Hexagons instead of Squares

Orinoco · Post by **Orinoco** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 2:46 pm

I was looking at the Battleball thread that Galak posted pictures for, and had a thought about the pitch. I know that this doesn't particularly add anything to the game, and so probably isn't that great an idea, but what do people think about replacing the squares on the board with hexagons? The advantage I see is that when defining surrounding squares you don't get the question of do diagonals count. The only drawback I can see is that if you line the heaxagons up the most sensible way, you get a 'staggered' line of scrimmage rather than a flat one.

I think this probably comes under the heading of 'it ain't broke so don't fix it', but just thought I'd see what other people thought

Orinoco, wombling free

Skummy · Post by **Skummy** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 2:56 pm

I'm about 85% certian that someone suggested this about 4 months ago. Have you tried the search option?

EDIT: Here it is: viewtopic.php?t=2818 A conversation evolved into that subject.

Orinoco · Post by **Orinoco** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 3:18 pm

Thanks Skummy. Fascinating reading. My first lesson in 'everything has already been discussed by those who've been here longer'

Orinoco, wombling free

Skummy · Post by **Skummy** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 5:43 pm

Orinoco wrote:Thanks Skummy. Fascinating reading. My first lesson in 'everything has already been discussed by those who've been here longer'

Orinoco, wombling free

Nah, that thread was buried with a really strange title. You would actually have to be the sort of sad sack who reads every new post and remembers them months later to have that kind of info on file.

Fresh people on the site are a necessity, simply because they ask new questions and bring up new viewpoints. The archives here are organized about as well as they could be on a site like this, but I don't expect every new person to know the obscure contents.

neoliminal · Post by **neoliminal** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:15 pm

I was thinking about this some today and I think I might have come up with a solution. But you have to be brave to hear it.

What if you sliced every square in BB in half, running the same direction as the field of play. In otherwords like this:

Players would take up two of these segmented squares. They could stand in any two they wanted.

When moving, a player could move in the normal four direction, but also move in "diagonal" directoins as follows:

But they would no longer be allowed to move diagonally as they had before.

This would more or less simulate hex movement and allow for more interesting starting set ups. Push back rules would need to be clear on what happened if someone was pushed back into a partial square, but it wouldn't be to hard to deal with.

Too complicated? Interesting? What do you think?

Skummy · Post by **Skummy** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:29 pm

That's very ingenious. I'll have to think about the effect it would have on the game, though.

BlanchPrez · Post by **BlanchPrez** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:51 pm

That's interesting, but keeping track of movement would be a pain.

Chris

Asperon Thorn · Post by **Asperon Thorn** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 10:47 pm

My vote goes for interesting, but that is because I am having trouble differentiating between the X's and the Pretzels.

And I have no idea on how many aspects of the game this could change. There are some obvious one's and then there are some not so obvious one's as well (like the decrease in effectiveness of Pass Block) This 'little' change could end up changing a lot of other little rules and numbers.

Possibly for the better.

Asperon Thorn

Goblingrin · Post by **Goblingrin** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 11:48 pm

I actually HAVE a football game (put out by SPI over 30 years ago, gaming really does run in my family) called Scrimmage that used a hex based map. It also had a pretty good rule set for movement/facing (1 point to move forward, 2 points to move any other way, 1 point to change facing 60 degrees). As an ex-football player, it really does resemble reality.

Unfortunately, the field was set up so that the grain (straight lines of hexes) ran sideline to sideline. In Bloodbowl, that would mean that you could only set 2 guys up on an enemy Big Guy at the kickoff.

It might be interesting to try out a game with a hex map... grafting the facing system on would require a complete revision (although a quick and dirty fix would be to add one or two to all players MA, the potential for one turners will be balanced out by their need to spend a point to change direction before they could reach the end zone).

Goblingrin

Xtreme · Post by **Xtreme** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 12:23 am

Neo's idea is very interesting and is the best example of how a hex like field could work that I have seen. But I can't see the entire BB community being to keen on changing the game in such a large way. But this is something I would be interested in hearing results after playtesting.

Just from looking at it it seems very well thought out and just might be the solution some of us are looking for.

duff · Post by **duff** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 4:24 am

Xtreme wrote:Neo's idea is very interesting and is the best example of how a hex like field could work that I have seen. But I can't see the entire BB community being to keen on changing the game in such a large way. But this is something I would be interested in hearing results after playtesting.

Just from looking at it it seems very well thought out and just might be the solution some of us are looking for.

It would make it harder to "gang up" lots because every hex only has 6 adjacento ones rather than 8. I tend to think the straight line of scrimmich has to be kept, so 3 against one on the LOS would have to go.

Xtreme · Post by **Xtreme** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 1:42 pm

duff wrote:
Xtreme wrote:Neo's idea is very interesting and is the best example of how a hex like field could work that I have seen. But I can't see the entire BB community being to keen on changing the game in such a large way. But this is something I would be interested in hearing results after playtesting.

Just from looking at it it seems very well thought out and just might be the solution some of us are looking for.
It would make it harder to "gang up" lots because every hex only has 6 adjacento ones rather than 8. I tend to think the straight line of scrimmich has to be kept, so 3 against one on the LOS would have to go.

The way I look at it each square still has 8 adjacent squares. Perhaps i'm wrong. I thought we were using each square the same way and just using the half squares for movement.

Skummy · Post by **Skummy** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 1:57 pm

Oh, and you could position a cage in such a way that a player could not leap into the middle of it.

Melifaxis · Post by **Melifaxis** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 3:28 pm

I say KISS

Games already take 2+ hours to play. The added benefit wouldn't be worth the longer time IMHO

For those who don't know:
KISS=Keep It Simple Stupid

BadMrMojo · Post by **BadMrMojo** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 6:39 pm

Actually, the split squares reminds me of Dark Future. Every vehicle took up 2 spaces rather than just one. A very clever idea, particularly if you're psychotic and want to put in facing.

No, I don't intend to imply that the rules should be changed to accomodate this, but if you want to try it for fun, I'd say it sounds like a good idea. Maybe Stunty lets you just occupy one square, hence a smaller tacklezone? Dodging in between two BOBs with a half a space between them sounds about right to me.