all the stuff there, set it up and not be exhausted or frazzled before even starting a game.  So while tedious, putting in this level of preparation is really important to ensure the game runs smoothly and your players have a great time.  If the players have a great time, so does the GM.  If the players don't, then it's pretty much a disaster for the GM.  The single biggest influencer of player satisfaction is the GM's attitude so a frazzle GM starts off at a huge disadvantage.

OK, enough about hex numbering and the logic behind it - I suspect all of you are on the edge of cardiac arrest from the pure excitement of the topic.

Maybe, if you're lucky, the next post will be about alphabetizing Vallejo paints or organizing game components and dice.  Yes, that is just the kind of edgy, avant-garde topics one should expect from this blog and it's author - that's just the way I roll, baby.